Should We Sing of God’s ‘Reckless Love’?

00:00:00.000 | [Music]

00:00:16.000 | Reckless Love. That's the mega hit worship song and its lyrics have reached

00:00:20.880 | millions and it's inspired over a dozen emails our way in just the past month

00:00:25.200 | like this one from Tim, a regular listener to the podcast. "Pastor John,

00:00:28.800 | hello. Over the past couple of months I've been hearing the song Reckless Love

00:00:31.760 | playing over and over in churches and on the radio. One of the main lines in the

00:00:35.840 | chorus celebrates the overwhelming, never-ending, reckless love of God.

00:00:41.440 | My question is, is this a biblically and theologically correct way to describe

00:00:46.000 | God's love? Is the term reckless too reckless? I don't want to sound too

00:00:51.040 | judgmental but every time I bring this up I get called a Pharisee for focusing

00:00:54.560 | on just one word rather than the message of the whole song. Just hoping you could

00:00:58.480 | shed some light because I truly believe that words matter, especially in songs of

00:01:02.000 | worship and praise." My response to this concern needs to be

00:01:06.960 | expressed to two different groups of people, pastors and lead worshipers on

00:01:11.680 | the one hand, and I'm lumping those together as worship service shapers, and

00:01:16.640 | the congregation on the other hand. The shepherds who feed the flock with songs

00:01:20.960 | and the sheep who are asked to savor the truth and the music that they're being

00:01:28.160 | fed. I have two words for the pastors and lead worshipers and then something for

00:01:34.160 | the rest of us. First, we live in a time of unprecedented wealth of Christian

00:01:41.120 | music and there is no shortage whatsoever of older songs and newer songs

00:01:48.960 | and fresh renditions of older songs that are rock solid in their biblical content

00:01:56.080 | and creative and fresh and powerful both in their lyrics and in their tunes,

00:02:02.240 | which means that pastors and lead worshipers are never boxed in to using

00:02:10.000 | theologically defective or musically dated songs if you don't want to. If you

00:02:17.040 | want to be theologically and biblically faithful as a lead worshiper and feed

00:02:23.600 | your flock with the richest of biblical food and the most engaging of tunes,

00:02:30.320 | there is a wealth of old and new to choose from so that you never have to

00:02:36.320 | sing something theologically defective or misleading or unhelpful. The second

00:02:42.640 | thing I want to say to pastors and lead worshipers is that it is your primary

00:02:48.480 | responsibility to build into the minds and hearts of the people truth that

00:02:56.080 | portrays Christ and the Father and the Spirit and the way of salvation in

00:03:01.200 | biblically faithful ways so that the people's minds engage with spiritual

00:03:07.840 | reality, not just imaginary things, and so that people's hearts are moved toward

00:03:15.440 | authentic spiritual affections rooted in that reality. That's your job. Now, the

00:03:22.880 | congregation, a word to the congregation, the concern that Tim is raising for us

00:03:29.440 | here in this question that he asked, what does a congregation or an individual in

00:03:36.160 | the congregation do if a song is being sung that we think has defective lyrics?

00:03:44.880 | Especially if we think the song is theologically or biblically defective,

00:03:51.920 | not just poetically defective. And Tim gives us this specific example of a

00:03:58.400 | popular song right now called "Reckless Love." But there are many such problems

00:04:03.840 | in many songs, both old and new, not just new. So let me take this one for an

00:04:13.120 | example as to how we might respond when this happens. So "Reckless Love" has a

00:04:20.880 | refrain which ends like this, "Oh, the overwhelming, never-ending, reckless love

00:04:27.760 | of God." Now, I don't know enough about the theology of the author to know what

00:04:34.240 | aspect, what dimension of the meaning of "reckless" he intended. But I'm so aware

00:04:42.000 | that today there's a kind of theology that sees God as not knowing the future

00:04:47.280 | and therefore treating him as though he could take real risks since he doesn't

00:04:51.120 | know what might happen, in which case the giving of his son might be described as

00:04:58.400 | reckless. You might give your son and salvation not succeed. I mean, there are a

00:05:04.800 | lot of people who believe this, who believe that God doesn't know the future

00:05:09.040 | exhaustively and therefore he's taking real risks because he doesn't know what

00:05:12.400 | the outcome is going to be, at least not in the short run. So if "reckless" were to

