The Story in Song Part 2 | Warrior

For an introduction to "The Story in the Song" series, see yesterday's blog post featuring Part 1 | The Love of God.

God is a God of love. He is also a (2) Warrior, sure and true as a loving husband who longs for and fights for his bride. He can offer grace and mercy because He is holy and just. As Creator, He is deserving of His creation’s worship and love. But as His creation – individually and corporately – we rebel against Him, rejecting Jesus’ sacrifice for us and choosing to love ourselves apart from Him. The recent events that have occurred around the world – with the shootings at the elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut; the rapes by the teenage boys in Steubenville, Ohio; the bombings at the Marathon in Boston, Massachusetts; the gut-wrenching murders in Gosnell’s clinic in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; the terrible persecution in Egypt; and the potential onslaught of war in Syria – while all horrific, are not strange anomalies in how we have treated each other in human history. This is where human selfishness and rebellion against a loving God take us. This is the world we have made. And we desperately need a Warrior to be holy and just to fight for us and against the evil in us.

Christ the Son demands our praise / For His kingdom has no end of days. / Lord, You rejoice in victory / When another lost soul bows to its knee; / Rising tide of righteousness / With the shield of truth upon Your breast. / Oh, the Warrior! / Honor and majesty divine / Around His sacred temple shine. / His grace and might so long foretold  / In crowns of glory, not of gold. / Your hand shall find out every foe, / And as a fiery furnace glows / With raging heat and living coals, / They will feel Your wrath upon their souls. / Oh, the Warrior will conquer all; / The world will fall before His feet.

As much as we express our need for God’s love and compassion, we must also remember we need His holiness and might. We need Him to be both the Servant King and the Righteous Judge. We need Him to change this world from a place where evil has its day far too often, to a place where heaven and earth meet and people can rejoice and live in the complete and perfect goodness only God can provide. 

We can humbly join with Him now in trusting Jesus as the only holy One and receive mercy, grace, and life everlasting. Or we can recognize Jesus for who He is after we die or when He returns, and justly receive the everlasting suffering, darkness, and solitude away from God that we continued to chase after because we chose not to love and honor the only One who can and does make all things new.

Tomorrow brings Part 3 | Nicodemus.

– Sully

Of course, if your curiosity is piqued, or something inside you is being stirred, feel free to connect.