How To Cripple The Sons of God

Yeah, I’m angry. And this is the longest blurb I’ve ever posted. But let’s back up.

I paid much closer attention to music after I became a Christian. Before then it was primarily the music that mattered, unless the lyrics were so bad that singing along with the band made me feel stupid.

It was hymns that first got to me. While the music still needed to be stirring, the lyrics made my inner fireplace flame with heat. I vividly recall the first time I attended a performance of Handel’s Messiah after having received Jesus--I could hardly contain myself. Well, actually, I didn’t. I leaped to my feet not fifteen seconds into the Hallelujah Chorus, threw my hands into the air and yelled praise to God. That no one else was yet standing made no difference to me; I was motivated beyond concern by God’s grace to me, which was stunningly captured by Handel.

Music and words light me up.

That’s why when the two, music and words, don’t play well together, I get all upset. Sometimes I’ll be singing along and enjoying the music when I’m suddenly confronted with words I don’t like, words that aren’t true, or words that make a mess of things--words that make a mess of you and me.

And that’s what happened a few days ago.

There’s a song racing up the Christian music charts called, “Empty Me,” by Chris Sligh. Now, I don’t want to be a sourpuss when it comes to music, especially Christian music. And I’m as certain as I can be that Chris is a genuinely good guy and a lover of Jesus. Do you sense a “But...” coming?

But. (There it is.)

“Empty Me” is one of those songs which, while accurately identifying the feelings and turmoil experienced by virtually every believer, it inaccurately assumes that everything bad in us is us, while the only good in us is Jesus. If that’s true, then who is the new creation me that God created at my new birth? Am I just a facade? A fake? Am I now a son of God or not? Have I become the perfect dwelling place of God, or is He hunkered down in some teeny, tiny little barricaded room deep inside me, surrounded and threatened by awful me? Am I good or am I bad?

If I am bad, then I don’t know what God did through Christ other than to earn my forgiveness. The sins on my record are removed, but I’m still rotten. Is that it? If it is, then this is why many of us picture ourselves as unchanged by God. And if we’re unchanged, guess who has an incredible (and I would add impossible) amount of work to do?

Let the self-beating begin.

But it’s not true! In fact, it’s a lie Satan began spreading just after those people in the upper room received the Holy Spirit and became alien new creations, no longer of this world. You and I must make the distinction that, while we have flesh and that nothing good dwells there (Rom 7:18), we are no longer flesh! We’re Spirit-born sons! Our fight is not with self because we have a new one. Our effort in this life is not to somehow get rid of our old self or to create a new self--that’s what God did through Christ! Can you see how big and awful a lie it is to believe anything else?

I hate this lie. I hate it because it impairs the glory of God by retarding it in the sons of God. And it fosters songs like this. It and others like it induce us to offer a supposed rotten and unchanged self to God, one He does not recognize! This lie makes unbelievers out of the very sons and daughters of God, horribly crippling us in our approach to Him and in our approach to living.

Jesus’ command to deny self and to pick up a cross and follow Him (Mt 16:24) was given to those who did not yet have a new self. They couldn’t have a new self because Jesus wasn’t yet in the business of handing out new ones. That was yet to come--after His crucifixion and resurrection, in which you and I were included (Rom 6:1-7). Now there are lots of people who have been given a new self. One of those is reading this.

You and I no longer have to deny our “self” since we have a new one, a son of God self. We should embrace that one. Frankly, it’s a high mark of faith in God when we do. There is, however, something that seems like the self we must deny, but it’s the flesh--you don’t want to follow after that!

What we need is Peter’s vision. Peter got it three times, but we might need it more.

Peter was a Gentile, a barbarian to those who were believers in God and who worked to obey Him. All of his life he heard that only those who obeyed God perfectly would be worthy and welcome in the kingdom. Imagine how tough it must have been to be given as a gift from God perfect worth and welcome in the kingdom through Christ, and then have to live around those who were still working for it. Peter was a New Covenant baby, who soon became fully involved in spreading the new gospel of God’s grace to us in Christ.

However, Peter struggled with the lie that God’s gift wasn’t really as good and perfect as God said it was. So, to help Peter believe the truth, God gave him a vision that helped him shift from an inaccurate and faulty estimate of people to a true one--a vision of people according to God, rather than people according to feelings and lies. The point of the vision? "Do not call anything impure that God has made clean." (Acts 10:15)

Boy, do we ever need that vision.

Satan, ever the strategist, continued to badger Peter with the lie that when God made men and women, boys and girls clean and new, they weren’t really entirely clean and new. And if they weren’t, they’d better do something to get there, like restrict themselves, perform rituals and take up new promises of what they would do to get God’s approval--to create an acceptable self and earn righteousness.

The lie, offered by those who were still selling the old and obsolete model of how to get along with God, the Old Covenant, found a place of influence with Peter. When those selling the lie blew into town, Peter chose to hang out with them, rejecting the newly made clean and holy sons and daughters of God as not clean enough.

Fortunately, Paul knew and despised the lie and its retarding and crippling effect, so he courageously exposed it (Gal 2:11-21). What a scene he must have made. I imagine fierce arguments, angry arguments that revealed both the need of the truth and the strength of the lie.

I hate the lie. But hating a lie of the devil doesn’t mean it goes away. In our day I think we’ve mostly bought it.

Look, you might really like Chris Sligh’s “Empty me”--thousands of people do. But lyrics like, “Lord, empty me of me so I can be filled with you” imply the lie, or at least flirt with it. What “me” do you think He must empty in order for Him to fill ‘er up? Are you at best just an empty tank? You’re not. While you are a vessel of God, when He fills you He is not alone! He’s with a magnificent son of God. If the “me” that I am needs to be gotten rid of and hurled out before the Spirit can fill me, then what of the gospel? Didn’t God already do that? Isn’t it to His glory that we believe Him?

It is. And I think that’s worth an argument.


(The lyrics to “Empty Me” are below. I welcome your comments.)

I've had just enough of the spotlight when it burns bright
To see how it gets in the blood.
And I've tasted my share of the sweet life and the wild ride
And found a little is not quite enough.
I know how I can stray
And how fast my heart could change.

Empty me of the selfishness inside
Every vain ambition and the poison of my pride
And any foolish thing my heart holds to
Lord empty me of me so I can be filled with you.

I've seen just enough of the quick buys of the best lies
To know how prodigals can be drawn away.
I know how I can stray
And how fast my heart could change.

Empty me of the selfishness inside
Every vain ambition and the poison of my pride
And any foolish thing my heart holds to
Lord empty me of me so I can be filled with you.

Cause everything is a lesser thing
Compared to you, compared to you.
Cause everything is a lesser thing
Compared to you. So, I surrender all!

Empty me of the selfishness inside
Every vain ambition and the poison of my pride
Empty me of the selfishness inside
Every vain ambition and the poison of my pride
And any foolish thing my heart holds to
Lord empty me of me so I can be
Lord empty me of me so I can be filled with you.
Oh, filled with you.
Empty me.