00:05:17.760 | fit into that theology, I would regard it as heretical. Now, I hope the author did

00:05:25.680 | not intend it that way. In fact, it seems to me that there's good evidence in the

00:05:31.520 | song that he didn't mean it that way. But the reason the word "reckless"

00:05:38.880 | raises the question is because in modern English, you have to work really hard to

00:05:45.600 | put a positive meaning on the word "reckless" in relation to God. Because if

00:05:50.560 | you just click on a good thesaurus online and look at all the meanings

00:05:56.480 | associated with "reckless," here they are—audacious, brash, carefree, careless,

00:06:02.160 | daring, foolhardy, hasty, ill-advised, imprudent, negligent, thoughtless,

00:06:08.000 | adventurous, any which way, breakneck, daredevil, desperate, devil may care,

00:06:14.400 | fast and loose, feckless, harebrained, headlong, heedless, helter-skelter,

00:06:18.800 | hopeless, hot-headed, inattentive, incautious, inconsiderate, indiscreet,

00:06:23.600 | kooky, madcap, mindless, overventuresome, playing with fire, precipitate, rash,

00:06:29.200 | regardless, temerious, uncareful, venturesome, venturous, wild. Now, that is

00:06:37.440 | the general sense that one gets when one hears the word "reckless driver,"

00:06:44.640 | uncaring about what other people do, or what he might do to other people. But

00:06:52.080 | maybe the author used the word "reckless" in the sense that God's love may

00:06:58.000 | look to an outsider, foolish and ill-advised, brash, breakneck, but in

00:07:04.720 | fact the foolishness of God is wiser than the wisdom of men, and the

00:07:10.880 | recklessness of God is more assured of success than the most carefully executed

00:07:15.360 | plan of man. Maybe. In other words, maybe he's treating the word "reckless" the

00:07:20.240 | way Jesus treated the word "hate" when he said, "You have to hate your mother

00:07:25.440 | and father in order to follow me." Well, it looks like hate to a lot of people

00:07:30.960 | when you follow Jesus and leave your mother and father behind. So what should

00:07:35.280 | you do sitting in the congregation if you don't like this word "reckless" and

00:07:40.240 | you have all these negative connotations in your head? One of the things you do is

00:07:45.520 | look at the lyrics of the song to see if there are evidences of how the word

00:07:52.240 | might be construed or intended. Here's a couple of examples. The song says,

00:07:58.880 | "Before I spoke a word, you were singing over me." Now in my mouth, those are

00:08:06.400 | radically Calvinistic lyrics. God only sings over his own people. He doesn't

00:08:12.080 | sing over those who are in rebellion against him. He sings over his own

00:08:15.920 | people, Zephaniah 3:17. So, if you are God's own people before you spoke a

00:08:22.960 | word, that's unconditional election. Here's another example. "Before I took a

00:08:29.360 | breath, you breathed your life into me." Now in my mouth, that's a radical

00:08:36.000 | affirmation of Calvinistic doctrine of sovereign grace, irresistible grace.

00:08:42.000 | Since the Bible doesn't teach that God breathed life into us before we were

00:08:47.200 | physically born, I take the words, "You breathed life into me," to be a reference

00:08:53.360 | to the new birth. So, the song is saying that the new birth happened to me before

00:09:02.400 | I took any breath at all, meaning before I did anything to signify that I had

00:09:08.880 | life, which is exactly what happens in the new birth. It is a sovereign gift of

00:09:13.840 | God. We don't make new birth happen. God makes new birth happen. Now, I don't

00:09:19.040 | know whether the author is that Calvinistic. I kind of have my doubts, but

00:09:23.360 | I don't know. But that's the way I would sing these words if we ever did sing it,

00:09:28.560 | because that's their most natural meaning, at least I hear them that way,

00:09:33.680 | which then means when I get to the word "reckless," I'm going to put a meaning on

00:09:40.320 | it that ascribes to God absolute control over the object and circumstances of His

00:09:47.440 | love, because that's what's implied in those previous lyrics. And I hope that

00:09:54.480 | those who love the word "reckless" in this song also love the Calvinistic

00:09:59.680 | theology in the rest of the lyrics. So, here's the point. If you're in a church

00:10:05.280 | that basically sings sound and helpful lyrics, and along comes a song with

00:10:10.880 | questionable words, then either stop singing if your conscience won't let you

00:10:17.040 | sing, or put a meaning on the words that you are able to affirm. Now, lest you

00:10:26.720 | think I'm asking you to do something quirky or unusual with new songs that we

00:10:34.080 | don't do with old songs, consider one last illustration. Most gospel-loving

00:10:41.840 | evangelical churches, including mine, the one I go to, love to sing Charles

00:10:49.680 | Wesley's "And Can It Be." Great song, right? Yeah. But what do you mean when you

00:10:56.720 | sing, "He left His Father's throne above, so free, so infinite is grace, emptied

00:11:02.320 | Himself of all but love"? Give me a break! He did not empty Himself of all but love.

