Dr.* James White, apologist for the Romanism of Steve Green.

n the Divid­ing Line of April 2, Dr.* James White had an attack of the hys­ter­ics over a Cast­ing Crowns song enti­tled “Jesus Friend of Sin­ners.” (The wild extent of it must be heard to be believed; the audio begins a lit­tle over half way through the pro­gram and con­tin­ues through to the end.) Here, for your sin­cere lis­ten­ing plea­sure, is the song that pro­voked Dr.* White into bit­ter jere­mi­ads against the com­pro­mised state of con­tem­po­rary Chris­t­ian lyrics.

The lyrics—read exeget­i­cal­ly, with­out any eise­ge­sis on the part of the commenter—seem to me noth­ing more than a plea against the hyp­o­crit­i­cal judg­ment of oth­ers (Matt. 7:1), as well as against putting a stum­bling block in your broth­er’s way (Rom. 4:13). In the song, the stum­bling block is one­self. “They’re trip­ping over me,” is how Cast­ing Crowns puts it. For Dr.* White, how­ev­er, “Jesus Friend of Sin­ners” advo­cates com­pla­cen­cy in the face of sin. It reflects a reluc­tance to call out sin for what it is.

On the con­trary. In fact, the song calls out sev­er­al sins: judg­men­tal­ism, hypocrisy, being dou­ble-mind­ed, hav­ing a hard­ened heart. It’s direct­ed at the Phar­isees among us, for they are out there. But some­how Dr.* White insist­ed on going down the rab­bit trail and using homo­sex­u­al­i­ty as an exam­ple of a sin that needs to be called out—despite the fact that the song does­n’t men­tion that par­tic­u­lar sin one way or the oth­er.

More pecu­liar­ly, though, Dr.* White called atten­tion to the fact that he, Dr.* White, has often been unfair­ly crit­i­cized for “cut­ting down peo­ple in [Christ’s] Name”—Roman Catholics, for exam­ple, among them—when actu­al­ly all he, Dr.* White, is con­cerned to do is to defend the truth of the Gospel. It is remarks like this that make me won­der whether his hav­ing tak­en 30 min­utes of his time to lam­bast “Jesus Friend of Sin­ners” has more to do with some sen­si­tiv­i­ty of his own on this point, rather than any­thing the lyrics of the song actu­al­ly say. It is dif­fi­cult to miss the eise­ge­sis engaged in here by Dr.* White.

Be that as it may, what sur­prised me most was the pains Dr.* White took—in an attempt to prove that he is not unfriend­ly to all con­tem­po­rary Chris­t­ian music—to praise a Steve Green song from sev­er­al decades back, enti­tled “Find Us Faith­ful.” He even took the trou­ble to put up a sep­a­rate blog post embed­ded with two—two!—YouTube videos of the song. What’s sur­pris­ing about this is that I would have sus­pect­ed Mr. Green’s song to have raised the ire of Dr.* White far more than “Jesus Friend of Sin­ners.” What do I mean? Well, take a lis­ten to the song, and you’ll dis­cov­er that “Find Us Faith­ful” is not much bet­ter than a sell-out to Roman­ism.

Mr. Green begins with an allu­sion to the “nar­row way” of Matthew 7:14, and then declares that “those who’ve gone before us line the way.” Now, isn’t this talk­ing about the Com­mu­nion of Saints? And please tell me where, in Scrip­ture, it says that the “nar­row way” is lined by the dead? Mr. Green is evi­dent­ly rely­ing on some extra-bib­li­cal tra­di­tion here—and a pret­ty grotesque one, at that. Just pic­ture a nar­row way lined with the bod­ies of the dead. That’s the kind of hor­rif­ic image that one would expect of a Roman­ist, not an evan­gel­i­cal Chris­t­ian.

It does­n’t get any bet­ter, either, because Mr. Green goes on to describe these dead saints as “cheer­ing on the faith­ful” and “encour­ag­ing the weary.” Does Mr. Green real­ly mean to sug­gest that the elect in Heav­en have any clue what’s going on here on Earth? Obvi­ous­ly, one of Rome’s defend­ers would say so. But why does Mr. Green make such an unbib­li­cal asser­tion? Does he real­ly believe that the saints in Heav­en are actu­al­ly emo­tion­al­ly invest­ed in our lives? That they might even—just imagine!—pray for us?

The lives of the saints, Mr. Green says at the con­clu­sion of his first verse, are “a stir­ring tes­ta­ment” to the grace of God. But there are only two testaments—the Old and the New. How is it that Mr. Green feels that he can add the “tes­ta­ment” of saints’ lives to the canon of Scrip­ture?

In his sec­ond verse, Mr. Green begins with some fur­ther bib­li­cal allu­sions (as if attempt­ing to res­cue him­self from this Roman­ist predica­ment). He refers to the “cloud of wit­ness­es” of Heb. 12:1, a verse that the papists often vain­ly claim in sup­port of their hereti­cal doc­trine of the saints. Mr. Green also makes ref­er­ence to the sim­i­lar vers­es 1 Cor. 9:24 and Phil. 3:14—again, vers­es often cit­ed by Rome’s defend­ers in sup­port of the idea that jus­ti­fi­ca­tion is a process and not a once-for-all event. “As those who’ve gone before us,” Mr. Green sings, “Let us leave for those behind us / The her­itage of faith­ful­ness passed on through god­ly lives.” What should be trou­bling to any Reformed believ­er at this point is that there’s not been one word about the fin­ished work of Christ in ref­er­ence to faith. Instead, Mr. Green makes ref­er­ence to the “god­ly lives” of the saints! One sus­pects a veiled ref­er­ence to works in this.

But now we come to what is real­ly the most trou­bling part of the song, and that’s the cho­rus, where Mr. Green express­es the desire to be found faith­ful. “May the fire of our devo­tion,” he sings, “light [the] way” of gen­er­a­tions to come. This is most dis­ap­point­ing. Mr. Green says noth­ing about the fire of Christ’s right­eous­ness. He says noth­ing about the fin­ished work of Christ. And he con­tin­ues in the same vein: “May the foot­prints that we leave / Lead them to believe.” It’s man’s works, man’s foot­prints, that are said to cause belief. Mr. Green says noth­ing about the Scrip­tures being a cause of belief. Mr. Green says noth­ing about the grace of God, which alone turns man’s heart of stone into a heart of flesh. This is all about works; this is all about what man can do. This is works right­eous­ness. It’s Roman­ism. There’s all this talk in the cho­rus about “we,” “we,” “we”; noth­ing about Christ. This is a man-cen­tered, false Gospel.

“Find Us Faith­ful,” when all is said and done, is straight out of Vat­i­can II. It’s about man’s works; it’s about the Com­mu­nion of Saints. It’s about the Uni­ver­sal Call to Holi­ness (see Lumen Gen­tium chap­ter 5 and John Paul II’s apos­tolic let­ter Novo Mil­len­nio Ine­unte). Mr. Green’s lyrics are—to bor­row an expres­sion from Mr. Marycle (spelled thus in hon­or of Our Lady)—“verses of sheer awe­some­ness.” Tru­ly, I think Dr.* White should go pub­lic with a severe con­dem­na­tion of this song. To remain silent would be incon­sis­tent with his pri­or cri­tiques of Rome, and Dr.* White has always been known to be “a con­sis­tent child of the Ref­or­ma­tion.”