MUSIC: SOME MUSINGS ON THE SONG "SAVIOR AND BRIDE"

If you’ve been coming to our church for any length of time then you’ll know that we are a church that practices expositional preaching, whereby the meaning of the text is the point of the sermon. We strive to never take God’s Word out of context in order to make it say something that it was not intended to say. That is why our expositional preaching is done systematically. In other words, we preach through books of the Bible from start to finish. Granted, there are pastors that preach through books of the Bible systematically and they fail to make the meaning of the passage the point of the sermon. That is not expositional preaching in the least. We aim to exposit or to expose the meaning that is already in the text. We do not aim to create our own message.

With that said, the songs that we sing on Sunday morning are meant to further teach us what we are going to learn about on any given Sunday morning.  We pick songs that center around the message of that Sunday's sermon. Those songs are meant to exalt our God and what He has said. Knowing then what the elders are going to preach on is essential for my song selection. But every now and then you come across a passage of Scripture where theology and song have infrequently met. Do your best to think of a song that addresses the main thrust of a passage like Ephesians 5:22-23. Here it is in it’s entirety.

Ephesians 5:22-33 Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands.

Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body. “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.

I imagine that you can think of a song that focuses on Christ’s love for the church. And I’m certain that you can think of songs where a love for husband and wife is sung about. But can you think of one that weds these two ideas as this particular Scripture does? I couldn’t. There may be a song written that does this, but I wasn’t aware of one. So, with the help of God and His Word the song Savior and Bride was composed. Now I don’t claim to be a wordsmith or a music theorist but the following lyrics were penned alongside some music and a love song was born.

SAVIOR AND BRIDE

We are one with Christ

 Savior and bride traded death for life

Husband and wife

Forever with Christ

We’ve been given new life

Because of His love we are sealed for above

PRE-CHORUS

And as we contemplate these truths

 Teach us, Lord, to yield to You

And may our hearts grow to be pure

And help each man and wife to endure

CHORUS

Lord, we pray for husbands to love their wives

As Christ the Savior has loved His own bride

And just as the church gives Jesus His due

We pray for all wives to obey The one to whom they said, “I do”

ENDING

Help us remember our “I do’s”

Help us remember our “I do’s”

Jesus, I love You

In my honest opinion, it’s an OK song as far as music goes. I’m much more thrilled with the lyrics of the song that the actual merging of the lyrics with music. But it serves its purpose—to teach us God’s Word so that we may rejoice in God and live in light of His Word--and with that I’m entirely happy. If it serves you in this capacity, then I’m just as thrilled as if I had preached a mediocre sermon where the delivery lacked but the message was well received nonetheless. In fact, this song is meant to be a sermon embedded in a song. I pray you receive it as such. With these initial thoughts in mind, let me share with you some additional thoughts on this song.

I.   IT WAS WRITTEN FOR MY WIFE AND DAUGHTER

For several years I’ve wanted to compose a love song for my wife. At the same time I also wanted to compose a song whereby I could teach my daughter what a Biblical marriage is supposed to look like. This song ended up merging those two concepts together. And while the song isn’t a love song in the worldly sense, it is a love song in the sense that the song calls us to pray for husband to love their wives as Christ loved the church. Tell me what greater love there is that Christ’s love for His church? By this standard all other love songs in the world fall completely short of the highest love possible.

II.   IT WAS WRITTEN FOR OUR CHURCH

All marriages have highs and lows. Sometimes those peaks last longer by the grace of God. Sometimes we endure deep dark valleys with the Great Shepherd leading us in the midst of struggle. When we are in the valley we need to look up and see the peak before us. The mere beauty of summit is enough to call people to endure the pain necessary to dig in and climb out of the valley. We need songs that point us to the pinnacle of all marriages: that of Christ and His beloved bride. We need something to aim for and when we see this beautiful and eternal union we struggle harder to get there in our own marriages. We need the everlasting union of Christ and His church paraded before us so that we can fight for our own marriages to mirror that. Since we do not sing about that in any of our songs, this song morphed into a song that was fitting for our congregations to sing.

But this song wasn’t just written for married people. It was written for single people in the same way that I wrote this song for my daughter. Not only that but married people need the prayers of single people as well. If you are not married, I need your prayers for my marriage. The other married couples in the church desperately need your prayers for a godly marriage just like you need our prayers for your (perhaps momentary) godly single life. Single people may one day be married and so even now you can pray for God to help you keep your vows to your future spouse (help us remember our “I do’s”).

