Christians around the world mark the end of the week prior to Resurrection Sunday (a better title for it than “Easter”), with special services drawing meditative attention to the conclusion of that week in Jesus’ earthly life. One of the highest, or perhaps we should say the deepest points in those observances is Good Friday. In a now classic “BC” cartoon, one character says,
“I hate the term ‘Good Friday’.” Another asks, “Why?” to which the first responds, “My Lord was hanged on a tree on that day.” This response follows: “If you were going to be hanged on that day, and He volunteered to take your place, how would you feel?” And the obvious answer then comes, “Good.” It concludes, “Have a nice day.”
The doctrine of Jesus’ substitutionary atonement is absolutely foundational for biblical Christian faith. Jesus’ death on the cross was not a sentimental gesture of concern for others that we are to imitate. It was God, in the person of the Son, taking on Himself the guilt of His elect (“He who knew no sin became sin,” 2 Corinthians 5:21) and suffering in their place the wrath of God which they deserved. This concept of substitution is unmistakable throughout the Bible. In the Old Testament, sinners placed their hands on the sacrificial animal, symbolically transferring their sin to that victim which was then killed as their substitute (Leviticus 16). And in Isaiah’s fourth servant song (Isaiah 52:13 – 53:12), the refences to Jesus dying as a substitute (“the LORD has laid on Him the iniquity of us all,” vs. 6) is found at least ten times.
“The Father of English Hymnody,” Isaac Watts (1674 – 1748), has given us, among his more than seven hundred fifty hymns, a fine testimony of the infinitely superior nature of Jesus’ sacrifice. In this 1709 hymn, “Not All the Blood of Beasts,” he follows the theme of the book of Hebrews in showing that Jesus and His blood of the new covenant is vastly superior to the sacrifices of the old covenant. In fact, one preacher has suggested that the central messenger of the book of Hebrews is simply, “Jesus is better than (fill in the blank!).” The author of that epistle shows that Jesus is better than angels, better than Moses, better than the Levitical priesthood, better than the tabernacle, and most of all, better than all the animals sacrificed under that prior dispensation of grace.
There is probably not a single hymnal in the world that does not include numerous lyrics from Isaac Watts. Some of his best-known include “Our God, Our Help in Ages Past,” “Joy to the World,” When I Survey the Wondrous Cross,” “Alas, and Did My Savior Bleed,” and “Jesus Shall Reign.” He was born in Southampton, Hampshire, England, just a bit more than ten years before the births of Johann Sebastian Bach and George Frideric Handel, who were both born in 1685. Watts was brought up in the home of a father who was a committed religious nonconformist tutor who had been incarcerated twice for his views. Young Isaac received a classical education, learning Latin, Greek, and Hebrew.
Watts displayed a propensity for rhyme from an early age. He was once asked why he had his eyes open during prayers, to which he responded:
A little mouse for want of stairs
ran up a rope to say its prayers.
He received corporal punishment for this, to which he cried:
O father, father, pity take
And I will no more verses make.
Though he was offered a generous scholarship by benefactors who saw his youthful brilliance, since he was a nonconformist he could not attend Oxford or Cambridge. These universities were restricted to Anglicans, as were government positions at the time. He was sent to the Dissenting Academy at Stoke Newington in 1690. Much of the remainder of his life centered on that village, which is now part of Inner London. Following his education, Watts was called as pastor of the large independent church in London, Mark Lane Congregational Chapel at the young age of 28, where he succeeded the great Puritan pastor / theologian, John Owen. During his years there, Watts helped train preachers, despite his poor health.
At the same time that he was preaching in that congregation, Watts took work as a private tutor and lived with the nonconformist Hartopp family in Stoke Newington. Through them, he became acquainted with their immediate neighbors Sir Thomas Abney and Lady Mary. He eventually lived for a total of 36 years in the Abney household, most of the time at Abney House, their second residence. On the death of Sir Thomas Abney in 1722, his widow Lady Mary and her unmarried daughter Elizabeth moved all her household to Abney House from Hertfordshire, and she invited Watts to continue with them. He lived there until his death in 1748, at the age of 73. He particularly enjoyed the grounds at Abney Park, which Lady Mary planted with two elm walks leading down to an island in the Hackney Brook, and he often sought inspiration there for the many books and hymns that he wrote. Watts lived at Abney Hall in Stoke Newington until his death in 1748, having struggled with health problems most of his life.
Watts contributed enormously to English hymnody, altering the previous tradition of the English churches by including new poetry for “original songs of Christian experience” to be used in worship. The older tradition was based exclusively on the poetry of the Psalms. The teachings of 16th century Reformation leaders such as John Calvin, who provided metrical versions of the Psalms in the vernacular for congregational singing, followed this historic worship practice. Watts was not the first Protestant to promote the singing of hymns. However, his prolific hymn writing helped usher in a new era of English worship as many other poets followed in his path.
Watts also introduced a new way of rendering the Psalms in verse for church services, proposing that they be adapted for hymns with a specifically Christian perspective. As Watts put it in the title of his 1719 metrical Psalter, the Psalms should be “imitated in the language of the New Testament.” Some have described him as “Christianizing the Psalms.” Thus, Psalm 72 (a coronation song for King Solomon) became “Jesus Shall Reign” under Watts’s pen. Besides writing hymns, Isaac Watts was also a theologian and logician, writing books and essays on these subjects which served for many years as standard textbooks. His “Hymns and Spiritual Songs” was first published in 1707, and launched him on a career that resulted in his hymns finding their way into hymnals of every Protestant denomination.
