Old Love Songs #1 - Wicked Wounds by Civil Parish ~ Bread for Beggars

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God’s love is unplumbable (Ephesians 3:18-19). So you’d think that as the central topic for Christian songwriting, God’s love would provide Christian artists with an inexhaustible source of content. Why is it, then, that so much of Christian music is the same? Don’t get me wrong. I thank God every time a Christian artist tells me how much God loves me. I can never hear enough that God loves me. But, there are so many more ways to describe God’s love than from a few choice Psalms or New Testament themes.

For the next three weeks, re:invention is going find Christian artists who have found God’s love in a place many of their contemporaries don’t look: the Old Testament. As we appreciate and analyze their interpretations of Old Testament texts in song, we’ll see some unique portrayals of God’s mercy and perhaps learn some Bible history along the way.

Song number one in our Old Love Songs series is Wicked Wounds by Civil Parish from their 2011 album, Abolition’s Well.

Though re:invention heralds Wicked Wounds as the first of our Old Testament songs, I really should state upfront that it’s probably unfair to label Wicked Wounds an Old Testament song. After all, there are only two lines in Wicked Wounds which reference the David/Bathsheba/Nathan drama of 2 Samuel 11-12, and then two more on the Fall of Genesis 3. Yet, despite a paucity of Old Testament references, the message of the David/Bathsheba/Nathan story is deep and loud.

The oft sung refrain of Wicked Wounds makes the song’s message hard to miss: “Oh, it’s all for love.” Everything else in the song builds up to or explains this love.

Verse one is the pining of the broken heart for love that brings redemption. Verse two is the restoration of love that heals the broken. The bridge is the personal confession and praise of Adam, David, and Peter who are dumbfounded by God’s love which covered the guilt of their sin.

Essentially, Wicked Wounds is a song of repentance. David’s sin is an illustration of that repentance.

Now, Civil Parish could have written a ballad of David, Bathsheba, and Nathan. They could have detailed facets of guilt, pulled at all the strings of pain and remorse and painted a beautiful picture of a sinner who finds freedom from guilt in forgiveness. Instead, they wrote, “When I saw her bathing there/ Why’d Nate come to me?”

And that’s it. Civil Parish teaches two chapters of Bible history in two lines. And they do it more poignantly than many 20 minutes sermons I’ve heard on the same text.

In their hanging question, “ Why’d Nate come to me?” lies the depth of Gods’ grace.

The inferred answer is to David’s question is, “You’re right, David. Nathan shouldn’t have come to you. You destroyed your marriage in your lust, you were unfaithful to your calling as a king, you ruined the good reputation God gave you, and you sinned against God in an explicit way.” Not to mention that extensive lying, murder, polygamy, and manipulation were all connected to his night with Bathsheba. God should have let David’s Kingdom and family spin out of control and crash. God should have let the guilt of David’s sin destroy him and left him to pay the punishment for that sin.

But he didn’t. He sent Nate.

God’s prophet, Nathan, called out the King on his sin. As Nathan exposed David’s guilt, David says “My bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. ⁴For day and night your hand was heavy on me; my strength was sapped as in the heat of summer.” (Psalm 32:3,4). Though guilt destroyed him, God used guilt as a stepping stone to bring David to redemption. Here’s where the line that ends each verse of Wicked Wounds fits in: when destruction is ceasing redemption is near. Once guilt crushed David and he realized that everything that was happening to him was his fault and he admitted it , Nathan the prophet spoke to him the sweetest seven words of redemption: “The Lord has taken away your sin” (2 Samuel 12:13).

David didn’t deserve redemption, but God gifted it to him.

The lingering question in Wicked Wounds, “why’d Nate come to me ?” speaks gratitude to the gift of God’s mercy. It shows in David an attitude of uncomprehending marvel to God’s grace.

A writer can assign so much value to the precision and detail of what he is wanting to communicate that he loses the emotion of his message, or, as in this case, the marvel of his message. The message then is accurate, but it doesn’t emote.

Sometimes the messages that ring most clearly are the ones not said.

“When I _ , why’d you come to me?”

We can’t answer that question. The beauty of grace is that we don’t have to.