III.  IT WAS WRITTEN IN A PROGRESSIVE MANNER FOR APPLICATION

This part is very essential so that no portion of the song is taken out of context. If you notice the flow of the song structure the verses focus on Christ’s love for His church—the gospel. The pre-chorus calls us to do something with the knowledge of Christ’s love for us---we are praying for God to help us yield, obey and submit to Him. Did you get that? So far, we the church, are praying for us to obey Christ in light of His love for us. Then the pre-chorus makes a huge but necessary transition. Just as Christ’s love and union with His bride is eternal, so too we are asking in the song for God to help each man and wife to endure. As the song exits the pre-chorus it transitions to a deeper prayer that is far from the world’s understanding of marriage. The chorus is a prayer for all people in our church. This prayer is a pleading to God for husbands to love their wives and Christ loves the church. The prayer is a pleading for wives to obey their husbands just as the church is to obey her loving Savior. The ending of the song is meant to be very personal on a human level as it relates to spiritual realities we possess in Christ. When we pray “help us remember our “I do’s”” we are transported back to our wedding day in which we made vows and promises to love and to never forsake the other. If you are not married, you are being called to think forward to the day that you do make those same vows, if God wills.

Sometimes, perhaps just having had a fresh argument, we can feel like we are sitting next to our worst enemy in church—our very own spouse. Believe it or not, but this song is also a rebuke to us when we are forgetting our “I do’s”. It’s mean to break you, if need be, as you pray this. And the final phrase is but a simple declaration that we love our Savior, the one who wed us eternally.

Now I wish I could take credit for this awesome theology, but I’m not that smart. It is all in Ephesians 5:22-33. The gospel is a moving story. It is the most powerful message on earth. It changes lives like no secular therapy can. It changes kings. It changes nations. It changes the world. It changes eternity.

IV.   IT WAS WRITTEN TO BE COUNTER-CULTURAL

Several versions of the lyrics were mulled over, scratched out, erased and rewritten. Part of the rewriting has to do with word-flow so that the song is hopefully catchy and easy to sing. But some of the words were rewritten so that definite statements were made so that no ambiguity would be present. The terms spouse was erased from the song as some point and replaced with “man and wife” or “husband and wife”. Knowing that our culture condones unbiblical marriages, I wanted the lyrics to be unambiguously Biblical in regards to the notion of what constitutes a Biblical marriage. You see the reason I love Biblical marriage so much is because I love the pictures that God has given us of the gospel and I don’t want those pictures tainted. I want the world to have the gospel and its pictures rightly presented to them for God’s sake and for their sake. They need these realities.

The very last line of the chorus was re-written several times. This was probably the hardest part of the song for me. First of all, what rhymes with submit and how do you lyrically soften that hart T sound at the end of a sung phrase—submitttttttt. Secondly, putting a phrase like this in a song is so counter-cultural that I’m sure to be seen as some religious freak and extremist and perhaps chauvinistic. Praying “for all wives to obey the one to whom they said “I do”….well, not only is it a touchy subject but it’s surely and continually taken out of context by (a). abusive men and (b). haters of God’s Word. On top of that, it feels weird to sing about it because that’s just something you don’t typically put in a song.

But if you follow the song structure and the Biblical teaching, you’ll see that a woman’s obedience to her husband mirrors the worship and obedience of the church to her Savior. The problem with our understanding of obedience and submission is just that: it’s our problem, not God’s. Do you realize that Jesus had no problem with submission? He submitted to the Father, obeyed Him in every law and rule He gave, even to the point of death. We would not be saved if it were not for the submission of Jesus. If light of that, if you see submission as a terrible quality, then you don’t understand how Christ achieved perfect righteousness for you. Our problem with submission and obedience is that we do not see it is an attribute of God in which we are all to display. We are all submitting to someone in some way to display the great nature of Christ. Children submit to parents, wives submit to husbands, husbands submit to the Lord, the Lord submits to the Father. Tell me what wife would not want to obey a husband that loves as Christ loves. What husband would not want to love his wife knowing the great love Christ showed him in His death and resurrection.

In light of the beauty of submission the word obey was used because biblically it means the same thing as submit but it eliminates that hart “T” sounds so that the song can be sung a little better—in my opinion.

I will say that I expected that there might be some harsh criticism for that last line. Maybe it hasn’t come yet, but I will say that I have been surprised by the overwhelming amount of support and encouragement from the women in our church concerning this song. Personally, I’d like to thank you for that. It means a lot to me. What initially has taken place is the complete opposite of what I initially thought might happen. I love it when I’m wrong on matters like these. In the same vein of encouragement, I have had several men encourage me as well. Thank you, brothers, as well.

V.   IT WAS WRITTEN FOR GOD

The reason I love my wife, daughter, the church and the world is because of God’s love for me. I love Him because He first loved me. While I was a sinner, He died for me. And so it makes sense to write a song that ends with “Jesus, I love You” because I do. I’m not perfect at loving my Savior, but this song captures one of those moments were I was very much caught up in the love that Christ has for me. It’s a worship song in its truest sense. It’s a praise song to a God worthy of praise. This wasn’t written for the radio. It wasn’t written to try and make a chart topper. It wasn’t written to make a profit. None of those things are bad in and of themselves, but this was written for God. This is just a small act of service to God which also demonstrates itself in love to others.

So church, this is a little of what went into the thoughts, lyrics and intent of this song.  Sometimes, I read articles of the circumstances that contributed to the writing of a particular hymn or worship song and I think, “wow, that totally makes sense”. Well, this article is my attempt to make sense out of song that makes most sense in the context of Scripture, my family, my church and the culture that I have found myself in.