Every Frame

Track six is justification sung from outside of time. The picture is a filmstrip. The Author sees every frame before the first one ever runs. We live frame by frame, one moment after another, seeing only the frame we are standing in. He sees the whole strip at once, finished, before the projector's light began.

So the chorus says something that sounds impossible until you have the framework underneath it. The justification was already done. The verdict was rendered before the run. The cross did not earn a verdict that was previously in doubt. The cross rendered into time what was true in the decree - it made visible at noon what was settled in eternity. The blood is real, the cross is real, but it is the showing, in time, of a thing the Author had already written.

And the gentlest line in the song is the wife's. The day I trusted I did not buy what was already mine. The trust was the frame catching up to the substance. That is what faith is. Not the cause of your salvation, not the price of it - the frame finally catching up to a substance that was always there. What I learned at thirty-five was true before I came to know. The saint is not building a verdict. He is walking through what is already true. He saw you free, He saw you whole, before you drew a single breath. The film was finished in His mind, and the ending is good.