00:11:07.760 | That is absolutely not true. He didn't empty Himself of righteousness and

00:11:13.040 | wisdom and justice and holiness and deity. Well, you can either protest the

00:11:20.640 | song to your worship leader and stop singing this Wesleyan song, or you can

00:11:26.280 | stop singing, or you do what I do. You can take it as poetic license for

00:11:34.720 | overstatement in a poem and construe it to mean, "He emptied Himself of everything

00:11:40.680 | He needed to empty Himself of in order to be as loving as He could be." Something

00:11:45.600 | like that. I don't think Charles Wesley was a heretic. Not like that, anyway. But

00:11:51.400 | take the next verse. Most Calvinists love to sing the next verse. Whoa, it sounds

00:11:58.120 | exactly like what we believe, right? "Sovereign, irresistible grace to the dead

00:12:03.680 | imprisoned sinner. Long my imprisoned spirit lay, fast bound in sin and nature's

00:12:09.960 | night," that's original sin, "thine eye diffused, a quickening, a life-giving ray.

00:12:16.880 | I woke, the dungeon flamed with light, my chains fell off, my heart was free. I rose,

00:12:25.280 | went forth and followed thee." When I sing that, I'm singing like a full-blooded

00:12:31.600 | seven-point Calvinist. "My chains fell off, my heart was free, I'm out of here

00:12:38.640 | because of the sovereign grace of God and that only." Charles Wesley didn't mean

00:12:44.360 | that. Charles Wesley, being a good Wesleyan that he was, not a Calvinist,

00:12:51.880 | probably did not mean what I mean when I sing that verse. He meant that God's

00:12:58.680 | prevenient grace overcame original sin and struck off the chains of

00:13:06.840 | helplessness and put me in a position where I, with newly granted autonomous

00:13:14.960 | free will, may or may not leave the prison. My choice is final and decisive.

00:13:22.840 | "I rose, went forth and followed thee." That's not what I mean when I sing that

00:13:31.160 | song. So back to the pastors and lead worshipers, please do your job and do not

00:13:38.760 | ask too much of us sheep as we sit here in this service. Give us songs whose

00:13:46.200 | original meaning we can joyfully affirm because they are fully biblical. Don't

00:13:54.160 | give us too many, just one or two, like maybe and can it be. Don't give us too

00:14:03.200 | many where we have to change the meaning in order to be faithful. Thank you, Pastor

00:14:08.400 | John. And this discussion reminds me of another popular episode that we recorded

00:14:13.160 | where we looked at the the lyrics of a Christian song titled "What a Beautiful

00:14:16.280 | Name." That was in an episode we titled "When Worship Lyrics Miss the Mark." That

00:14:21.920 | was episode number 1077. Check it out in the archive at

00:14:26.720 | DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn. And there you can explore all of our

00:14:31.760 | now 1,200 past episodes. And you can scan through a list of our most popular ones

00:14:37.040 | of all time and a list that's updated every day. And you can read full

00:14:41.160 | transcripts and you can even send us a question of your own. You can do all of

00:14:44.280 | that at DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn. And of course, if you want to get new

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00:14:53.440 | and your favorite podcast player. Well, I recently ran a search of the APJ inbox of

00:15:00.080 | all the emails that we have for the words "anxiety" or "anxious." And those terms

00:15:05.320 | appear in 620 emails. Incredible. To the struggle with anxiety we turn next when

00:15:12.640 | we return on Monday. I'm your host, Tony Reinke, and on behalf of John Piper and

00:15:17.800 | all of us at Desiring God, have a wonderful extended Memorial Day weekend.

00:15:23.080 | And we'll see you back here next week.

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Should We Sing of God’s ‘Reckless Love’?

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