Francis Schaeffer used to warn us about using “God words” too casually, hardly thinking about them at all as they rolled off our lips, words that we assume we and our hearers understand, when we actually have only a very simplistic and shallow comprehension of them. He had in mind such words as “faith,” “saved,” “holy,” and even “grace.” We see that failure to comprehend, or even think seriously, about grace in the popularity of singing “Amazing Grace, How Sweet the Sound,” with no thought at all about what the grace means.
We certainly ought to give more than passing thought to a word as central and beautiful to our faith as “grace.” How many hymns do we know in which grace is the dominant theme? Obviously we think of John Newton’s autobiographical hymn from his time at the church in Olney, “Amazing Grace.” Check your hymnal’s section on grace, and you will find a number of others which we ought to know. “Grace! ‘Tis a Charming Sound,” “Marvelous Grace of Our Loving Lord,” and “Wonderful Grace of Jesus.” And there will also be hymns where grace is the theme, even if it is not in the opening line. “And Can It Be,” “Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing,” “What Tho’ I Cannot Break My Chain,” “I Am Not Skilled to Understand,” “Not What My Hands Have Done,” “A Debtor to Mercy Alone,” “I Was a Wandering Sheep,” and “I Sought the Lord, and Afterward I Knew.”
For many people, their understanding of grace falls far short of the full concept in Scripture. I sense that for too many, God’s grace simply means that God is nice. But oh, how woefully inadequate is that. Many have learned the Sunday School acrostic: “God’s Riches At Christ’s Expense.” But even that fails to grasp what grace is, and what makes grace so amazing. Most simply, grace is God’s not just giving us something we don’t deserve (which is forgiveness and eternal life), but His giving us the opposite of what we actually deserve (which is eternal damnation in the just horrors of hell). And He does this, not because of anything in us, but only because of His sovereign good pleasure, as Paul wrote in Ephesians 1.
And so we come to this study today of the hymn, “By Grace I’m Saved, Grace Free and Boundless.” It was written in 1742 by Christian Ludwig Scheidt (1709-1761), not to be confused with Samuel Scheidt, the German composer and organist of the early baroque era, 1587-1654. Christian Scheidt wrote this hymn just a few years after he had graduated from Gottingen. The son of a mayor, he was privileged to receive an excellent education, eventually studying at universities in Altorf and Strasbourg, both in France. After graduating, he taught for two years and then returned for more study, first in theology at the University of Halle and philosophy at the University of Gottingen, both in Germany. With a doctorate from Gottingen, he spent the rest of his life in academic work, serving as a professor and later as a librarian and archivist.
The hymn shows us the heart of a man who deeply appreciated and trusted in the God who had saved him by sovereign grace. His faith was severely tried in the decades after his schooling. He and his wife had eight children, but every one of them died at a young age! And on top of that, soon after the death of their eighth child Scheidt discovered that his wife was having an affair with his personal assistant. After three years of attempting to reconcile, they divorced. He remarried, but died three years later in Hanover after a lengthy and severe illness.
He wrote this hymn as an exposition of Ephesians 2:8-9, “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.” Our English translation comes from Matthias Loy (1828-1915). He was the fourth of seven children of immigrants from Germany who lived as tenant farmers in the Blue Mountain area of Cumberland County, Pennsylvania. When he was six years old, the family moved to Hogestown, a village nine miles west of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. At the age of fourteen, he was sent as an apprentice to printers in Harrisburg, where he worked for six years while attending school. He received a classical education at Harrisburg Academy and graduated from Trinity Lutheran Seminary in Columbus, Ohio in 1849.
