Hymns4Him

“Preeminence” is a powerful word in any context. It is the word used to describe something or someone that is at the very top, the greatest in authority, importance, power, influence, or value.  In Colossians 1:18, Paul said that Jesus is preeminent.  The Greek word he used, proteuo, occurs in no other place in Scripture.  It is a very fitting way to speak of Jesus in His all-encompassing greatness.  The full section in Paul’s epistle is an awesome statement about Jesus’ preeminence.

     ¹⁵ He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. ¹⁶ For by Him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through Him and for Him. ¹⁷ And He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together. ¹⁸ And He is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything He might be preeminent. ¹⁹ For in Him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, ²⁰ and through Him to reconcile to Himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of His cross.

     ²¹ And you, who once were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, ²² He has now reconciled in His body of flesh by His death, in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before Him, ²³ if indeed you continue in the faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel that you heard, which has been proclaimed in all creation under heaven, and of which I, Paul, became a minister.

In this section of chapter 1, Paul was describing to the believers in Colossae that preeminence of Jesus in rather extravagant images.  In some ways, the way Paul presents Jesus sounds like the account of the dazzling glory of Jesus revealed on the Mount of Transfiguration.  That, along with Isaiah 6 and Revelation 1, convicts us that our view of Jesus falls far short of the glory that is inherently His.  In Colossians 1:15-23, we have what many have suggested is an early Christian hymn, a hymn about the preeminence of Christ.

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Paul wrote a letter from his imprisonment in Rome to the church in Philippi.  This is one of the most joy-filled books of the Bible, in which Paul was filled with praise because of His appreciation of what Jesus had accomplished.  Despite his circumstances, Paul wrote, “Rejoice always; again I say, rejoice!”  Professing that he was forgetting what was behind and straining toward what was ahead, acknowledging that he hadn’t reached the goal yet, he was pressing on with all his might.  And what was that goal?  Read his words in chapter 3 again with fresh amazement.

Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith – that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.

To know Christ in this way will be the conscious longing of every heart that has been born again.  These words, and these verses from Philippians 3, have led to an absolutely marvelous hymn, written in 1993 and released in a 1995 recording “Is Anyone Thirsty?”.  The song is known by its title, “Knowing You, Jesus,” as well as by its opening line, “All I Once Held Dear. The composer, Graham Kendrick (b. 1950), has been described as a “father of modern worship music” whose songs are “crammed full of poetic, divine, biblical truth” that have “sculpted a view of God that has impacted generations.” In short, he writes songs that help the church to sing. Since the release of his first album in 1972 Graham has been at the forefront of contemporary Christian music in the UK, having written and recorded over 450 songs, many of which are sung around the world, including “Shine Jesus Shine,” “The Servant King,” “Amazing Love,” and “Knowing You.”

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Humility is one of the great virtues of a Christian’s heart.  As we progress in our sanctification, we not only see more of the greatness of the Lord’s love for us.  We also see more of the weakness of our love for Him.  We see that reflected in the dynamics of Isaiah 6 (which is a great template for a worship service today!).  Isaiah saw the Lord (this was Jesus, according to John 12:41), high and lifted up and seated on a throne, with seraphim crying out, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of His glory!”  And then he reflexively saw himself, and he cried out, “Woe is me! For I am lost (literally in Hebrew ‘disintegrating’), for I am a man of unclean lips.”  And since he was a prophet whose lips proclaimed the word of the Lord, even this, where he was at his best spiritually, was terribly deficient before the Lord.

Surely that duality will be reflected in the souls of growing believers.  Few today would be sold brazen as to claim that they lived at greater spiritual heights than the apostle Paul.  But after years of walking closer and closer to the Lord, Paul confessed that he was the chief of sinners (1 Timothy 1:15), not because he was sinning more then, but that his spiritual vision had improved to the point that he was then able to see more clearly into the depths of his own redeemed fallenness.  Such genuine, honest humility is perhaps truly one of the greatest marks of spiritual maturity.

