Recently I have been considering a favorite song of mine from the Christian radio genre and it is also a song that we have also sung in the services of the congregation where I preach. The song is entitled “Jesus Messiah” made popular by the religious artist, Chris Tomlin. I have written about some of his other songs that I like as well. However, the part about this song that is problematic for me is the second verse which says, His body the bread, His blood the wine. This has been an ongoing blindly guided situation I see God’s people falling into. They refer to the juice taken at the Lord’s Supper as wine. I say that this is problematic not because I object to it but I believe that nowhere in God’s Word does it give the indication that the drink that was used at the original giving of the memorial or at any time the Lord’s Supper is to be observed as wine. Not in any of the gospel’s nor in the account of Paul in First Corinthians do any of the writers guided by the Holy Spirit ever refer to the grape juice that was used during the commemorating of our Saviors death used as wine. A quick search into any concordance will verify this. The Greek word for wine is never used in this area of the Bible. This word “wine”, I do understand is used to mean numerous different things when it is used in scripture. But the word wine is nowhere in those scriptures in the Greek or even English. Even in some of the most liberal translations that I have come across do not refer to the Lord’s Supper as it being wine.
I just urge for us to sing songs about Bible things using Biblical language. Don’t take a good song and mess it up doctrinally just to fit in with the world. In the case of this song I have talked with our song leader and we have agreed that changing the word wine to vine, it not only makes rhyming sense, more importantly it makes Biblical sense. Too many times if we come across something that is wrong scripturally we just stay away from it. I suggest we fix it, turn it back to God for His praise. If the old boundaries have been moved we shouldn’t just say, oh well, we should move them back. Not to mention when something like this is misunderstood among the world it has a tendency of confusing those that are new Christians and to those that are not as spiritually mature as they could be. Please don’t think me hard headed or legalistic, but check it out see what the Bible really says.
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