That was the year he entered the Lutheran ministry and became a pastor at Delaware, Ohio. In 1865 he resigned that pastorate to become a professor in the Theological Seminary of Capital University in Columbus, Ohio. In 1881 he was elected president of that university. After a critical attack of angina, he retired as professor emeritus in 1902. He edited the “Lutheran Standard,” official periodical of the Evangelical Lutheran Joint Synod of Ohio, from 1864 until 1890. In 1881, he founded the “Columbus Theological Magazine” and managed it for ten years. He served as President of the Ohio Synod from 1860 to 1878 and again from 1880 to 1894. In 1887, Muhlenberg College awarded him the degree of Doctor of Divinity. He wrote twenty-one hymns and also translated a number of German hymns into the English language. He also edited a translation of Martin Luther’s three volume “House Postil,” sermons for the church year. He died in Columbus in 1915, the same year as the death of “The Queen of Gospel Hymnody,” the blind American hymn writer Fanny Crosby.
Scheidt’s original composition had ten stanzas. We use an abbreviated version in the translation in most hymnals today. Those unfamiliar with the hymn text will also probably be unfamiliar with the traditional tune. The meter also works for the tune NEUMARK, which is much more commonly known today. It was written in 1657 by George Neumark, and is used for the chorale, “If Thou But Suffer God to Guide Thee.”
While grace is the theme, it is laid out magnificently in the lyrics as the grace that saves us as we are justified by faith alone in Christ alone. This grace that saves has nothing at all to do with our merit or achievements. It is solely because of His grace in Christ that we have been saved. That truth will shine forth brilliantly in stanza after stanza.
Stanza 1 announces that central theme of salvation by a grace that is “free and boundless.” And it is written with the pietistic spirit that applies it to the heart. We need to “believe and doubt it not,” since God’s Scripture promises contain no falsehood, and “must true remain.” That means I need not live in fear and uncertainty about my salvation. There can be no doubt that this divine grace guarantees that I “too shall heav’n obtain.” Satan will try in many ways to lead us into doubt that will unsettle our soul, but we need to come back to God’s own Word for stability.
By grace I’m saved, grace free and boundless; my soul, believe and doubt it not.
Why stagger at this word of promise? Has Scripture ever falsehood taught?
No; then this word must true remain: by grace you too shall heav’n obtain.
Stanza 2 makes it clear that this grace flows out of the “good pleasure” of God, as Paul wrote in Ephesians 1:5. The self-focused human heart will repeatedly try to base our salvation in part on something we have done, even if it’s just the act of exercising faith. But according to Ephesians 2:8-9, even that faith is not our own, but the free gift of God, lest we should boast in our own merit, for “our works and conduct have no worth.” Isaiah 64:6 tells us that our deeds of righteousness are “filthy rags” when it comes to having any value. It is because of Christ Jesus alone that we have received this saving grace. “His death did for our sins atone and we are saved by grace alone.”
By grace! None dare lay claim to merit; our works and conduct have no worth.
God in his love sent our Redeemer, Christ Jesus, to this sinful earth;
His death did for our sins atone, and we are saved by grace alone.
Stanza 3 shines the spotlight on “God’s Son, our only Savior.” It was not “because of your own merit that Jesus died your soul to win.” How wonderful that all of the praise is given to Jesus and Jesus alone. Yes, He died for us because He, and the Father, loved us. But that love was not because of anything lovely in us, for there was nothing of that sort. This reveals again for us that one of the most amazing things about God that He has revealed in His Word is that He is a God of grace, that He has always been and always will be so kindly disposed toward us. How truly amazing!
By grace God’s Son, our only Savior, came down to earth to bear our sin.
Was it because of your own merit that Jesus died your soul to win?
No, it was grace, and grace alone, that brought Him from His heav’nly throne.
Stanza 4 turns our attention inward to see how “Satan plagues your troubled conscience.” Our consciences do indeed accuse us as we remember in how many ways we have lived carelessly in sin, ignoring God’s commands and His calls to holiness. Those memories cause us embarrassment before the Lord sometimes as we meditate and pray. The cure is to return to “this word of promise,” that this is a pardoning God. When we remember His holiness and our sinfulness, it defies human reason that such grace could be given to us. And yet the message of the gospel is that God atones for that sin through the blood of Christ, and so treats us by grace as if we had never sinned, which is the doctrine of justification.
