The singer has tried everything a seeker can try. He has climbed mountains and crossed open country to reach the one he wants. He has known a lover's touch and felt it heal him. He has spoken like an angel. He has also taken the devil's hand. He is still looking.
Then the last verse turns. He says he believes in the kingdom to come, when every color will run into one. He tells the Lord that he broke the bonds and loosed the chains. He says the Lord carried the cross of his shame. He says plainly that he believes it. Then the chorus comes back, and he still has not found what he is looking for.
That is what sets the song apart. Most songs about searching are sung by someone who has not met God. This singer has met him. He believes what Christ did on the cross, and he says so out loud. The search goes on anyway. What remains is the distance between the thing believed and the thing possessed. He has seen the country from the mountain. He is not living in it yet.
The Song and the Band
The song started with a drum pattern and a tune nobody kept. An early version had a different melody and went by the name "Under the Weather" (Totally Hits Nashville). The Edge brought a new melody and the title. Bono took it from there, and producer Daniel Lanois steered him toward gospel (Diffuser). Bono had been playing a tape of blues and gospel songs that the Irish writer Dermot Stokes gave him.
U2 released it in 1987 as the second single from The Joshua Tree, and it went to number one in America (MPR News). A year later the band sang it on Rattle and Hum with a New York gospel choir behind them.
Bono has described it more than one way. He has introduced it as "a gospel song with a restless spirit" (NPR). He told Rolling Stone it was "an anthem of doubt more than faith" (Songfacts). He also said the music that moved him most was "either running toward God or away from God" (Diffuser).
The doubt label deserves a second look. The song never questions the cross. The singer says he believes it. What he doubts is himself, and how far he still has to go. Jon Pareles of the New York Times has noticed how hard the melody leans on one word, "still." It tells you he has been looking a long time (NPR). It also tells you he has not quit. The refrain never softens into resignation. It stays a claim. By Bono's own measure, this is a song running toward God.
I Count Not Myself to Have Apprehended
Paul once wrote out his own list of credentials. He was circumcised on the eighth day. He was born of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of the Hebrews. He was a Pharisee who kept the law without fault (Philippians 3:5–6). Then he set the whole list aside. "But what things were gain to me, those I counted loss for Christ" (3:7).
The song keeps a list too. Every item on it falls short of what the singer wants. So far the two men agree.
Then Paul says something that surprises. He has given up everything for Christ. He has preached him across the Roman world. And he still does not claim to have arrived.
Not as though I had already attained, either were already perfect: but I follow after, if that I may apprehend that for which also I am apprehended of Christ Jesus. Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 3:12–14)
"I count not myself to have apprehended." That is the chorus in Paul's words. He wrote it in chains, after decades of faith. The singer says he is still running. Paul says he presses toward the mark. For both of them, the not-yet is the reason to keep moving.
Apprehended of Christ Jesus
Paul's sentence holds something the song leaves out. He presses on "that I may apprehend that for which also I am apprehended of Christ Jesus." To apprehend is to lay hold of. Paul reaches for Christ because Christ has already laid hold of him. The singer is looking. Paul is looking too, and he knows he is held while he looks.
John puts both halves of that into a single verse. "Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is" (1 John 3:2). Now we are sons. What we shall be has not appeared yet. The song has the not-yet. John adds the now, and he names the day the looking ends. We shall see him as he is.
The singer says he still has not found what he is looking for. Scripture lets that stand. He has not seen it yet. What he is looking for has already found him, and one day he will see him as he is. Until then, the song's best word is still.