Hymn Study - What wondrous love is this, O my soul, O my soul!

1 What wondrous love is this, O my soul, O my soul! What wondrous love is this, O my soul! What wondrous love is this That caused the Lord of bliss To bear the dreadful curse for my soul, for my soul, To bear the dreadful curse for my soul! 2 When I was sinking down, sinking down, sinking down, When I was sinking down, sinking down, When I was sinking down Beneath God's righteous frown, Christ laid aside his crown For my soul, for my soul, Christ laid aside his crown for my soul. 3 To God and to the Lamb I will sing, I will sing; To God and to the Lamb I will sing; To God and to the Lamb, Who is the great I Am, While millions join the theme, I will sing, I will sing, While millions join the theme, I will sing. 4 And when from death I'm free, I'll sing on, I'll sing on; And when from death I'm free, I'll sing on. And when from death I'm free, I'll sing his love for me, And through eternity I'll sing on, I'll sing on, And through eternity I'll sing on.

What wondrous love! While looking up the lyrics to this hymn a Google search revealed a couple of things to me. The hymn is only a couple of words in actuality. Those few words have deeply spoken to many people as my search returned video after video and page after page of people performing this song. What about you?

Church is full of little expressions isn't it? Jesus loves you. Jesus died on the cross. Forgive me I have sinned. Amen. Give thanks to the Lord! Alleluia! Hear my prayer. It's got some more robusts repetitions as well. The Nicene and Apostles Creed, The Lord's Prayer, the confession of sins, the words received during distribution of the Lord's Supper, the songs of our weekly worship, Glory be to the Father and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now, and will be forever. Amen. Refrain.

I don't know about you, but I have sinfully zoned out of my worship before. The fewer words, the easier. Mouth open, mouth shut, even while receiving the Lord's Supper for the forgiveness of my sins, a literal miracle happening at that moment, mouth open, mouth shut. Just going through the motions. I love church, I love my God, but sometimes I really need the kids to quiet down and I have this service down pat, and now we're singing a favorite hymn so I can mouth the words along while doing this other thing.

What wondrous love, amazing grace! These are common themes in hymns and sermons. It's kind of easy to overlook those words, they tick the "sounds Christian to me" box in our minds, but stop and think about these words, what wondrous love?! Yes it is amazing. Have you ever had something disposable, something you didn't cherish? Say maybe some paper for a grocery list. You start writing down what you need, milk, eggs, cheese, then you remember, I just got eggs and cheese on this other errand, you crumple up the paper and start over, milk, bread, so on and so forth. God just spent eternity with nothing and decided to create everything, planet, heaven, angels, animals, humans. Shortly thereafter things didn't go so well. What wondrous love that He didn't crumple us up and start over. What wondrous love that He instead put this burden on His Son for us.

What wondrous love says a lot. Don't just say Jesus loves me, no, understand it. This hymn goes on: When I was sinking down Beneath God's righteous frown, Christ laid aside his crown For my soul. We sing that we're standing before a judge, guilty and the judge looks at the situation and the hymn lets us know He's not happy, then gets up and says I better get about to serving your sentence for you. It's unfathomable. It is undeserved, wondrous love. Not only does this judge do this for you, He did it for the hearing before you, and He'll do it again with the next case until all crime is accounted for and accordingly punished.

The last two verses concentrate on us, we will sing of His love, not through a memorizable, catchy jingle, but a pouring of our souls into gratitude with millions of others through the rest of our lives, right past the sting of death and continued on into eternity we're we'll sing our love to Christ and He'll join in to sing of an eternal love for you. These words, even the ones we repeat and memorize and sometimes go through the motions during, they were written by people filled with the Holy Spirit and they fill us with the Holy Spirit and to people hearing them for the first time. Don't take your words to God for granted, instead, remember why it is you are saying them. Because God's love is wondrous!