One of my goals for this year is to write a devotional based on great hymns of the faith. Every morning I look at a new hymn and write a few words, pulling out the spiritual truth that lies in these great lyrics.
I was not prepared for Alas, and Did My Savior Bleed.
It’s 300 years old. It was written in a time before cars and the internet and cell phones. But the words cut straight through to my heart and reduced me to a blubbering mess at my computer.
Here’s what I wrote about it. It will be in my forthcoming devotional, but I couldn’t sit on this one for that long.
Enjoy!
Alas! and did my Savior bleed
And did my Sovereign die?
Would He devote that sacred head,
For such a worm as I.
Isaac Watts
Like many of the great hymns of old, this song brings us immediately to the foot of the cross. Oh, that we would visit this wonderful yet terrible locale with greater frequency! When we gaze upon the sacrifice of our Lord, all of life’s priorities fall sharply into focus.
In two brief sentences, Isaac Watts captures the glory and the agony of the cross. In the first, we see the sacrifice. Our Savior and our Sovereign, broken and bleeding ultimately giving Himself as a sacrifice that He did not earn or deserve. In the second, we see the beneficiary of this sacrifice. From the base of the cross, we see ourselves, utterly unworthy of such a kingly offering.
Such is the essence of the gospel. The glorious God, living eternally in light and perfection stepped down from His throne and entered the toil and suffering of this world. Amid the dirt and the darkness of the daily grind He lived in perfection, not to bring glory to Himself, but to sacrifice Himself for us and give the benefits of His life away to those who had already, repeatedly, defiantly disqualified themselves from such rewards.
Ultimately our Lord was glorified. His name cannot remain low. Despite sitting at the right hand of the Father today, He offers the benefits of His sacrifice to us today.
We do not deserve it. Repeatedly we have rejected it. Compared to His glory and perfection we are less than worms. Yet despite the apparent injustice, notwithstanding the radical inequity of the trade, He takes on our sin and gives us His perfection.
We give up the destiny we could not avoid, gaining the inheritance we do not deserve.
Considering the gospel brings us low. Not back into the rebellion of our sinfulness, but bowed deeply in humility. When we consider what the cross did for us, we are oriented on the mercy and love of God. It cannot be about us any longer, for we are the reason such a sacrifice had to happen.
For those who have received such generosity, how can we respond appropriately? It is not enough that we should assume the role of the debtor and begin the toil of “working off the debt of love” that we have received. By virtue of this sacrifice and gift, we have been elevated to the privileged position of sons and daughters. It is not for a son or daughter to attempt to repay the generosity of our Father.
The Apostle Paul puts it very well in 1 Corinthians 6 when he writes,
You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.
Glorify God. That is our response.
The Apostle John, the beloved friend of Jesus, replies,
We love Him because He first loved us.
We love in return.
Isaac Watts did not leave us bowed at the cross, crushed by such a great sacrifice we could never repay. The fifth stanza brings us full circle.
But drops of grief can ne’er repay
The debt of love I owe;
Here, Lord, I give myself away,
‘Tis all that I can do.
Our response to the sacrifice is to give ourselves away. We offer up our lives, not in repayment but as a gift of thanks. These lives are not our own. They have been purchased and are the possession of our Lord Jesus. So we give them back to Him, for His purpose and His glory.
‘Tis all that we can do.
