4th century BC
Plato
- Idealism — forms over particulars
- The Republic ethic: “God is not the author of evil”
Notes
Track thirteen sits cold, just before the closer, and it is the most personal song on the album. For over twenty years a charge has followed me - that my language of Christ being made sin makes Him, in His nature, a sinner. The Measure is that trial, read in a flat courtroom voice that never rises.
The song's hardest truth is its structure. The verdict does not change. They had the verdict typed before he crossed the floor. No matter what the accused says, the refrain comes back word for word - he said the words, and the words are enough. Not what he meant, the bench will not weigh what he meant. And the accused mounts no defense of his own. He answers only in the words of Christ - judge not according to the appearance, first take the beam, let him without sin cast the first stone. He hands the bench the Judge's own instruction, and the bench wrote heresy across the page.
Verse four is the doctrinal heart, and I want it understood plainly. He never said it. He said imputed. He said reckoned, he said borne. I have always kept the careful line - sin imputed to Christ, reckoned to His account, borne in our place, never collapsed into His nature. The charge requires collapsing imputation into substance, and the song catches the trap: to charge him with the collapse, the bench first had to collapse it. The accusation is itself the heresy. With what measure they mete, it is measured to them now. The gate stays closed. But the record holds the other finding.
Lyrics
[Intro]
Let the record show the room was full.
Let the record show the verdict came in first.
[Verse 1]
They had the verdict typed before he crossed the floor.
Twenty years it sat there, and it never needed him.
A man can answer slow, a man can answer true,
a man can answer all his life, the bench has somewhere else to be.
They did not come to weigh him.
They came to read the thing they brought.
[Chorus]
The finding is heresy.
He said the words, and the words are enough.
Not what he meant, the bench will not weigh what he meant.
He said the words, and the words are enough.
Write it down. The finding is heresy.
This is the measure. This is the measure they keep.
[Verse 2]
He did not raise his voice, he did not mount a defense.
He brought the red letters, he read the bench the words of the Lord.
He said, judge not the man according to the appearance.
He said, judge righteous judgment, weigh the thing beneath the word.
He handed them the Judge's own instruction.
And the bench wrote heresy across the page.
[Chorus]
The finding is heresy.
He said the words, and the words are enough.
Not what he meant, the bench will not weigh what he meant.
He said the words, and the words are enough.
Write it down. The finding is heresy.
This is the measure. This is the measure they keep.
[Verse 3]
He read them more, he gave them every word he had,
and every word he had was still the Master's, never his.
He said, first take the beam, the beam that is in your own eye.
He said, the one without the sin, let him be first to cast the stone.
He quoted them the Judge they say they serve.
And the bench wrote heresy across the page.
[Verse 4]
Now hear what the charge is, hear what heresy means in this room.
It means to take the words he was made sin, and load the sin into his nature.
He never said it. He said imputed. He said reckoned, he said borne.
He kept the sense the Scripture keeps, he held the careful line.
But the bench said sense is nothing, only the surface of the word.
And to charge him with the collapse, the bench first had to collapse it.
[Chorus]
The finding is heresy.
He said the words, and the words are enough.
Not what he meant, the bench will not weigh what he meant.
He said the words, and the words are enough.
Write it down. The finding is heresy.
This is the measure. This is the measure they keep.
[Bridge]
And here is the thing the room was far too certain to hear.
Every line he read was never a man pleading for his life.
It was the Judge. It was the Judge, and He was speaking to the bench.
Judge not, He said, or you will stand exactly where you put him.
With what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.
They were not trying a heretic.
They were heretics, trying the man who read them their own sentence.
[Final Chorus]
The finding is heresy.
They said the word, and the word was enough.
Not what was meant, they would not weigh what was meant.
They said the sense is nothing, only the surface of the word.
Write it down. The finding is heresy.
And the heretics are the bench that wrote it down.
This is the measure. This was always the measure they keep.
With what measure they mete, it is measured to them now.
[Outro]
The gate still closes, it closed a long time ago.
In their book the finding stands, and the finding wears his name.
But the record is not theirs, the record was never theirs.
Let the record show the other finding now.
Judge not.
With what measure ye mete.
Commentary