Five Iron Friday #2
One missed step can make you stumble,
you set yourself up for a fall.
You punish yourself for each failure,
dogma beat out alcohol.
When all of your principles were fashioned,
you thought that your new rules made you new.
But maybe those X's on your hands,
are what's killing you.
-FIF, The Cross of Saint Andrew
If you haven't heard the song in its entirety, you should. The meaning can be a little difficult to discern, but Reese took some very purposeful steps in writing it.
The X's on hands refers to Saint Andrews Cross. Saint Andrew was crucified on an X shaped cross, not believing himself to be worthy of dying the same way as his Savior (similar to Peter). Reese sings about how important it is for us to see that manner of thinking is not the way to salvation, but rather a product of it.
Also, in the second verse, Reese writes about what it really was that changed St. Andrew, that being Christ's mercy.
But here too, Reese says specifically "Christ has mercy". Rather than the phrase (which has been common through much of Christian history), "Christ HAVE mercy."
The difference may not seem significant, but it very much is. God does not have limited mercy, He freely gives it, we don't need to beg it from Him. It is in no way because of what we do. We no more deserve it on our best days than on our worst. The simple truth is that Christ has mercy, and that was the driving factor in every thing that St. Andrew lived for, even up to the manner of his death. Pretty cool stuff.
you set yourself up for a fall.
You punish yourself for each failure,
dogma beat out alcohol.
When all of your principles were fashioned,
you thought that your new rules made you new.
But maybe those X's on your hands,
are what's killing you.
-FIF, The Cross of Saint Andrew
If you haven't heard the song in its entirety, you should. The meaning can be a little difficult to discern, but Reese took some very purposeful steps in writing it.
The X's on hands refers to Saint Andrews Cross. Saint Andrew was crucified on an X shaped cross, not believing himself to be worthy of dying the same way as his Savior (similar to Peter). Reese sings about how important it is for us to see that manner of thinking is not the way to salvation, but rather a product of it.
Also, in the second verse, Reese writes about what it really was that changed St. Andrew, that being Christ's mercy.
But here too, Reese says specifically "Christ has mercy". Rather than the phrase (which has been common through much of Christian history), "Christ HAVE mercy."
The difference may not seem significant, but it very much is. God does not have limited mercy, He freely gives it, we don't need to beg it from Him. It is in no way because of what we do. We no more deserve it on our best days than on our worst. The simple truth is that Christ has mercy, and that was the driving factor in every thing that St. Andrew lived for, even up to the manner of his death. Pretty cool stuff.
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