The first of Martin Luther’s “Ninety Five Theses” was this: “When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said, ‘Repent’ (Matthew 4:17), He willed the entire life of believers to be one of repentance.”   He was right.  “Repentance” is not just one thing to check off the list when we come to saving faith in Jesus.  It is something we must do every day, as the Holy Spirit convicts us further of our sin and our need of a Savior.  It is what Jesus taught us to pray in the Lord’s Prayer: “Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.”  Such is a life of humility before the Lord.

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In Deuteronomy 33:27 we read that “the eternal God is your dwelling place, and underneath are the everlasting arms.”  Everlasting arms!  What wonderful imagery to convey a wonderful concept that gives believers such wonderful consolation in difficult times.  It’s not just that God is there, but that He is supporting us through whatever hardship we may be experiencing. It reminds us of Jesus’ words in John 10 when He assured us that our heavenly Father holds us in His hands, and no one can pluck us out.

We live our lives by depending on Him in every dimension. We trust Jesus not just for salvation. We trust Him for everything.  That dependence is also conveyed in the concept of leaning on the Lord for everything: for strength, for guidance, for peace, for understanding, for direction, for friendship, for comfort, for forgiveness, for insight,  And in those ways we are to “trust in the LORD with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding.  In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make straight your paths” (Proverbs 3:5-6).

We all know what it is to lean on someone.  We lean on friends for companionship, for advice, for reassurance, for support, for acceptance, for empathy, and for counsel.  Whoever it is that we have chosen to trust needs to able and willing to be worthy of the trust we have placed in them.  The Lord has invited us to do so, and has consistently shown Himself to be the most trustworthy being in the universe.  It doesn’t mean that we will always understand His work in the short term, but the end line is set. Romans 8:31-39 assures us that nothing in all creation will be able to separate us from His love.

Is there a hymn about leaning on those “everlasting arms?”  There sure is!  It is the 1894 hymn “Leaning on the Everlasting Arms” by Elisha Albright Hoffman (1839-1929).  Those words come directly from God’s Word in Deuteronomy 33:27. The hymn’s author was born in Orwigsburg, Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania to Francis A. and Rebecca A. Hoffman, who were both of German descent.  His father worked as a minister in the Evangelical Association for over 60 years, which likely influenced Hoffman’s decision to enter the ministry.

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In His “High Priestly Prayer” in John 17, Jesus said to the Father, “To know You is eternal life.”   That tells us as adopted children of God that one of the most important and valuable things for us to do with the eternal life we already possess is to maintain a major on-going effort to learn as much as possible about our Heavenly Father and to do all that we can to cultivate a closer relationship with Him.  God has directed us to “the ordinary means of grace” as the way we can pursue those goals.  Those means of grace are the Word, prayer, and sacraments.  These “ordinary” means are available and sufficient for us.  We do not need any supernatural, miraculous, “extraordinary” resources.

As we grow in our understanding and appreciation of what God is like, certainly one of the most marvelous things we come to know and experience is that God is love, as we read in 1 John 4:8 and 16.  There is virtually no end to the list of Bible verses and events that demonstrate the love of God, including the book of Hosea and the Parable of the Prodigal Son. And there is also a substantial list of books that have been written on the subject, from Bernard of Clairvaux, Jonathan Edwards, and Samuel Rutherford to John MacArthur, Ray Ortlund, R. C. Sproul, and D. A. Carson.  The greatest statement of the love of God is, of course, Calvary’s cross where we see that “God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son” (John 3:16).

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One way to gauge the spiritual health of a congregation (or a denomination … or a person) is to review the themes of sermons heard and digested over a period of time.  This will be the result of what pastors have chosen to preach, what has been taught and published by seminary professors, and what books a person has chosen to read.  For example, consider in your own church what themes have been most common and frequent on Sunday mornings.  Even more telling, what themes have rarely if ever been touched on in a clear way from the pulpit.

In many cases in each of those three dimensions (local church, denomination, and individual) we will discover that there is a decidedly primary horizontal focus (sometimes to the exclusion of anything else!): our relationship with one another, being kind, forgiving, helpful, patient, etc.  There is often a deficiency in the vertical dimension of our lives, our relationship with God, our spiritual health in His eyes, our hunger for Him, even themes of divine warning and judgment.  The God too often proclaimed is not the God of the Bible, but one who is all love and mercy, a God who is never angered by the iniquity that boils up out of sinful hearts.

