Phil Wickham – Christ Is Risen

Christian artist Phil Wickham is back again for another Berean Test examination!  I’m excited to review yet another Phil Wickham song: Christ Is Risen.  This will be my fifth review, joining Living Hope, Great Things, Your Love Awakens Me, and This is Amazing Grace, all of which received perfect or high scores.

He recently released Christmas last month, covering classic Christmas tunes such as Angels We Have Heard On High, Joy To The World (Joyful, Joyful), and What Child Is This.

Also, check out my reviews of Your Love Awakens Me, Great Things, Living Hope and This is Amazing Grace.

Lyrics can be found at https://genius.com/Phil-wickham-christ-is-risen-lyrics.

Note to new users: This is a different kind of review site!  Read About the Berean Test and Evaluation Criteria prior to reading this review.

1. What message does the song communicate?

There are several themes espoused:

• God’s amazing grace saved us, acknowledging our own wickedness and blindness and transformed by experiential clarity and understanding and welcoming sinners as saints.
• We praise God because Jesus rose from the dead, who defeated death and fear.
• Delivered from spiritual death, and redeemed by the blood of Jesus, we may now inherit eternal life with God, responding with eternal praise.
• We will tearfully see Jesus’ closed wounds, arms of embrace, and beautiful face.

Side Note: Wickham’s use of repetition is surprising and unexpected, stretching out repeated lines without going too far.  It follows the usual Choral repeat after each verse until after Verse 2, where Pre-Chorus acts as its own verse and Chorus picks up additional lines.  After that comes Verse 3, the Pre-Chorus again, and the full Chorus again.  After some instrumental filler and singular line, only the second half of Chorus is played, ending with Verse 3.

Score: 10/10

2. How much of the lyrics line up with Scripture?

All of it does.

[Verse 1]

Lines 1 and 2: The first and second of four lines that quotes the first four lines from John Newton’s Amazing Grace, with minimal word shifting that does not change its meaning.

Grace, meaning “undeserved favor”, is a major theme within the entire Bible.  For the sake of brevity, I will only mention two characters: Abraham and Paul.

Abraham is a major historical figure whose righteousness was credited to him by grace through faith, as quoted in Genesis (Genesis 15:6) and three times in the New Testament (Romans 4:3, Galatians 3:6, and James 2:23).

As for Paul, grace is a major theme throughout his writings, particularly in the book of Romans.  See Romans 3:21-24, Romans 4:3-8, Romans 5:1-2, Romans 5:6-8, Romans 5:15-21, Romans 6:14, Romans 8:1-4, Romans 9:14-16, Romans 11:5-6, Galatians 2:21, Galatians 5:4, Ephesians 1:7, Ephesians 2:4-9, 2 Thessalonians 2:16, Titus 2:11, and 1 Timothy 1:15-16 for further study.

For those who care to know, the word “wretch” has two definitions:

1. A miserable, unhappy person; and
2. A vile, despicable person.

I think both fit, in light of Jeremiah 17:9.

Line 3: Refers to the three parables Jesus told in response to the Pharisees and Scribes grumbling saying “Jesus receives sinners and eats with them” (Luke 15:1-2).  These are:

1. The parable of the lost sheep (Luke 15:3-7),
2. The parable of the lost coin (Luke 15:8-10); and
3. The parable of the prodigal son (Luke 15:11-32).

Line 4: Most likely, spiritual blindness. See 2 Kings 6:17, Luke 24:31, John 3:3, John 9:39, Acts 26:12-18, 2 Corinthians 3:12-18, 2 Corinthians 4:6, and Ephesians 1:18.

[Chorus]

Line 1: The word ‘Hallelujah” is a compound Hebrew phrase, with “hallelu” meaning “a joyous praise in song” and “jah” or “yah”, which refers to the Tetragrammaton YHWH. Put together, we are singing “we joyfully praise God in song” when we use this word.

Line 2: We joyfully praise God in song because Jesus rose from the dead (Matthew 28:1-20, Mark 16:1-20, Luke 24:1-12, John 20:1-29 Acts 1:3, Acts 3:15, Acts 4:33, and 1 Corinthians 15:3-8).

Lines 3 and 4: Repeats lines 1 and 2.

Lines 5 and 6: Appears during the third Choral repeat.  Not to be taken literally, it refers to the Spirit of the song sang through all eternity: that Christ rose again and we are eternally grateful.  See commentary on Pre-Chorus, line 6.

