Last week my son and I went to see the Christian band Mercy Me. Even though I’m not really a fan of the band, nor do I listen to Christian contemporary music (I don’t listen to much of any kind of music anymore), it was an enjoyable concert. It was held at the arena where I understand the Stanley Cup Champion Tampa Bay Lightening play ice hockey (there were plenty of banners), and while it wasn’t packed, it was a substantial crowd. For a Christian band that’s been around for 27 years, I was impressed. The production, sound, and musicianship was impressive, and lead singer, Bart Millard, has a powerful voice and a winsome demeanor. His life was the inspiration for a hit movie staring Dennis Quaid called I Can Only Imagine, the name of a song he wrote after his father died. He is also clearly in love with Jesus, and the reason I write about it has to do with that.
At one point he had the crowd sing the first verse of Amazing Grace, and singing it with 12,000 or so other Christians was an incredible experience. He’d mentioned prior how much division and contention there is in the church today, and after we sang he said, for a moment it seemed like everyone agreed on something. The crowd chuckled, but his point was a profound one. What we agree on, all who call on the name of Jesus, who trust him with our eternal souls, is . . . . Jesus! The name that is above every name. I often marvel at that name, the name of a regular guy (from all outward appearances), and how that name has transformed lives for almost 2,000 years. Lies, myths, fairy tales, and made up stories do not do that. The name of a mere man would have no power to do anything, let alone transform Western civilization (see the wonderful book Dominion by Tom Holland). And that against all odds, starting with a small rag tag band of peasant followers in the face of the Roman Empire and the Jewish religion. Christianity should have died an ignominious death in obscurity, but it refused because it’s Lord and Savior came back from the dead. That historical fact is the only reason an arena full of people sing to his name two millennia later.
About Bart Millard’s love for Jesus, he said he grew up a Southern Baptist, which meant he was a legalist. Christianity, as he understood it, was living up to certain standards, jumping through hoops so he could be accepted by God. Then ten years ago or so before he went on stage for a concert, a friend told him that there was absolutely nothing he could do to make himself more acceptable to God, so he should just go enjoy himself. He wasn’t sure what to make of that. Like many another good Christian, he saw his performance as a Christian as a means to measure up so God would like and accept him more. All of a sudden he was confronted by the truth of the gospel, that there was nothing he could do to make himself more acceptable to God. As the Reformation declared, he realized it was through faith alone by grace alone that he was a child of God, and nothing could change that. For me that realization came from Paul’s declaration in I Corinthians 1:30:
It is because of him (God) that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God—that is, our righteousness, sanctification and redemption.
First, it wasn’t because of me that I am in Christ, not my decision, not my will, not my choice, but God’s. As John says in the first chapter of his gospel, we are “children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.” Nobody chooses to be born, physically or spiritually; it’s all of God. Our acceptance before God can never be more or less than it is in Christ because Christ is what we can never be, the righteousness of God. Therefore we are loved unconditionally because we are loved in Christ. We could not be loved more, regardless of what we do or do not do. He is also our progressive holiness, our sanctification, our becoming more like him. All of this because he purchased us, redeemed us, we are his. Instead of looking to us, our sin, our failure, our effort, we look to him, as Jesus told us to do:
14 Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, 15 that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him.”
We simply look up to him, and trust that he took the penalty, death, for us. No more striving to measure up; we can’t! No more jumping through hoops to get him to like us a little more; he can’t! Bart Millard and his bandmates, he said, have spent the last ten years proclaiming this simple gospel message. That’s why their latest album is titled inhale (exhale), relax, God’s got us covered in Christ; no more striving, rest in him, then live for him.
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