Watts explained his methods as follows: “Where the Psalmist describes religion by the fear of God, I have often joined faith and love to it. Where he speaks of pardon of sin through the mercies of God, I have added the merits of a Savior. Where he talks of sacrificing goats and bullocks, I rather mention the sacrifice of Christ, the Lamb of God. When he attends the ark with shouting into Zion, I sing of the ascension of my Savior into heaven, or His presence in His church on earth. Where he promises abundance of wealth, honor, and long life, I have changed some of these typical blessings for grace, glory, and life eternal, which are brought to light in the Gospel, and promised in the New Testament.”
It was his regular habit to compose a new hymn or psalm setting for every sermon he preached. As a result, his collected works are a treasure trove of rich Scriptural instruction, incisive theological analysis, cogent topical apologetics, and penetrating Gospel application. His carefully worked-out theology of language (and its implications for grammar, logic, and rhetoric, for worship, discipleship, and pastoral care, for theology, apologetics, and evangelism, for beauty, goodness, and truth) enabled Watts to articulately bemoan the devastating effects of the fall, as in “Joy to the World,” where “sins and sorrow grow” and “thorns infest the ground.” But he also joyously celebrated the fact that Jesus has come. Indeed, “He rules the world with truth and grace;” and not in just a few isolated corners, oh no: “fields and floods, rocks, hills, and plains” all bear testimony to the fact that “He makes His blessings flow as far as the curse is found.”
Watts’s hymn “Not All the Blood of Beasts” is most closely connected with this theme of sacrifice in Hebrews, and is stated there most pointedly in chapter ten, verse four: “For it is impossible for the bloodof bulls and goats to take away sins.” We read in Leviticus 17:11 and in Hebrews 9:22 that the life of the flesh is in the blood and that without the shedding of blood there can be no forgiveness of sin. This is because of the seriousness of sin as an act of “cosmic treason” (as R. C. Sproul often reminder the church). Even a single sin is an act of such enormous magnitude that only the life of the sinner could atone for it. Since we cannot, our hope is found in the one God provided for a substitute, the Lord Jesus, shedding His blood in our place, as Isaiah 53 so eloquently teaches. Only a perfect man could stand in the place of a guilty sinner. The animal sacrifices of the Old Testament pointed ahead to the only one who could qualify to achieve the expiation and propitiation sinners need. There had been an ocean of blood spilled on the altars before Christ, none of which actually atoned for sin. But in His death, “once for all” (Romans 6:10), Jesus perfectly achieved that goal of full payment for all the sins of all the elect of all ages.
Stanza 1 looks back to declare that all of those animals sacrificed for sin, from the blood shed for Adam to make a covering for him in the Garden of Eden, to the lambs and goats and bulls whose blood was shed that very Passover weekend in Jerusalem when Jesus hung on the cross, actually failed to accomplish forgiveness for a single sin. Even all of those sacrifices combined over the millennia could not “give the guilty conscience peace or wash away the stain” of our iniquity.
Not all the blood of beasts on Jewish altars slain
could give the guilty conscience peace or wash away the stain.
Stanza 2 looks at the present to see how Jesus’ “once for all” sacrifice as “the heavenly Lamb” has completely satisfied divine justice and has truly forgiven all our sins, removing them as far as the east is from the west (Psalm 103:12), casting them into the deepest part of the sea (Micah 7:19), to be remembered no more (Jeremiah 31:34), so that we can be declared justified (Romans 5:1) and therefore I can viewed by God “just-as-if-I’d never sinned! There is no “Sacrifice of nobler name and richer blood” than that of Jesus.
But Christ, the heav’nly Lamb, takes all our sins away;
a Sacrifice of nobler name and richer blood than they.
Stanza 3 looks inside our own hearts to embrace Jesus and his saving work. It is still couched in the Old Testament imagery of animal sacrifices where the priest or sinner would place human hands on the animal substitute, symbolically transferring guilt to the animal, which was then slain in place of the sinner(s). Simply looking at that animal was of no benefit. There had to be the actual transfer. And so today, merely looking at Jesus on the cross is of no benefit. There must be saving faith that lays hands “on that dear head.” It is like the night of the Passover. There would be no deliverance unless the blood was actually applied to the entrance of the home. Today, when we reach out to Jesus, we stand “like a penitent” confessing our sin and trusting Him.
My faith would lay her hand on that dear head of Thine,
while like a penitent I stand, and there confess my sin.
Stanza 4 looks back once again to view where this great transaction took place. In doing so, we see not only the cursed tree on which He hung (Deuteronomy 21:23 and Galatians 3:13), but also the enormous burden of sin which He bore. 2 Corinthians 5:21 tells us that “He who knew no sin became sin for us.” He didn’t become a sinner, but in some way beyond our full comprehension He actually “became sin.” It was that, in His human nature, which caused Him such agony in the Garden of Gethsemane and accounted for His cry of dereliction, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” It was because my soul “knows her guilt was there.”
My soul looks back to see the burdens Thou didst bear
when hanging on the cursed tree; and knows her guilt was there.
Stanza 5 looks at the present as we who believe now “rejoice to see the curse remove.” We accept the promise God gives us in 1 John 1:9 that “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” We can even now begin doing what we will do in glory for eternity: “bless the Lamb with cheerful voice and sing His bleeding love.”
Believing, we rejoice to see the curse remove;
we bless the Lamb with cheerful voice and sing His bleeding love.
The tune FESTAL SONG was written in 1872 by William Henry Walter (1825-1893). Born in Newark, New Jersey, Walter taught music in public schools, and was an organist associated with Trinity Church, Manhattan, and its chapels. He composed at least 43 hymn tunes. Among them, FESTAL SONG is still widely sung to a variety of texts, including “Rise Up, O Men of God.”
Here is a link to the hymn as sung in a morning worship service.