For our Good Friday service, I asked the worship team to learn and perform a powerful hymn first written by William How in the 19th century and modernized more recently by Sandra McCracken and the good folks at Indelible Grace Music.
The hymn, entitled Who Is This, juxtaposes beautifully the biblical themes of Christ’s humiliation and exaltation. Scripture commonly places these two themes side-by-side, as in Phil 2:8-11: Being found in appearance as a man, [Jesus] humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. For this reason also, God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
Ever since first hearing this song six years ago, I’ve been smitten by the poetically beautiful way it speaks of both Christ’s suffering and his glory. Now that we stand on the other side of both Good Friday and Easter, the contrast in these verses should stand in stark relief.
1. Who is this, so weak and helpless,
Child of lowly Hebrew maid,
Rudely in a stable sheltered,
Coldly in a manger laid?
’Tis the Lord of all creation,
Who this wondrous path has trod;
He is God from everlasting,
And to everlasting God.
2. Who is this, a Man of Sorrows,
Walking sadly life’s hard way,
Homeless, weary, sighing, weeping
Over sin and Satan’s sway?
’Tis our God, our glorious Savior,
Who above the starry sky
Is for us a place preparing,
Where no tear can dim the eye.
3. Who is this? Behold him shedding
Drops of blood upon the ground!
Who is this, despised, rejected,
Mocked, insulted, beaten, bound?
’Tis our God, Who gifts and graces
On His church is pouring down;
Who shall smite in holy vengeance
All His foes beneath His throne.
4. Who is this that hangs there dying
While the rude world scoffs and scorns,
Numbered with the malefactors,
Torn with nails, and crowned with thorns?
’Tis our God Who lives forever
’Mid the shining ones on high,
In the glorious golden city,
Reigning everlastingly.
Today is Good Friday. We remember and reflect on the wrath of God poured out on Jesus for the atonement of our sins. Sunday is Easter. We will gather and celebrate the resurrection of Jesus and his victory over Satan, sin, and death. In preparation for our Easter gathering, it would do your soul well to reflect on one of the songs we will sing together on Sunday. These are the thoughts of Justin Curtis:
In Christ Alone is a modern hymn written by Stuart Townend in collaboration with fellow songwriter Keith Getty in 2002. It is quite common to hear us at Coram Deo Church say that we long to be a people who know and experience the Gospel, preaching it to each other constantly. The verses of this contemporary hymn, equip us for that very calling. Lyrics addressing the themes of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection are interwoven throughout the movement of this song. And not only that, numerous gospel-implications seem to pour out from verse to verse, grounding both this musical expression in scripture, and the believer in what it means to stand in Christ alone. In this modern hymn, one is able to experience theological depth presented in poetic form.
In the poetic writings of the Psalms (118:22), through the prophetic message of Isaiah (28:16), and all over the gospel narratives (Math 21:42; Mark 12:10; Luke 20:17) Jesus is referred to as the cornerstone of our salvation. According to Acts 4:11-12, “This Jesus is the stone that was rejected by you, the builders, which has become the cornerstone. And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.” Therefore, the Gospel—the good news of salvation—is found in Christ alone.
We find in the Gospel, that God entered into human history in the form of Jesus Christ, both fully man and fully God (John 1:1) as a gift of love and righteousness. He was born of a virgin and lived a life without sin, although he was tempted in the same way that we are today. Jesus went to the cross and became the perfect scapegoat. The wrath of God was satisfied in this substitution as Jesus willingly took upon himself, every sin of the past, the present, and the future. He died in our place, for our sins, paying our debt to God, and purchasing our salvation with his own precious blood (Romans 5:1-11). Jesus’ dead body was laid in a tomb and buried for three days. On the third day, Jesus rose, bursting forth in victory over Satan, sin, and death. He now sits on His throne at the right hand of the Father, ruling and reigning over all nations, all cultures, and all of creation. This is the good news of the Gospel. This is where our hope lies: In Christ alone, our hope is found.
Knowing the truth about God and who we are in Him is central to our lives as believers. For those who hope in Christ alone, it is essential to see how the good news of Jesus comes to bear on our real lives. As we look at the words of this modern hymn, the truths and beauty of the Gospel renew our minds and transform our hearts.
