Dec
15
2009
The Enemy Without
I like the new Switchfoot album "Hello Hurricane." It's great running music with several songs that give you that needed kick when the miles get tough. But I do have a concern about a theme that weaves itself into at least a couple of the tracks.
I could be wrong, but in songs like "Mess of Me" and "Free" it seems that Foreman and friends believe the greatest enemy we have is ourselves -- that salvation is primarily freedom from our own imperfections. Consider, for example, the chorus from "Free":
Free,
Come set me free
Down on my knees
I still believe you can
Save me from me
Come set me free
Come set me free
Inside this shell
There’s a prison cell
To be sure, there is a sense in which the gospel frees us from ourselves. And I understand the doctrine of indwelling sin. As believers we must wage war against the sin that remains in us -- the enemy within. But this latest offering from Switchfoot seems to want salvation, from beginning to end, to be about freeing us from us.
But the great enemy we have apart from Christ is not self, but God.
Consider the following texts:
- "For all our days pass away under your wrath; we bring our years to an end like a sigh" (Ps. 90:9).
- "Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him" (John 3:36).
- "But because of your hard and impenitent heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath when God's righteous judgment will be revealed" (Rom. 2:5).
- "And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience—among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind" (Eph. 2:1-3).
The psalmist reminds us that man's default position is "under [God's] wrath." John warns those that remain in unbelief that "the wrath of God remains on [them]." And Paul sees the pool of humanity apart from Christ as "storing up wrath" and as "children of wrath." These texts make it clear that God's wrath, not our imperfections, is our great enemy and what we desperately need saving from. And the good news of the gospel is that in Christ, God saves us from God.
Now that's a salvation infinitely more valuable than freedom from self.