Nitpicking Hymns: Lord, Thee I Love With All My Heart

I will love thee, O Lord, my strength. The Lord is my rock, and my fortress, and my deliverer; my God, my strength, in whom I will trust; my buckler, and the horn of my salvation, and my high tower. I will call upon the Lord, who is worthy to be praised: so shall I be saved from mine enemies (Psalm 18:1-3).

So, I took a quick look at the first three lines of TLH 429, “Lord, Thee I Love With All My Heart.” After studying the German translations of other hymns, I wasn’t surprised to find, what is to me, a significant discrepancy between the author Martin Schalling’s German text, and the altered translation from Catherine Winkworth. As in every case, the German text is much more orthodox than its English counterpart.

In the first stanza, we sing:

Lord, Thee I love with all my heart;

I pray Thee, ne’er from me depart,

with tender mercy cheer me.

This raises the question for Lutherans: Can I love the Lord with all my heart? We are certainly commanded to do so. God commands His people to love Him will all their heart, soul, strength, and mind. Jesus tells the Pharisees that this is the greatest of God's commandments. 

Just because we are commanded to do something, however, does not mean that we are able to do it. 

In our fallen state, our sinful hearts are inclined away from God, not toward him. We cannot, by our own reason or strength, believe in Our Lord Jesus Christ, or come to Him. 

For theological traditions which believe that they cooperate in their conversion and salvation, this line poses no problem. If I can decide to have faith in Christ by an act of my own free will, why wouldn’t I be able to decide to love Him with all my heart? It’s the same thing, isn’t it?

For the confessional Lutheran, however, we must take issue with this translation. There is no scriptural basis for saying that we regenerate humans, who are simultaneously sinner and saint, can love the Lord our God with our whole hearts. Indeed, we confess weekly that we have not loved Him with our whole hearts, and that we have not loved our neighbor as ourselves.

Putting the best construction on the text, one could look at it as an expression of overwhelming thankfulness and joy. However, making such an expression is equivalent, as one of my pastor friends put it, to receiving a million dollars from a billionaire and then offering to buy him lunch as an expression of gratitude. 

 

Saying that I love the Lord with all my heart is a bit like deciding to respond to an altar call. Without the working of the Holy Spirit through the Word, you would not have been able to decide to follow Jesus, nor would you want to do so. The Holy Spirit already made you a Christian before you stood up, walked down the aisle, and said the Sinner's Prayer. You didn't decide to believe in Jesus. He chose you, even though it may look like you made a decision by an act of your will.

This issue, however, does not exist in the original language. This is what the author wrote originally:

Herzlich lieb hab' ich dich, o Herr,

Ich bitt' woll'st sein von mir nicht fern

Mit deiner Güt' und Gnaden.

Translated, this would be something like:

I love you dearly, oh Lord;

I beg you not to be far from me,

with your goodness and grace.

This is a much more orthodox, confessional Lutheran, English rendering of Schalling’s original text, though not poetic and singable.

According to the Handbook for the Lutheran Hymnal, “This hymn, a prayer to Christ, the consolation of the soul in life and death, after Psalms 18 and 73, is a treasure bequeathed to the Church from the heart of Schalling.” Indeed, the beginning of Psalm 18 sounds similar to the first stanza of the hymn:

I will love thee, oh Lord, my strength. The Lord is my rock, and my fortress, and my deliverer; my God, my strength, in whom I will trust; my buckler, and the horn of my salvation, and my high tower. I will call upon the Lord, who is worthy to be praised: so shall I be saved from mine enemies (Psalm 18:1–3).

David writes that he will love the Lord. He does not write he will love the Lord with all his heart.

One argument could be that the new man we are in Christ certainly loves the Lord with all his heart. It is the old man, whom we fight against daily, drowning him in the waters of our baptism, who doesn’t.

The idea that the new man cooperates with God, and does good works, while the old man remains is not contrary to scripture. It is affirmed in the Lutheran Confessions. All of Paul’s epistles recognize this tension between the Spirit and the Flesh, the chief passage being Romans 7. Paul continually exhorts Christians to abandon their pagan ways. He calls us to stop gratifying the flesh and its desires. He calls us to walk in the good works God has prepared for us to walk in. He calls us to walk according to the Spirit, to cultivate the fruits of the Spirit, and to turn away from the acts of the Flesh. Paul calls us to the lives of Christians, the new creations into which Christ has made us, by doing good. The good we do is not ours, nor does it save. It is a natural outgrowth of our faith in Christ and our regenerate state.

