Pierce my ear, O Lord, my God
Take me to Your door this day.
I will serve no other God,
Lord, I’m here to stay.
For You have paid the price for me;
With Your blood You ransomed me.
I will serve You eternally,
A free man I’ll never be.
This song has always been a song that has stuck with me since my early days of being a Christian. For quite a while, I wondered how this song applied to my life. What does piercing my ear have to do with Jesus? If you go to Exodus 21, we see where this comes from. It says,
“But if the slave plainly says, ‘I love my master, my wife, and my children; I will not go out free,’ then his master shall bring him to God, and he shall bring him to the door or the doorpost. And his master shall bore his ear through with an awl, and he shall be his slave forever.”
Exodus 21:5-6
God commanded that a slave be set free unless the slave loved his owner and the life of servitude towards him.
When we sing this song, we sing because we have the opportunity to pierce our ear in service to God through Jesus. In John’s Gospel, it says, “Whoever practices sin, is a slave to sin”(Jn. 8:34). The issue is presented not only in the Gospel, but the issue has been affecting man since Adam decided to forsake God’s command in the garden. Paul addresses this issue in Romans 3, asserting that both Jews and Gentiles are under sin and, therefore, enslaved to it. We had separated ourselves from God through sin, and we were dead in our sin. God’s righteousness perseveres through our sins, and his character is shown through Jesus’s life. Jesus was sent as the perfect sacrifice so that we could have a chance at eternal life through his death and resurrection. Paul asserts that those who have faith in Jesus Christ can be justified in the eyes of God regardless of their previous sins. Those who are obedient to Christ can have their sins forgiven through baptism, and we can be freed from our chains of sin. Since we are free from sin, who are we enslaved to now? “Since you have been freed from sin, you have become slaves to righteousness (Rom 6:18). We have pierced our ear to God, to live as a righteous servant to him. We owe him everything since he gave his only begotten son for us, to pay our debt for sin.
In life, we will always be a slave to something. So I ask you this: will you be a slave to God and live a life free from sin, or be enslaved to sin and separate yourself from God?
Christian Cherry
Dalraida church of Christ is a congregation of Christians that meet in the mid-town area of Montgomery, Alabama. Our goal and purpose is to seek and follow God and His Word in everything that we do in life.