Grace for the weak.

The scandal of grace in the hymns of Joseph Hart.

Photo by Birmingham Museums Trust on Unsplash

Joseph Hart’s most enduring hymn is “Come Ye Sinners, Poor and Needy,” which could very well serve as an anthem for the gospel of Christ that welcomes the weakest and poorest of sinners to fall into the arms of the Savior who lived, died, and rose again for them. Jesus’s infinite compassion and mercy are expressed in the tenderest of terms, as Hart draws one’s attention to the one who invites all to come to him, with the assurance that all who come to him will never be cast out (John 6:37). “Come Ye Sinners” is, in many ways, reflective of Hart’s milieu, in which he articulated his deeply theological and Christological convictions. Hart’s hymns are poignant and profound precisely because they were composed from a place of desperation. In other words, Hart himself was the sinner in whose ears rang the invitation, “Come, ye sinner, poor and needy.”

Born into a pious family, Hart’s adolescence was marked by religious unrest and spiritual discontent. Despite being exposed to devoutly Calvinist doctrines and teachings, Hart grew skeptical of such religious rigors and became infatuated with the supposed “enlightened” philosophies of his day. The humanism and rationalism that colored that era became his go-to ideologies as he strove to circumvent the broadly evangelical dogma of his upbringing. These divergent pursuits brought Hart to a watershed moment in the late 1750s, during which he encountered the gospel of grace as if for the first time. He became keenly aware of his need for a Savior whose saving capacity could rescue a sinner the likes of him.

Hart’s spiritual renewal emerged out of a revived cognizance of his own inability to merit any semblance of right standing with God Almighty. No amount of religious rigor, spiritual discipline, or pious effort could do it. Any attempt to make himself righteous, whether through the auspices of the church, academia, or elsewhere, was deficient and a paltry source for what his soul craved most — namely, the assurance of remission of sins. This, of course, is a concomitant effect of the preaching of God’s law and God’s gospel. As hearers become acquainted with just how deep their sins go through the exposition of the law, they have the good news of relief announced to them through the gospel. Those who belong to the church, therefore, are those who understand their need for grace.

This became indicative of the faith of Joseph Hart, whose “gospel awakening” issued out of the troubled waters of sin and skepticism. Christ’s cross became his glory and hope; “all things else [were] dung and dross.” Those words come from another of Hart’s hymns that is nonetheless “evangelical” in tenor and tone. Aptly titled “Christ the Believer’s All,” Hart expresses what serves as the bedrock of his (and our) faith — namely, the merits and accomplishments of Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God who became incarnate to take away the sins of the world (John 1:29). Here are Hart’s words:

Lamb of God, we fall before thee;
Humbly trusting in thy Cross.
That alone be all our Glory;
All Things else are Dung and Dross.
Thee we own a perfect Saviour;
Only Source of all that’s good.
Ev’ry Grace and ev’ry Favour
Come to us thro’ Jesu’s Blood.

Jesus gives us true Repentance
By his Spirit sent from Heav’n.
Jesus whispers this sweet Sentence,
“Son, thy Sins are all forgiv’n.”
Faith he gives us to believe it:
Grateful Hearts his Love to prize.
Want we Wisdom? He must give it;
Hearing Ears, and seeing Eyes.

Jesus gives us pure Affections;
Wills to do what he requires;
Makes us follow his Directions;
And what he commands, inspires.
All our Pray’rs, and all our Praises
Rightly offer’d in his Name,
He that dictates them, is Jesus:
He that answers, is the same.

When we live on Jesu’s Merit,
Then we worship God aright:
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,
Then we savingly unite.
Hear the whole Conclusion of it.
Great or good, whate’er we call,
God, or King, or Priest, or Prophet,
Jesus Christ is All in All.
(22–23)

Notwithstanding one’s past or position, we who live by faith “live on Jesu’s Merit.” Sinners have no other hope or qualification other than that which is found in the wounds of Christ alone. The battered and torn frame of the crucified one imbues the desperate and destitute with faith, love, and wisdom, all of which stream from the Lord’s severed side. In the person and work of God’s Son, therefore, the words of God’s good news are heard (and seen) — words that bring us to “true repentance” and give us the faith to believe that he redeems, and he alone. All that we have and all that we are, we owe to him, corresponding to what the apostle Paul says in his letter to the Colossians, “Christ is all, and in all” (Col. 3:11).

In many ways, the hymns of Joseph Hart are an echo of his own life, which itself reflects the scandal of the grace of Christ that welcomes the worst and least deserving to find absolution freely given. He found his song in the great reversal of the Word of Grace, which makes the unworthy holy and gives life to the dead. To sing Hart’s hymns is to revel in the absurdity of God’s economy, where failures are forgiven, where the unqualified are loved, and where Christ’s cross unendingly reverberates with the notes of good news: “It is finished.” May we, like Hart, be given to live on nothing more or less than Jesu’s merit.

Grace and peace to you.

Works cited:

Joseph Hart, Hymns, &c. Composed on Various Subjects (London: H. Trapp, 1777).