Because of His great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions―It is by grace you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with Him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus.
Ephesians 2:4–6
Words: Philip Doddridge (1702–1751). Published posthumously in Hymns Founded on Various Texts in the Holy Scriptures, by Job Orton (Shropshire, England: Joshua Eddowes & John Cotton, 1755), number 287: Salvation by grace.
Music: Creation Franz J. Haydn, 1798 (🔊 pdf nwc).
Stupendous grace! and can it be
Designed for rebels such as we?
O let our ardent praises rise
High as our hopes beyond the skies!
This flesh, by righteous vengeance slain,
Might ever in the dust remain:
There guilty spirits sent to dwell
Midst all the flames and fiends of hell.
But lo! Incarnate Love descends;
Down to the sepulcher it bends;
Rising, it tears the bars away,
And springs to its own native day.
Then was our sepulcher unbarred,
Then was our path to glory cleared;
Then, if that Savior be our own,
Did we ascend a heav’nly throne.
A moment shall our joy complete,
And fix us in that shining seat,
Bought by the pangs our Lord endured,
And by unchanging truth secured.
O may that love, in strains sublime,
Be sung to the last hour of time!
And let eternity confess,
Through all its rounds, the matchless grace.