“Oh, to grace how great a debtor daily I’m constrained to be!
Let thy goodness, like a fetter, bind my wandering heart to thee:
Prone to wonder, Lord, I feel it, prone to leave the God I love;
here’s my heart, O take and seal it; seal it for thy courts above.”
Our journey through Come Thou Fount comes to a close with this third and final verse. My hope is that the Church at large will again find great refuge in the rich hymns of old. As we do so, may these hymns forge theological poetry in the song writers of this generation. Let us not settle for cheap platitudes in songs; but rather lyrics of gold that are forged in the fiery furnace of tribulation and rooted in the never-changing Word of God.
Oh, to grace how great debtor daily I’m constrained to be!
The beginning of this third verse, comes off of the tail of the end of verse two where the song writer remembers how Jesus sought him wondering from the fold of God and interposed His precious blood to save him. It is from our conversion – our being rescued by Jesus – that the magnitude of grace gets our knees knocking. The cost of what Jesus has done for us is a price we could never pay. God gives freely the one thing we cannot afford – His blood. When our author writes that he is a debtor to grace, he cannot mean that he has to pay God back for what He has done; that is impossible. God will in fact not take payments. His grace requires that we receive it for free – no payment allowed. The song writer is simply getting at the idea that even if God allowed us to pay Him back, we never could. A lifetime of daily payments would not equal a drop in the Pacific Ocean.
Let thy goodness, like a fetter, bind my wandering heart to thee:
It is grace that saved us, and it is grace that keeps us. The imagery of a fetter is a vivid illustration into the author’s mind. A fetter is a chain that is used to restrain a prisoner, typically placed around the ankles. A fetter is used to keep a prisoner from going anywhere. So our author petitions God to bind His goodness around the feet of his heart to keep him from going anywhere. Our author has a deep understanding of the depravity of the human heart. He understands that without being kept by the grace of God, his heart will wander from it. But for those whom Christ interposed His precious blood, the promise of the gospel is, as another hymn says it, that Christ will hold us fast. Man is never more free than when he is a prisoner of Christ. May Christ bind us up to Himself with no wiggle rim.
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it, prone to leave the God I love;
When I sing this song, it is this lyric that tends to choke me up a bit. Why? Because it is true. Because I feel it. As I feel this proneness to wander, I think to myself, “What a wretched man am I!” How could I, in the face of Christ, wander from Him? I hate my wandering. The song writer pulls at this tension well, saying that he is prone to leave the God that he loves. How could I leave a God that I love? I hate my leaving, because my wretched heart leaves that which I love. This seems to be Paul’s famous predicament in Romans 7. But what a grace, our hymn does not stop here.
here’s my heart, O take and seal it; seal it for thy courts above.
What do we do with our wretched, wandering heart? We give it to Christ. Only He can conquer it’s wickedness. Only He can make it new. Let us put the hand of our hearts in the hand of Christ and have Him walk us into glory. If it’s up to us, we will fumble. It is not up to us. It’s up to Christ. He is the greatest closer of all time. The blood that He spilled to rescue us, is the same blood that seals us for eternity. When Christ seals a man for glory, it is as sure as a raindrop is sure to be wet. We have not the power, ability, or desire to seal ourselves for Christ. Let us give ourselves to the one who has the power, ability, and desire to seal us – Christ.
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