Song: “Passion”
Artist: Stryper
Album: Reborn
(2001)
Track: 5
“Passion” marks the first somewhat slower ballady type
thingy on Reborn, but even here we’re not left with a token slow song for radio
play or something. The choruses kick up
the intensity to an otherwise soft and lovely song, and the contrast really
makes this one stand out quite nicely.
Let me say this briefly – I like it when rockers put a
little punch into their slower songs.
There are many albums where you get whiplash going from hard rock to a
piano ballad, but keeping a heavy guitar in the mix allows for a more unified
sound on the album. This song does this
well. We’re several tracks in, and it’s
time to lighten up a bit, but Stryper doesn’t do it too much. They hook you with a pretty melody without
lulling you to sleep.
It’s Stryper’s songwriting and arrangements that really make
this album work, and that is backed up with some actually profound lyrics.
The state of the
narrator alone
The verses themselves are primarily focused on discussing
the state of the narrator, and I love how this works. In the first verse, we see this depicted as a
prison, but not a normal prison – a prison created out of the things he has
built, namely his home and career. They
are empty and wanting, and they leave him with “petty doubt and frivolous
fear.”
The fact that the narrator built this life may be overcome
by our sense of sympathy for him, but lest that cloud our judgment, he
confesses in verse two:
It's funny how I see myself
As wounded and scarred
When my reality itself
Proved selfish and hard
How much I wish most Christian musicians would listen to these
lines. Even within Christianity we start
drifting into this view of the atonement that Jesus came to heal where we have
been hurt. That’s actually true (which
makes the first verse quite appropriate), but that’s not the whole of it or
even the primary purpose of it. Jesus
came to heal where we have hurt God and hurt others. It’s not that we are wounded, it is that we
wound. It’s not that we are scarred, it
is that we cause scars. We are guilty,
and yet we are, in Christ, cleansed.
Through Your passion
The choruses, bringing us out of the softness of the verse,
provide the solution – the passion of the Christ. The passion is an old term used to describe
the crucifixion of Christ. The narrator
is clear here as to the solution to his problem – “Through Your passion I am
free.”
And it is a freedom from his entrapment, and it is also a
freedom from his sin. We see his
repentance and faith, his desire to “serve You,” to follow Jesus, but that is
not what saves him. The sacrifice,
something he admits to not deserving in the chorus, is what does.
Overall
There’s a lot packed into these short lines, certainly, but
here we see the dual oppression of sin – the way sin entraps and makes you a
victim, but also the way sin makes you the perpetrator – but the solution is
highlighted, and our proper reaction to that solution as well. There is an amazement at the cross in this
song, and that profound thankfulness spurs the narrator on toward righteousness
and service.