The good works which God gives us to do to benefit and serve our neighbor, as Schalling writes in stanza two of his hymn, praises God’s grace to us.

This is how David can say that he will love the Lord. It is by the power of the Holy Spirit. Likewise, this is how we can say we love the Lord. It may not be right, however, to say that we love the Lord with all our hearts. We can only do so properly if we project this phrase into the future. After Christ returns, and He destroys sin and death forever, and we live with Him with glorious bodies like His, in the new creation free from sin, we will indeed love him with all our hearts.

Personally, I would much prefer a more accurate poetic rendering of Schalling’s first three lines. That way, this whole issue is moot. 

In the meantime, in this fallen creation, while our new man struggles with our flesh constantly, we must be content to say by the Holy Spirit, as David did, “I will love thee, oh Lord, my strength.”

Regardless, this still remains one of my favorite hymns. ###

Victory over the Amalekites

Now Amalek came and fought with Israel in Rephidim. And Moses said to Joshua, “Choose us some men and go out, fight with Amalek. Tomorrow I will stand on the top of the hill with the rod of God in my hand.” So Joshua did as Moses said to him, and fought with Amalek. And Moses, Aaron, and Hur went up to the top of the hill. And so it was, when Moses held up his hand, that Israel prevailed; and when he let down his hand, Amalek prevailed. But Moses’ hands became heavy; so they took a stone and put it under him, and he sat on it. And Aaron and Hur supported his hands, one on one side, and the other on the other side; and his hands were steady until the going down of the sun. So Joshua defeated Amalek and his people with the edge of the sword. Then the Lord said to Moses, “Write this for a memorial in the book and recount it in the hearing of Joshua, that I will utterly blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven.” And Moses built an altar and called its name, The-Lord-Is-My-Banner; for he said, “Because the Lord has sworn: the Lord will have war with Amalek from generation to generation” (Exodus 17:8-16).

The People of Israel are rescued by Yahweh in spite of their constant rebellion. He brought them out of Egypt by His mighty hand; they can claim no part in making Pharaoh let them go. Yahweh defeated the Egyptians in the Red Sea when pursued Israel; it could not be claimed that their escape and the Egyptian’s defeat came about by the force of their arms. God provided food for the children of Israel in the wilderness; no one could claim that Israel was self-sufficient. In fact, they ran out of provisions. They complained to Moses and longed for the rather romanticized life they had in Egypt, where they sat around pots full of meat. God provided them water from a most unlikely source when they had no water to drink. They dug no well; they found no stream. They complained. Yahweh, through the working of Moses, gives the children of Israel water to drink, gushing forth from a rock. This was not dead water from a stagnant pool that would make them sick and die, but living water, flowing forth from the rock that Moses was told by God to strike. And that rock, St. Paul tells us, was Christ.[1] Being struck by the rod of the Law, Christ provides living water to refresh and nourish His people in the dead and dry wilderness.

Now Amalek, descendent of Esau, came and fought with Israel at Rephidim. Now they must defeat the enemy themselves. Moses sends Joshua. “Choose us some men and go out, fight with Amalek. Tomorrow I will stand on the top of the hill with the rod of God in my hand,” Moses says. He will pray; the mediator making intercession for his people to Yahweh. The people may be fighting a battle but it is Yahweh who wins it for them. Moses stands on the hill, arms outstretched in prayer. When Moses held up his hand, Israel prevailed; when he let down his hand Amalek prevailed. The Israelites were fighting, but Yahweh was the source of their strength and victory.

So Joshua defeated Amalek and his people with the edge of the sword. Here we see another shadow of Christ: Joshua, who will eventually succeed Moses as the leader of Israel. Moses will give them the Law and show them their sin. Joshua, or Yeshua, which is anglicized as Jesus, will do what Moses cannot do. Joshua will lead Israel across the Jordan into the Promised Land. He will defeat Israel’s enemies with the edge of the sword. Christ, the Joshua who is the fulfillment of this shadow, has defeated Israel’s enemies, once and for all, on the cross; He has purchased and won us from sin, death, and the devil with His holy, precious blood, and by His innocent suffering and death on the cross. He rose from the dead on the third day, having conquered death and the grave, and ascended into heaven. He will come again with glory, to judge the living and the dead. In righteousness He judges and makes war. John describes Him in Revelation:

His eyes were like a flame of fire, and on His head were many crowns. He had a name written that no one knows except Himself. He was clothed in a robe dipped in blood, and His name is called the Word of God. And the armies in heaven, clothed in fine linen, white and clean, followed Him on white horses. Now out of His mouth goes a sharp sword, that with it He should strike the nations. And He Himself will rule them with a rod of iron. He Himself treads the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God. And He has on His robe and on His thigh a name written: King of Kings and Lord of Lords (Revelation 19:11-16).