By grace! O mark this word of promise when you are by your sins oppressed,
when Satan plagues your troubled conscience, and when your heart is seeking rest.
What reason cannot comprehend God by His grace to you will send.
Stanza 5 once again considers how weak our hearts are when the realization of our many sins and “tribulation’s furnace” tries our souls. In the face of these attacks, we do indeed find that our hearts are timid and that we tremble. But in spite of that, “the Father’s heart is open wide” to forgive us time after time and to continue to claim us as His own, loved as much as He loves His only begotten Son, according to John 17:23. The language of the lyrics (and other hymns, too!) suggests that if we were at sea in the midst of a raging storm, we would desperately need an anchor that would keep us from being swept away. And so we sing, “Where could I help and strength secure, if grace were not my anchor sure?”
By grace to timid hearts that tremble, in tribulation’s furnace tried,
by grace, in spite of fear and trouble, the Father’s heart is open wide.
Where could I help and strength secure, if grace were not my anchor sure?
Stanza 6 looks into the future to the time that will come to all us “when dying.” On what will we rest our hope on that day, knowing “my heart’s condition” with all the sin and guilt of a lifetime? What hope can we possibly have of surviving that day of judgment? Only if God’s grace has overcome our sin through the payment of His Son’s shed blood applied to our hearts through faith. If that is true, then I am assured that though “I know my heart’s condition,” “I also know my Savior’s voice,” for I am His sheep and know the voice of the one who knows me (John 10). The result is that even now, before that day comes, “my heart is glad, grief has flown.” And the only possible and all-sufficient reason is that “I am saved by grace alone.”
By grace! On this I’ll rest when dying; in Jesus’ promise I rejoice;
for though I know my heart’s condition, I also know my Savior’s voice.
My heart is glad, all grief has flown, since I am saved by grace alone.
Stanza 7 brings us to the final celebration of this great truth. Our security is based not on anything in ourselves, but only on God’s Word, trustworthy and true because it has been “penned by inspiration,” that word from 2 Timothy 3:16 that literally means breathed out by God. Jesus assured us in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5 that not even the smallest letter or part of a letter will pass away as long as heaven and earth endure. “Our whole faith” must rest upon this “grace alone, grace in His Son.” As marvelous as is John Newton’s hymn, “Amazing Grace, How Sweet the Sound,” does not this hymn by Scheidt surpass that in beauty, in eloquence, and even in amazement? For here in this hymn we have a much more complete explanation of what grace is, and how it is rooted solely in Christ’s person and work. Almost as amazing as is grace is our amazement that Newton’s beloved hymn never mentions the name of Jesus or His atoning work!
By grace! This ground of faith is certain; so long as God is true, it stands.
What saints have penned by inspiration, what in his Word our God commands,
what our whole faith must rest upon, is grace alone, grace in His Son.
There have been several hymn tunes associated with these lyrics. One of the most common is the tune for “O That I Had a Thousand Voices,” O DASS ICH TAUSEND (sometimes also named MENTZER). It was written in 1704 by Johann Mentzer (1658-1734), whose life spanned roughly the same period as Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750). Born at Rahmen, near Rothenburg in Silesia, he studied theology at Wittenberg. In 1691 he was appointed pastor at Merzdorf, in 1693 at Hauswalde, and in 1696 at Kemnitz in Saxony, where he died. He was a friend of the Lutheran pietist, Nicholas von Zinzendorf, a neighbor of his. He was a prolific hymn writer, with 30 of his compositions appearing in various hymnbooks of his time. Many of them are characterized by ardent love for Christ, typical in pietism. The only one in English common use today is this one. It was written in 1704 after the home in which he was temporarily living burned down.
Here is a triumphant singing of the text, though with a different tune.