Hymn Series – Day 4
In a time and age where hymns and spiritual songs were really only scriptures literally picked up out of the bible and placed onto a melody line, Isaac Watts was a rebel and a songwriting revolutionary.
In fact, he came from a line of rebels – rebels with a cause mind you – and revolutionaries, when it came to things of God and man. His father, Deacon Enoch Watts, a Puritan, who ministered in the Congregational Church, did not always adhere to the established church order and their interpretation of scripture… Consequently, he spent much time in prison and was not home when Isaac was born.
Isaac was a smart kid who developed a gift for rhyming, and along with his rebellious ways, he constantly complained about the current songs and music they would sing. His father, growing weary of the complaint, dared him “Why don’t you give us something better, young man!” He accepted his fathers challenge and set about to modernise Hymns and Psalms – he wanted them to have deep meaning and theological quality and also enjoyable to sing. In 1707, he wrote “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross” based off the scripture in Galatians 6:14 “But God forbid that I should boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.”
His songs ushered the church into a new season of worship and connection with Jesus. Being revolutionary is not all glamour and glory, it's often lonely and challenging. It's actually also destructive unless Christ and others are your focus.
When it's Christ focused, He gives you the grace and strength to express something new without also creating a divide and enemies. Jesus has a way of consuming the revolutionary so that their heart is ruined for anything else but the pure love of Christ. As Watts writes in the last lines of his famous hymn that has been sung for over three centuries “Love so amazing so divine demands my soul, my life, my all…”