“Sin’s curse has lost its grip on me”
Galatians 3:13 informs us that, ‘Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree.” Our inability to please God by walking in obedience because of the curse of sin was overthrown on the cross. Our savior became a curse for us, so we could be freed and walk in newness of life.
“For I am His and He is mine”
Romans 8:14-16 fleshes this out by saying, “For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’ The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God.” Those who trust in Christ alone, should not walk in fear, but rather be comforted by the fact that they are adopted into God’s family and loved as His children. We are His children, and He is our Father!
“No guilt in life, no fear in death”
Those who are overwhelmed by a deep sense of guilt and shame can find revolutionary news in the Gospel. Romans 8:1 shouts to us that because Christ willingly took our place and was punished for our sin, out of His grace and mercy, “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” To be in Christ alone, is to be one who is living free from guilt and trusting in the finished work of the cross.
“No power of hell, no scheme of man, can ever pluck me from His hand”
Those who are trsuting in Christ alone and have experienced the transformational power of the Gospel can be assured that nothing could ever separate them from the grace of God found in Jesus Christ. This is clearly shown forth in Romans 8:38-39, “For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of god in Christ Jesus our Lord.” This gospel implication brings about a confidence that can be found in Christ alone.
Reflecting back on his work, Stuart Townend noted, “The lyric [of this song] excites me because it places our hope, our assurance, our eternal destiny in the right place – on the solid foundation of Christ. I know in my own life I need reminding continually not to live by my feelings or my circumstances, but by the unchanging truth of the Gospel.” In Christ Alone is well suited for Coram Deo’s worship culture because it is Gospel-Centered and good for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry and for the building up of the body of Christ (Eph. 4:12).
May we be a people whose hope is found…In Christ Alone!
This is the second post in a series highlighting some of the songs we sing together on Sunday mornings. As I reminded us last time, when we gather as a church and sing, we are seeking to drive the truths of the Gospel down into our hearts and minds that it might overflow into a life of worship. Our singing has Gospel implications, and so it matters.
I Boast No More is a hymn written by Isaac Watts, who is widely considered the Father of English Hymnody, as he is credited with roughly 750 hymns. The chorus and melody that we sing and have become familiar with at Coram Deo were once again written and composed by Sandra McCracken. The verses of this hymn, taken almost right out of Phil. 3:7-9, speak quite beautifully of the righteousness we have in Christ alone. This righteousness is not due to any merit of ourselves, rather it is a gift of grace from God so that no one may boast (Eph. 2:8-9). The truth of the verses drive the response/resolve of the chorus.
Righteousness is a fundamental attribute of God which speaks of His perfection; He is right, just, and good in ALL His ways (Ps. 145:17). And because God is righteous, He also requires righteousness, which is set forth by His righteous law. This is God’s standard for all people. This is God’s standard for us.
Of course we do not meet this standard: “As it is written: ‘There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands, no one who seeks God. All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one.’ (Rom. 3:10-12)” We stand condemned before a holy God; we are under His righteous judgment and wrath. This should produce in us fear and trembling. If it does not, maybe we have not truly experienced the character and nature of God. Before God, even our best acts are like filthy rags…
The best obedience of my hands
Dares not appear before Thy throne;
But here is the beauty of the Gospel: In Jesus, the righteous demands of God’s law are answered. The Gospel reveals to us the righteousness of God in a whole new way (Rom. 1:17) — not only is righteousness God’s standard, it is also His provision for us through Christ. This is called passive righteousness. God justifies us while we are still sinners, through faith in what Jesus has accomplished on the cross…
But faith can answer Thy demands,
By pleading what my Lord has done.
In the Gospel, not only do we receive forgiveness, we also receive the perfect righteousness of Christ so that we are acceptable before God. The cry of this hymn is that “we find all comfort in Jesus’ wounds and have no need to seek or invent any other means to reconcile ourselves with God than this one and only sacrifice, which renders believers perfect (righteous) forever.” We quit the vain things we turn to for hope, our self-righteous duties/acts, our constant striving for our own pride and glory. No more do we boast in those things, we have died to our former selves. May our lips sing and hearts boast only in Jesus Christ, and Him crucified!