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The days in which we live, like many times before us, are filled with chaos, conflict, and confusion.  We are tempted to think that things are out of control, but as Christians we know better than that.  We have access to a peace that passes understanding, because we belong to a Savior who passes understanding!  The troubles around us are real and dangerous, from radical political philosophies to immoral behavior to brutal wars.  But we understand that sin has produced all this and more, and that there is both an ultimate solution and an immediate source of comfort, both of which enable us to rejoice in the midst of all this.

That attitude of worship has always been one of the great qualities of a deep faith in the Bible and in the God of the Bible.  He not only has a wonderful plan for His creation and His redeemed children.  He has promised to sustain us as He works all things according to the design of His will (Ephesians 1:11). And so we can continually live before Him with songs of praise in our hearts and on our lips.  The theology that underlies that is that God is sovereign as He sits on His throne, ordaining all that take place in His world. It’s not that we shut our eyes to what we see or ignore the reports that we see on the news.  It’s that we’re secure in the confidence that God is in control and that He has proven that we can trust Him.  As William Cowper wrote in his hymn, “God Moves in a Mysterious Way,” “He plants His footsteps on the sea and rides upon the storm.”

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January 22, 1973 was one of the saddest days in American history. It was on that day that the United States Supreme Court announced their infamous decision about abortion in Roe v. Wade, claiming a constitutional right for women to have the lives of their unborn children put to an end by abortion practitioners.  In the more than 50 years since then, more than 66,000,000 children have been put to death in their mother’s womb in the United States, a staggering number, which is more than ten times larger than the number of souls killed in the Nazi holocaust of World War II in Germany and Poland. Today, the number one cause death in America by far is abortion! Though the Supreme Court reversed the Roe v. Wade decision on June 24, 2022, the practice continues across the nation. Much of that has been at Planned Parenthood facilities (which some have understandably begun to call “abortuaries”), which continue to receive millions of taxpayer dollars to subsidize their work.

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Jesus’ letter to the church in Ephesus in Revelation 2 identified many very commendable things about the church in that city. They were doctrinally discerning, diligent in ministry activities, and persevering in serving the Lord.  But there was one overwhelmingly devastating problem, they had forsaken their first love.  The first and greatest commandments is that we are to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, strength, and mind (Matthew 22:37).  The believers in Ephesus had that love in the beginning.  But by this time that love for Jesus had grown cold.  It’s a powerful lesson to teach us that busyness and orthodoxy are no substitutes for devotion for the lover of our souls.

Two of the Bible’s most prominent themes are God’s love for us and our love for Him.  The cross is the greatest proof of God’s love for us.  And the essence of the Christian life is our love for Him.  The first motivates and thrills us, and the second shapes how we please Him.  As our Bibles are full of passages about both, so also are our hymnals full of compositions about both His love for us and our love for Him.  A quick check of the topics in the table of contents in the front and those in the topical index at the back will not confirm that, but also make an impressive demonstration of that.

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If you’re taking note of major seasons in the church year, don’t forget Epiphany.  Not all denominations observe this sequence of seasons, but most at least observe dates nearest the Christas and Easter seasons.  There is no biblical mandate for this, though in the Old Testament God regulated definite events and times, something that was set aside with the coming of Christ. The earliest reference to a liturgical calendar seems to have been in a sermon by the early church father John Chrysostom in Antioch in December, 386. 

Among the liturgical dates observed today is Epiphany, sometimes called “Three Kings Day,” and celebrated on January 6, twelve days after Christmas Day. On this day, Western Christianity recognizes Christ’s manifestation to the Gentiles. The Gentiles were represented when the Magi visited the child Jesus and showed how God’s gift of the Good News is for everyone.  Eastern Christianity observes Jesus’ baptism on this day. His baptism revealed his identity to mankind. Epiphany celebrates God revealing himself to the world in the East or the West, and especially with the arrival of the Magi affirms that salvation is for the whole world, Gentiles as well as Jews.

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