Lines 7 and 8: Appears during the third Choral repeat.  Repeats lines 1 and 2.

[Verse 2]

Lines 1 and 2: References the Parable of the Prodigal Son in Luke 15:11-32.

Line 2 specifically refers to man’s transformation from eternal separation to eternal life (Romans 6:1-11, Romans 7:4-6, Galatians 2:19-20, 2 Timothy 2:11, and 1 Peter 2:24).

Line 3: See commentary on Chorus, line 2.

Line 4: That is, a sinner became a saint.  See commentary on line 2.

[Pre-Chorus]

Lines 1 and 2: Borrows Scripture and ideology from 1 Corinthians 15:55-57.

Lines 3 and 4: Christ’s resurrection renders spiritual death and fear powerless, delivering us from its reach (Isaiah 25:8, Hosea 13:14, Luke 20:35-36, 1 Corinthians 15:24-26, 1 Corinthians 15:55-57, 2 Timothy 1:10, and Hebrews 2:14).

Line 5: With Christ risen and death defeated, we are now free to seek a personal relationship with God, inheriting eternal life (Mark 10:29-30, John 3:15-16, John 3:36, John 4:14, John 5:24, John 5:39-40, John 6:27, John 6:40, John 10:28, John 17:3, John 20:31, Romans 5:21, Romans 6:22-23, Romans 8:18, 2 Corinthians 4:16-18, Galatians 6:8, 1 Timothy 1:16, 1 Timothy 6:12, 2 Timothy 2:11, Hebrews 5:9, 1 Peter 5:10, 1 John 2:23-27, 1 John 5:10-13, 1 John 5:20, Jude 1:20-21, Revelation 3:5, Revelation 7:16-17, and Revelation 21:3-4).

Line 6: Eternal praise is an appropriate response to God’s great love for us (Nehemiah 9:5, Psalm 30:12, Psalm 52:9, Psalm 86:12, Psalm 89:1, Psalm 115:18, Psalm 145:1-2, Psalm 145:21, and Revelation 5:9-13).

[Verse 3]

Lines 1 and 2: That is, the day that we die.

Lines 3 and 4: Thomas saw Jesus’ scars post-resurrection (John 20:27) and we ought to seek the beauty of God’s face (Psalm 27:4).  Though it is speculative that we would see His battle scars and outstretched arms of love, neither is unbiblical and both are reasonable.  Revelation 22:4 tells us that we will see His face.

Lines 5 and 6: Indeed, and God will wipe those teardrops away when we arrive (Revelation 21:4).

Lines 7 and 8: Repeats Chorus, lines 1 and 2.

[Interlude]

Line 1: References the resurrection of Jesus again, followed by a short call to Casper the friendly ghost.  For the first half, see commentary on Chorus, line 2.

[Chorus 3]

Lines 1-4: Repeats Chorus, line 5-8.

Score: 10/10

3. How would an outsider interpret the song?

Wickham does several things that make it easy for unbeliever interpretation to point them to Christianity:

• Quotes from the beginning of Amazing Grace.
• Name-drops Jesus.
• Use of everyday language and minimal Christianese.

Alternative interpretations seem highly unlikely.

Score: 10/10

4. What does this song glorify?

It glorifies Jesus, through celebrating His resurrection and describing our worship in response to His wonderful acts.

Score: 10/10

Closing Comments

Phil Wickham’s Christ Is Risen is yet another worthy song from this mid-career artist.  The title succinctly summarizes the main theme of this song, adding rationale for why we praise Him for all eternity, making unbeliever interpretation easy and glorifying Jesus.  I applaud his use of repetition.

Congregants should belt this one out during Sunday services.

Final Score: 10/10

Artist Info

Track: Christ Is Risen (listen to the song)

Artist: Phil Wickham

Album: Living Hope

Genre: Contemporary Christian Music (CCM)

Release Year: 2018

Duration: 5:10

Agree?  Disagree?  Don’t be shy or have a cow!  Calmly and politely state your case in a comment, below.

Updates:

03/25/2021 – Updated per repetition announcement.  I moved my commentary to a side note.

07/30/2020 – A little bird (Neal Cruco) told me that Merriam-Webster dictionary updated their dictionary for the word “Prodigal” Therefore, I am forced to take back my critique of this word, raising its score to perfection!