This week our song is Vicky Beeching’s The Wonder of the Cross – in it we consider whether it matters who the author is in terms of whether we sing the song or not….
Also on YouTube
For more on the Vicky Beeching controversy – see these earlier articles.
Undivided – An Open Letter to Vicky Beeching
An Open Letter to the Evangelical Church about Vicky Beeching and ‘Gay Christianity’
Last weeks song is here….
Songs for Sunday 8 – Psalm 130 – From the Depths
Thanks for sharing this David.
My worry with this song is, what is the writer proclaiming, to what degree is it truth impacting in her life?
‘May I never lose the wonder……’
It’s to a degree observational, but doesn’t seem to grasp what is accomplished for the writer. Where is the proclamation of what is has done for her (or the singer) personally?
It’s as if it’s a nice wonderful observation, but misses any application. Therefore requiring this observant wonder, because it has yet to change the life and deal with personal sin.
Listen to Horatio Spafford in contrast.
‘Bliss, oh the bliss, of this glorious thought, my sin not is part but the whole, is nailed to the cross and I bare it no more, praise the Lord praise the Lord oh my soul.’
That’s the wonder of the cross, not just observed, but applied!
There is a remarkable piece by AW Tozer on this topic, the Old Cross and the New, where he tackles a new but false view of the cross, and only the old Cross does what it’s purposed to do. Put to death.
Below is just a portion, see the link for the full article.
http://ldolphin.org/oldcross.html
-‘The new cross does not slay the sinner, it redirects him. It gears him into a cleaner and jollier way of living and saves his self-respect. To the self-assertive it says, “Come and assert yourself for Christ.” To the egotist it says, “Come and do your boasting in the Lord.” To the thrill seeker it says, “Come and enjoy the thrill of Christian fellowship.” The Christian message is slanted in the direction of the current vogue in order to make it acceptable to the public.
The philosophy back of this kind of thing may be sincere but its sincerity does not save it from being false. It is false because it is blind. It misses completely the whole meaning of the cross.
The old cross is a symbol of death. It stands for the abrupt, violent end of a human being. The man in Roman times who took up his cross and started down the road had already said good-by to his friends. He was not coming back. He was going out to have it ended. The cross made no compromise, modified nothing, spared nothing; it slew all of the man, completely and for good. It did not try to keep on good terms with its victim. It struck cruel and hard, and when it had finished its work, the man was no more…….’
Now as a sinner, that’s the sort of cross I want to sing about. Not one I look at and leaves me the same. But one which slays my sin, and I can rejoice as Spafford did.
It’s possible to sing the Wonder of the Cross, and avoid any true personal application, because it makes no demands. It’s not possible to do that with Spafford and It is Well, because that Cross the singer proclaims as nailed their sin to death. It’s personal, not observational. Spafford grasped the Old Cross Tozer speaks of.
Once the cross has done it’s work like that, we cannot be the same.
This was todays April 10th My Utmost for His Highest-
Complete and Effective Decision About Sin
By Oswald Chambers
…our old man was crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves of sin. —Romans 6:6
Co-Crucifixion. Have you made the following decision about sin—that it must be completely killed in you? It takes a long time to come to the point of making this complete and effective decision about sin. It is, however, the greatest moment in your life once you decide that sin must die in you– not simply be restrained, suppressed, or counteracted, but crucified— just as Jesus Christ died for the sin of the world. No one can bring anyone else to this decision. We may be mentally and spiritually convinced, but what we need to do is actually make the decision that Paul urged us to do in this passage.
Pull yourself up, take some time alone with God, and make this important decision, saying, “Lord, identify me with Your death until I know that sin is dead in me.” Make the moral decision that sin in you must be put to death.
This was not some divine future expectation on the part of Paul, but was a very radical and definite experience in his life. Are you prepared to let the Spirit of God search you until you know what the level and nature of sin is in your life— to see the very things that struggle against God’s Spirit in you? If so, will you then agree with God’s verdict on the nature of sin— that it should be identified with the death of Jesus? You cannot “reckon yourselves to be dead indeed to sin” (Romans 6:11) unless you have radically dealt with the issue of your will before God.
Have you entered into the glorious privilege of being crucified with Christ, until all that remains in your flesh and blood is His life? “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me…” (Galatians 2:20).
I am enjoying these Songs for Sunday, thank you. I used to love The Wonder of the Cross but can’t sing it wholeheartedly now because I am distracted by the writer’s story and wondering about her and how she could go away from all she wrote about. You mentioned David having sinned but he, though he sinned greatly, always turned back to God.
I think there may be sincere Christians who are seriously misguided about a lot of matters. Maybe all of us are badly wrong over a spectrum of questions. Why do we latch onto this lesbian lady’s drift away from evangelicalism? What about bishops who are millionaires or multimillionaires? What about the range of bullying scandals played out in evangelical Churches? What about one life per second or more lost to abortion? My hope and prayer would be for her return to a balanced biblical theology. Celibacy, or sex in marriage, appears to be spelt out clearly in the Bible. But I have come to feel a circumspect and measured engagement pays dividends on sensitive questions like this. It’s a lovely hymn but maybe the psalms are less contentious? Anything done between female sexual partners pales to trivial insignificance, at least in my mind anyway, when compared to what we see in the Ukraine just now,-or the UK abortion butchery.