Thursday, September 07, 2006

No Sweet Lion

The following is taken from page 5 of the latest issue of Touchstone:

For some reason it struck me in church recently that many of our songs refer to Jesus as "precious." In our Song of Preparation we sang of our "Precious Jesus" and how "sweet" it is to trust in him. In our Communion hymn we sang of "his precious blood." Then we sang in our Song of Faith of the "Precious Redeemer."

The word appears 11 times in the New International Version of the New Testament and 37 times in the Old Testament. More than I thought. The Greek word means "great price, esteemed, held in honor, costly." Jesus is precious, all right.

But today we normally use the word to describe something harmless, like a "precious baby" or a "precious kitten," or even "a precious moment." The dictionary has this definition: "characterized by feeling or showing fond affection for (Example: 'Children are precious')" and "obviously contrived to charm (Example: 'And insufferably precious performance')."

Someone, especially someone not used to being in church, could easily come away from our service thinking Jesus was someone characterized by "fond affection" or is someone "obviously contrived to charm," rather than the "Lion of Judah" and the One who will judge the living and the dead. Dorothy Sayers said that the church had "pared the claws of the Lion of Judah" and "recommended him as a fitting household pet for pale curates and pious old ladies." We have to remember that the people who come to us want to meet a lion.

--Robert Baldwin
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