We have been rescued by God’s might hand from our slavery to sin. Though we were by our nature children of wrath, God loved us. Even when we were dead in our transgressions, God made us alive together with Christ, by His grace.[2] Even though we continue to rebel against Him by our sinful thoughts, words, and deeds, He grants us repentance and faith through His means of Word and Sacrament. If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. But if we confess our sins, God, who is faithful and just, will forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. We Christians are the Israel of God, wandering in the wilderness, making our way to the Promised Land. We are following the true Joshua, Jesus Christ. We have been enlisted into His army. We have been washed clean from our sin, not by passing through the Red Sea, but in the waters of Holy Baptism[3]. We have been given robes of clean, fine linen. And we must be strong in the Lord and the power of His might, not our own. And though we must fight in the wilderness, we must know that it is by Christ’s work on the cross, not our own working, that our enemies of sin and death have been defeated. We must put on the whole armor of God so that we may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil; that we may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand. We gird our waist with truth, which is God’s Word of Law and Gospel; we put on the breastplate of righteousness, which is a righteousness that comes from Christ and is not our own; we shoe our feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace; we take the shield of faith, the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God;[4] a sword which is sharp enough to pierce even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of thoughts and intents of the heart.[5] And we pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests, being alert and praying always for all the saints, our brothers and sisters in Christ.[6]

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[1] 1 Corinthians 10:4

[2] Ephesians 2:3-5

[3] Ephesians 5:26; Titus 3:5-8 1 Peter 3:18-21

[4] Ephesians 6:14-17

[5] Hebrews 4:12

[6] Ephesians 6:18

The Plot to Kill Jesus - Jesus Predicts His Death

Now it came to pass, when Jesus had finished all these sayings, that He said to His disciples, “You know that after two days is the Passover, and the Son of Man will be delivered up to be crucified.” Then the chief priests, the scribes, and the elders of the people assembled at the palace of the high priest, who was called Caiaphas, and plotted to take Jesus by trickery and kill Him. But they said, “Not during the feast, lest there be an uproar among the people” (Matthew 26:1-5).

Whenever we hear Jesus predict His own death, and see the disciples’ utter failure to understand or believe what Jesus is telling them, we tend to react incredulously. What was their problem? Were they not paying attention? Were they just stupid? Modern man has an arrogant tendency to look down on those of previous generations. We tend to characterize those who came before us as ignorant. After all, we have televisions, smart phones, and computers. We do this in religious matters as well. We look down our nose at the disciples. We think to ourselves, “If I had been there with Jesus, I would’ve believed.” How could these idiots possibly doubt Jesus’ words after what they witnessed? They saw Him heal the sick, cast out demons, miraculously feed the multitudes, walk on water, and even raise the dead. If we saw all that, savvy and well-educated modern sophisticates that we are, we certainly would’ve believed.

But it isn’t true. Miracles don’t make believers, the Holy Spirit working through the Word does. If people won’t believe the words of Moses and the Prophets, they won’t believe even if someone rises from the dead.[1] The Jews who plotted to kill Jesus saw many of His miracles. When Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead, the Pharisees did not marvel that Lazarus was again alive; they said, “If we let Him alone like this everyone will believe in Him, and the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation.”[2] They, too, thought Jesus’ miracles would make converts. It didn’t work on them, though. The multitudes who ate multiplied loaves and fishes soon after deserted Jesus when he taught them the hard saying that, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you.[3]

The teaching of Scripture cannot be stated any more clearly and concisely than in the explanation of the Third Article of the Apostle’s Creed from Luther’s Small Catechism: I believe that I cannot by my own reason or strength believe in Jesus Christ, my Lord, or come to Him; but the Holy Ghost has called me by the Gospel, enlightened me with His gifts, sanctified and kept me in the true faith; even as He calls, gathers, enlightens, and sanctifies the whole Christian Church on earth, and keeps it with Jesus Christ in the one true faith.[4]

The problem with the disciples wasn’t that they needed to be convinced to believe in Jesus. They needed to be converted. This is what was happening to them over the course of their time with Jesus. The Holy Spirit worked to create faith in them as He willed. Christ tells them plainly: You don’t have faith even as big as a mustard seed. They protest, of course. They even vow to die with Jesus, when he tells them that they will all abandon him, as foretold in Holy Scripture. Their self-image will be shattered upon Jesus’ arrest, trial, and crucifixion, when the shepherd is smitten, and the sheep are scattered. Peter must be restored by Christ.[5] The disciples on the road to Emmaus must have their eyes opened to Jesus.[6] Jesus must open understanding of the Scriptures to the disciples.[7] He is the key.

