Weekday Devotion With Pastor Chris

  On Good Friday we remember Jesus’ movement to the cross.  One of the most meaningful hymns for this day was written some three hundred years ago.  “When I survey the wondrous cross” has been called the finest hymn in the English language.  It was written by Isaac Watts and can serve as a helpful guide as we recall Christ’s sacrifice.

     Watts was the hymn-writer who revolutionized congregational praise in the churches of England and Scotland.  Up until he came along, it had been limited to metrical psalms ever since the Reformation.  The results were often less than uplifting.  Returning from chapel one Sunday morning Isaac (about twenty years old at the time) complained about the terrible quality of the metrical psalms that they had used in worship that day.  His father exclaimed, “Then give us something better, young man!”  Watts proceeded to do just that.  Before the day was over he had written a hymn that was used in worship the following Sunday, and so began a career that would ultimately produce somewhere between 650 and 750 hymns.

     Watts believed there was a place in worship for hymns that were more than just biblical paraphrases.  He pushed for hymns that gave free expression to some of the great truths of our faith in poetic form.  His efforts gave birth to the English hymn as we know it today.  Among his best known works are “O God, our help in ages past,” “Jesus shall reign where’er the sun” and “When I survey the wondrous cross.”

When I survey the wondrous cross,

On which the Prince of glory died,

My richest gain I count but loss,

And pour contempt on all my pride.
 

     In this hymn we are called to do more than offer a brief glance in the direction of the cross.  The invitation is to stop and contemplate its meaning.  Here is the very Son of God, the Prince of glory, dying for our sakes, taking the burden of our sins upon himself; “He was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the punishment that made us whole” (Isa. 53:5).  How could we be other than humbled in the face of such a sacrifice?
    

See, from his head, his hands, his feet,

Sorrow and love flow mingled down;

Did e’er such love and sorrow meet,

Or thorns compose so rich a crown?

 

     Watts got it exactly right: it is boundless love and surpassing sorrow that came together on the cross.  It is sorrow and compassion that fills God’s heart as he considers our great need, and it was love that drove Jesus to the cross; “God shows his love us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us” (Rom. 5:8).
 

Were the whole realm of nature mind,

That were a present far too small;

Love so amazing, so divine,

Demands my soul, my life, my all.
 

     No gift could possibly repay God for what God.  The most we can do, the best we can do, is to offer God the gift of ourselves – love in response to that far greater love that God has shown us.  This Good Friday consider the cross.

“May I never boast of anything except the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.”  (Gal. 6:14)