Casting Crowns is such an amazingly talented group of lyricists that I just have to share it with people. I'm a person who, when listening to music, is magnetically drawn to the lyrics — I pay more attention to them than anything else in a song. That being said, Casting Crowns' lyrics are especially captivating, you can really tell that songwriting is their God-given gift. I hope to portray just how profound these lyrics are to me through this article. I hope I can allow you to experience what I do every time I hear these songs.

1. "Jesus, can You show me just how far the east is from the west? 'Cause I can't bear to see the man I've been rising up in me again. In the arms of Your mercy I find rest 'cause You know just how far the east is from the west: from one scarred hand to the other." (East to West)

Man, this one brings a tear to my eye. This lyric echoes Psalm 103:12-14 which says:

"As far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us. As a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him; for he knows how we are formed, he remembers that we are dust." (NIV)

I feel like the language used in this lyric can easily be glossed over, but I'm here so that you don't miss out on basking in its beauty.

It shows us that our forgiveness was begun and completed on the cross. When Jesus gave himself up for dead (temporarily), our slates were wiped clean — our lustful, prideful, wrathful slates.

But what I find especially interesting about the Bible using "east to west" instead of "north to south" is that east and west never run together. They never meet. Let me explain. If you continue traveling north, all the way up to the North Pole, and you continue, you will eventually be traveling south, and vice versa. But, if you are traveling west, and keep going all the way around the globe, you are always heading west. West never becomes east — west never ends, and vice versa. Every phrase in the Bible had so much put into it; if you lose focus for a second, you miss a whole lot.

Anyway, back to the lyric. When you tie these two ideas together: of east to west never meeting, and all of our sins being forgiven on the cross, we discover the complete meaning of that last phrase: "You know just how far the east is from the west: from one scarred hand to the other." In other words, just as the east and west never end, the distance between Jesus' hands on the cross is metaphorically infinitely large and is, therefore, more than capable of holding all of your (and everyone else's) sins up against the cross.

In this lyric, Casting Crowns is pointing out that the idea that the east and west never meet and the endlessness of God's forgiveness are fundamentally the same.

2. "But if we are the body, why aren't His arms reaching? Why aren't His hands healing? Why aren't His words teaching? And if we are the body, why aren't His feet going? Why is His love not showing them there is a way? There is a way. Jesus paid much too high a price for us to pick and choose who should come, and we are the body of Christ. Jesus is the way." (If We Are the Body)

This lyric is alluding to 1 Corinthians 12:12-18 which says:

"Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ. For we were all baptized by one Spirit so as to form one body — whether Jews or Gentiles, slave or free — and we were all given the one Spirit to drink. Even so the body is not made up of one part but of many.
"Now if the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason stop being part of the body. And if the ear should say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason stop being part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? But in fact God has placed the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be."

This passage is speaking about the many various roles of Christians in the Church, and asking why these roles aren't being fulfilled. Certain people are called by God to be teachers, healers, others, missionaries and so on, and each one of these roles is infinitely important. Casting Crowns is trying to tell us that we need to step up and do fulfill our roles, or the very people that we are supposed to be helping and loving will slip through our fingers.

I especially like the part that says, "Jesus paid much too high a price for us to pick and choose who should come..." I feel that that lyrics strikes right at the heart of many Christians today. So many of us, for some reason, feel that we get to choose who is a Christian and who isn't. We are so busy judging each other, that we don't have enough time to love each other, which is the only thing that will lead people to Christ ("Why is His love not showing them there is a way?").

3. "Are we happy plastic people under shiny plastic steeples with walls around our weakness, and smiles to hide our pain? But if the invitation's open to every heart that has been broken maybe then we close the curtain on our stained glass masquerade." (Stained Glass Masquerade)

There are three scriptures that I believe relate to this lyric, 1 Samuel 16:7, Jeremiah 16:17, and Matthew 23:27. First, 1 Samuel 16:7, which says:

"But the Lord said to Samuel, 'Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him. For the Lord sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.'" (ESV)

If we saw people as God sees them, we wouldn't be fooled by this so-called "Stained Glass Masquerade." God says in Jeremiah 16:17 that our facades do not fool him:

"For My eyes are on all their ways; they are not hidden from My face, nor is their iniquity hidden from My eyes."

Casting Crowns is calling us to be vulnerable and stop trying to hide our hearts under smiles and steeples. It does us no good. The only way we will reach the broken and hurting is by revealing that we are also real broken and hurting people too. We are not perfect, but we have Jesus.

This lyric reminds me of the "whitewashed tombs" mentioned in Matthew 23:27

“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs which indeed appear beautiful outwardly, but inside are full of dead men’s bones and all uncleanness."

We need to realize that God loves and accepts us for who we are, and we must accept others just the same. We do not have to pretend to be perfect. We also need to learn to love each other like that: unconditionally. So, with that, I leave you with the ultimate example of love:

"For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son. This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed. But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what they have done has been done in the sight of God."