Christ worked their conversion - and ours - from beginning to end. We can be certain that as we now believe in Him, no one can pluck us out of His hand. This is why we, following St. Paul’s example, endeavor to know nothing but Christ crucified among those with whom God has surrounded us in our vocation. It is through hearing the message of Christ that men are born again - not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.[8] This is why it is important that we do not despise preaching and God’s Word. It is the means through which sinners receive repentance, faith, and forgiveness of sins, won for mankind by the death and resurrection of Christ.

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[1] Luke 16:27-31

[2] John 11:45-48

[3] John 6:53

[4] Luther, Martin. "The Small Catechism." The Small Catechism - Book of Concord. Accessed March 14, 2018. http://bookofconcord.org/smallcatechism.php#creed.

[5] John 21:15-19

[6] Luke 24:13-35

[7] Luke 24:44-49

[8] Romans 10:17; John 1:12-13

Conversion and Repentance

The Good Shepherd, by Lucas Cranach the Elder

I was recently asked this most reasonable and logical question regarding our “decision” to become a Christian, in the comments section of a previous essay (In Response to Hans Bischof Regarding Decision Theology and Silly Arguments): Don’t we decide to accept the gift of salvation, or at least decide not to reject it? I’m compelled to respond because, for years, it was also my question. Well, sure, the thought goes, we don’t do the work of salvation – the dying on the cross, or works to atone for specific sins. It would surely follow, however, that if Jesus wants to give us a gift (forgiveness), we would have to decide either to accept or reject it.

The bottom line is this: Is there any part of my salvation that is left to me to do? I generally sum up this question by asking another – Who does the verbs? If there is something left for me to do to complete God’s saving work (synergism), then I must be sure to complete my  or I won’t be saved. If God does everything and leaves nothing to me (monergism), then God is the one responsible for my salvation from beginning to end. If that is the case, then I can have a solid assurance that it is finished and my salvation is secure (as secure as God’s promise, anyway). If, however, even the smallest part of my salvation is contingent upon something I must do, then in reality it is entirely dependent upon me and what I must do. Decision Theology, which portrays man’s decision to accept Christ as the work man does to complete God’s work of salvation, relegates Jesus to the role of a partner.

The Bible teaches that the work of salvation is monergistic, that is, it is God’s work from beginning to end. He converts us. He gives us repentance and faith. He keeps us in that faith. This is a hard pill to swallow for all people, but especially for the independent-minded American. Scripture, however, cannot be denied. What Luther wrote on a scrap of paper while lying on his death bed is surely true: Wir sind alle Bettler. Hoc est verum[1].

How does God complete this work? He doesn’t simply zap us with lightning bolts. He comes to us through means. Jesus is delivered to us through the external world, whether by reading, preaching, or the Sacraments, which are the word coupled with a physical element (bread, wine, water). The Holy Spirit then works faith in a person when and where He wills it. Repentance? This is also a gift given by God, and not something we do of our own will. This was the understanding St. Peter and those to whom he reported the conversion of the Gentiles in Acts 11 had:

“If then God gave the same gift to them as he gave to us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, Who was I that I could stand in God’s way?” When they heard these things they fell silent. And they glorified God, saying, “Then to the Gentiles also God has granted repentance that leads to life” (Acts 11:17-18).

God converted those Gentiles through the word preached to them by Peter. God demonstrates this by granting them the gift of speaking in tongues, the same gift given to the Apostles. When Peter recounts all this to “those of the circumcision,” their conclusion is that God granted those Gentiles repentance. Or, said another way, God “repented” them.

Similarly, St. Paul also thought that repentance was a gift given to men, rather than a work to be performed:

And the Lord’s servant must not be quarrelsome but kind to everyone, able to teach, patiently enduring evil, correcting his opponents with gentleness. God may perhaps grant them repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth, and they may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil, after being captured by him to do his will (2 Timothy 2:24-26).