And since you have made it to the end of the post, I will let you in on a little insider information: I Boast No More will be included on our soon-to-be released Coram Deo worship album.
This is the first post in a new series I will be starting to highlight some of the songs we sing together on Sunday mornings. When we gather as a church and sing, we are seeking to drive the truths of the Gospel down into our hearts and minds that it might overflow into a life of worship. Therefore, the songs we sing and our interaction with them is important. My hope in these posts is to bring out some of the rich theology in our songs in such a way that raises both your understanding and affections for who God is and what He has done. So to start us off…
Awake My Soul was written and composed by Sandra McCracken in 2002 and was on Derek Webb’s (Sandra’s husband) 2003 release She Must and Shall Go Free. The lyrics are rooted in the beauty of Christ’s supremacy and all-sufficient nature. In the verses we sing that Christ holds all things together, that God’s grace through Jesus provides all we need, and that He is bringing and will bring redemption to our brokenness. Then in the chorus we conclude and affirm that, because of all this, we boast only in God (Jer. 9:23-24) and His revelation in Christ (Gal. 6:14). These themes are a great fit for our preaching series in Colossians.
As we were singing this song together this past Sunday, a few lines especially stood out to me, and I have been meditating on them since:
This grace gives me fear
And this grace draws me near
And all that it asks it provides.
These are weighty words, but what exactly are we singing? Let’s look at each of these lines and see how they powerfully fit together.
“This grace gives me fear”
As we encounter God’s grace, we necessarily encounter His holiness. We begin to learn something of God’s divine nature, that He is altogether separate in being than we are, and that in Him is contained the perfection of all power, beauty, and moral excellence. The holiness of God, encountered only by His grace, produces in us a healthy amount of fear when held up to our sinfulness (Is. 6:1-5).
Furthermore, the grace we are singing about is God’s work through the person of Jesus to reconcile us to Himself. “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not of yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast” (Eph. 2:8-9). God’s grace towards us in Jesus is a gift, it is unmerited and undeserved, there is nothing in our effort or doing that makes us worthy of God’s grace. Jesus died precisely because there was nothing we could do in and of ourselves. This kind of grace is threatening. It threatens our pride, our struggle for self-worth, our religious efforts, and our very identity. We are not our own, we have been bought with a price and our identity has changed. God, in His grace, has purchased us through the blood of Jesus. And this new identity brings with it a new reality, a calling on our life—a call to come and die, a call to deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow Jesus. God’s grace in our life is calling us to a life of discipleship; it is costly grace, not cheap. God’s grace is threatening, it strikes fear into our very being.
“And this grace draws me near”
But this same grace also draws us near, reconciles us, and gives us confidence to approach a Holy God. Because of God’s grace towards us in Jesus, we now have a great high priest who pleads on our behalf. God grants and imputes to us, the perfect satisfaction, righteousness and holiness of Christ so that we might enter His presence with worship that has been purified. This grace is both threatening and comforting. Dietrich Bonhoeffer captured these two aspects of grace well…
Costly grace is the gospel which must be sought again and again, the gift which must be asked for, the door at which a man must knock. Such grace is costly because it calls us to follow, and it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ. It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life. It is costly because it condemns sin, and grace because it justifies the sinner.
It is as we draw near to God that we discover that this costly grace, this call to come and die, is actually a call to life in all its fullness. It is the call of Jesus: “For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it” (Matt. 16:25).
“And all that it asks it provides” God’s grace calls us to lose our life and follow Jesus, and it is also the very power that enables us to actually be able to follow Him. The Gospel (God’s grace towards is in Jesus) is the means for both our justification (God’s saving grace) and our sanctification (God’s empowering grace). God’s grace draws us to Himself, justifies us by faith in Jesus Christ, and sanctifies and empowers us by the Holy Spirit. What God’s grace asks of us it also provides, and in so doing awakens our soul to life in Him, the fullness of joy.