Paul instructs Timothy in the way he, the Lord’s servant, must act when teaching and dealing with others, especially his opponents. He is to be patient and kind, correcting error with gentleness. To what end? That he may reason his opponents into the faith using carefully crafted and rhetorically complex arguments? That they would, through an act of their will, intellectually agree with and voluntarily accept his teaching? No. Timothy is to deliver the word, as Paul describes elsewhere, “in season and out of season[2],” and God, the actor in terms of salvation, may grant them repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth. The Book of Concord (FCSD II 89), quoting Luther sums all this up nicely:

Luther says about conversion that a person is purely passive. This means a person does nothing at all toward conversion, but only undergoes what God works in him. Luther does not mean that conversion takes place without the preaching or hearing of God’s Word. Nor does he mean that in conversion no new emotion whatever is awakened in us by the Holy Spirit and no spiritual operation begun. But he means that a person by himself, or from his natural powers cannot do anything or help toward his conversion. Conversion is not only in part, but totally an act, gift, present, and work of the Holy Spirit alone. He accomplishes and does it by his power and might, through the Word, in a person’s intellect, will, and heart, “while the person does or works nothing, but only undergoes it.” It is not like a figure cut into stone, or a seal pressed into wax, which knows nothing about it, which neither sees him nor wills it. Rather it happens the way that has just been described and explained (McCain, et al. 2005).

Consider the example of the shepherd which Jesus uses in his Parable of the Lost Sheep in Luke 15. The shepherd and his interaction with his sheep can offer us insight into man’s role in his own conversion and repentance.

So He spoke this parable to them [Pharisees] saying: “What man of you, having a hundred sheep, if he loses one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness, and go after the one which is lost until he finds it? And when he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders rejoicing. And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and neighbors, saying to them, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep which was lost!’ I say to you that likewise there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine just persons [upright persons] who need no repentance” (Luke 15:3-7).

Jesus, in the parable, describes repentance as being found by the Good Shepherd and carried back to the sheep-fold by him. The sheep can take no action on his own, he is lost. He can only “be found” and rescued by the shepherd. Dr. Ken Bailey, author of “Finding the Lost: Cultural Keys to Luke 15,” explained in an Issues ETC interview that Jesus here means to impure the “Shepherds of Israel” for losing their sheep (Bailey 2015). Jesus, the Good Shepherd, had to come and do what they would not. He finds the sheep and carries it back on his shoulders. He “repents” it. This idea is not novel but, suggests Dr. Bailey; it is shown to us also in Psalm 23:

The LORD is my Shepherd; I shall not want. He makes me to lie down in green pastures; He leads me beside the still waters. He restores my soul; He leads me in the paths of righteousness for His name’s sake (Psalm 23:1-3).

This most famous and beloved of the Psalms describes the interaction of the Good Shepherd and his sheep. Again, God is doing the verbs – He makes me lie down; He leads me; He restores. The key word in this passage, however, is “restores.” I always got the image of a person weakened by hunger or thirst, who was restored to vigor again after being fed or given drink, when I read this in the past. Dr. Bailey, however, points out that the word translated “restore” is the Hebrew word Shuwb (pronounced “Shoob”) which means “to turn back,” or repent (Bailey 2015). He (God) repents, or turns back, my soul.

I disagree with Dr. Bailey’s choice of working when, at one point in the interview responding to a similar question to the topic of this essay, he says, “You make a decision to accept to be found” (Bailey 2015). We Lutherans don’t like the word “accept” because it smells of decision theology. The problem is that we are limited to nouns and verbs when attempting to express these ideas using language. On this side of eternity, we will not ever express it adequately.

Decision theology, as stated before, views man’s decision to accept Christ, to give him your heart, to make him lord of your life etc., as the completion of God’s salvation work. God’s work of salvation, to the contrary, is already finished. Or, in terms of the parable, the sheep is helpless to return to the fold of his own accord and the Shepherd retrieves him. The sheep “accepts” the rescue performed by the Shepherd. This act of acceptance, which is really not an act, but rather the sheep’s passive acceptance of an action done to it, does not complete the Shepherd’s rescue. Every part of conversion and repentance is effected upon us by God of his grace, through means of the external word, done by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Works Cited

Bailey, Dr. Ken, interview by Rev. Todd Wilken. Jesus, the Good Shepherd (May 7, 2015).

McCain, Paul Timothy, Robert Cleveland Baker, Gene Edward Veith, and Edward Andrew Engelbrecht, . Concordia: The Lutheran Confessions. Translated by William Hermann Theodore Dau and Gerhard Friedrich Bente. St. Louis, MO: Concordia Publishing House, 2005.

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[1] When Martin Luther died on February 18, 1546, a scrap of paper was found in his pocket with his

final seven words, a mix of Latin and German. Wir sind alle Bettler. Hoc est verum —“We are

all beggars. This is true.”

[2] 2 Timothy 4:2