The most popular hymn of the current century, according to numerous surveys (including CCLI) asking about people’s favorite hymn, is In Christ Alone. This is destined to become a classic, along with such beloved hymns as Amazing Grace, Our God Our Help in Ages Past, and Blessed Assurance. Written in 2001 by Keith Getty and Stuart Townend, it quickly became a staple of congregational song in English-speaking churches around the world, having become the most frequently sung song in Christian worship. It is estimated that between 40 and 50 million people sing this song each year! It catapulted Keith and his wife, Kristyn, into the fame that has grown since with the many songs, CDs, and concerts from Getty Music, including their annual sold-out Christmas music festival from Carnegie Hall in New York City and their annual global “Sing” music conference that has attracted tens of thousands of participants.
Keith and Kristyn are both from Northern Ireland, and their music has a distinctive Irish folk music character. Keith was born in 1974 and learned to play piano and guitar from a young age. In addition to his Christian songwriting, he has produced or orchestrated more than 200 projects. Kristyn had begun singing in her child as a young teenager. The two married in 2004. The “match-maker” was Kristyn’s uncle, John Lennox, a world-famous professor of the philosophy of mathematics at Oxford and an author and speaker defending biblical truth and especially creationism as an apologist for the faith. Keith and Kristyn now reside in the US in Nashville, TN. They have four daughters.
Most of the songs from the Gettys have words written by either or both Keith and Kristyn. Kristyn has played a major role in many of the lyrics, demonstrating a wonderful gift of literary eloquence with a marvelous grasp of biblical and reformed theology. And she is the lead singer in all of their recordings.
In Christ Alone is one of several hymns in which Keith and Stuart Townend collaborated. Stuart has since become very well-known for his own concerts and compositions, including How Deep the Father’s Love. It is people like the Gettys and Stuart Townend that have been at the forefront of the newest wave of Christian hymn-writing. If it’s possible to identify a primary theme that is most common to all of this new 21st century contribution hymnody, it is grace. And it is grace in a richly doctrinal sense; not just the feeling of joy in our salvation, but the recognition of the sovereignty of that grace given to undeserving sinners that lifts our hearts in praise to His marvelous goodness to us, grace that came at the price of the atoning death of Christ as our substitute to satisfy divine justice and magnify divine love.
In their first published song collection in 2007, Keith wrote this about In Christ Alone.
Of all the hymns we have written, this hymn is the most recognizable wherever Kristyn and I lead worship. Ironically, it is the first hymn Stuart and I ever penned together. I had a strong, very Irish melody that I could imagine a large crowd singing. I wanted it to become a hymn that would declare the whole life of Christ and what it meant. Something that could teach people the foundations of what we believed in Christ, the God who changed all of history and Who wants a relationship with each of us. It is a creed-based song, firing people with hope that here is the God who even death cannot hold. No guilt in life, no fear in death, this is the power of Christ in me. Stuart penned a quite incredible lyric, which the two of us developed for a couple of weeks until it became ‘In Christ Alone.’
In stanza 1, three things stand out. First is the fact that it is in Jesus ALONE that we find what our soul so desperately needs. There is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved (Acts 4:12). We proclaim unapologetically that there is no other way. But second is the fact that Jesus is the all-sufficient way. A mighty collection of characteristics and benefits is piled up … Jesus is our hope, our light, our strength, our song, our cornerstone, our solid ground. And third is the fact that we reap magnificent blessings from Him when we place our trust in Him … we are secure in the fiercest drought and storm, and we are filled with love and peace. Fears are stilled as strivings cease.
In Christ alone my hope is found,
He is my light, my strength, my song.
This Cornerstone, this solid Ground,
Firm through the fiercest drought and storm.
What heights of love, what depths of peace,
When fears are stilled, when strivings cease.
My Comforter, my All in All.
Here in the love of Christ I stand.
In stanza 2, we have two of the most important doctrines of the gospel: the incarnation, as Christ took on flesh to become a human being, a helpless babe; and propitiation, as He suffered not only the rejection of men and the painful agony of the cross, but also the judicial wrath of God. This is the doctrine of the vicarious, substitutionary, sacrificial death of the Lamb of God in our place to satisfy divine justice. It was this that sadly led in 2013 to the hymn being rejected for inclusion in the hymnal of the mainline Presbyterian Church (USA). (*see below).
In Christ alone! – who took on flesh,
Fullness of God in helpless babe.
This gift of love and righteousness,
Scorned by the ones He came to save
Till on that cross as Jesus died,
The wrath of God was satisfied.
For every sin on Him was laid.
Here in the death of Christ I live.
In stanza 3, we celebrate the resurrection as the glorious confirmation of the effectiveness of Jesus’ atoning work. Having suffered the cursed death on the cross, the Father raised Him from the dead. As Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 15, without this, our faith would be in vain, and we would be the most to be pitied of all people. And what magnificent language is employed in the hymn to describe the result. Jesus stands in victory, sin’s curse no longer holds us in its wicked grip, and – oh, how wonderful! – having been purchased with His precious blood, I am His and He is mine.
There in the ground His body lay,
Light of the world by darkness slain:
Then bursting forth in glorious day
Up from the grave He rose again!
And as He stands in victory
Sin’s curse has lost its grip on me,
For I am His and He is mine,
Bought with the precious blood of Christ.
In stanza 4, we look with confidence to a wonderful future, whatever troubles we may face briefly in the years before that final day. Our guilt has been cancelled; we have been acquitted. And on the day of our death, He will welcome us home. Such is the power of the gospel of Jesus Christ. As Psalm 139:16 tells us, all our days have been ordained for us before one of them came to be: Jesus commands (and guarantees!) our destiny. And what a destiny that is! The imagery of our being held securely in His hand comes from John 10:28-29. It is also beautifully expressed in Charitie Lees Bancroft’s wonderful 1863 hymn, “Before the Throne of God Above,” with its line: “A great High Priest whose name is “Love,” whoever lives and pleads for me. My name is graven on His hands, My name is written on His heart. I know that while in Heav’n He stands, no tongue can bid me thence depart.”
No guilt in life, no fear in death,
This is the power of Christ in me.
From life’s first cry to final breath,
Jesus commands my destiny.
No power of hell, no scheme of man,
Can ever pluck me from His hand
Till He returns or calls me home,
Here in the power of Christ I’ll stand.
Here’s a live performance of “In Christ Alone.”
*The second stanza of the hymn contains the line, “Till on that cross as Jesus died, the wrath of God was satisfied.” That was the cause of controversy in 2013 when the hymnal revision committee of the mainline Presbyterian Church (USA) voted to reject the song for inclusion in their new hymnal, Glory to God. They had sought permission to alter the line to read “Till on that cross as Jesus died, the love of God was magnified.” As copyright owners of the hymn, Townsend and Getty wisely refused to allow that drastic change. It’s true that God’s love was magnified at the cross. But most believe that the reason for the requested change was a denial of the wrath of God being satisfied there.
This involves the view that the atonement was a satisfaction of divine justice as Jesus offered Himself vicariously as the substitute for the penalty that the elect deserve. Not only was that the penalty of death (it was clear in the Garden of Eden that the soul that sins shall surely die, and in the affirmation that without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sin). It was also the penalty of the wrath of God poured out on the guilty, and here on Christ in our place (as in the substitution of the ram as Abraham was about to sacrifice Isaac), and in the entire sacrificial system of the Old Testament – especially on Yom Kippur – as priests offered animals as substitutes for the people.
Most pointedly, those who objected to this historic view of the atonement rejected the idea that the Father’s wrath was directed toward Christ. But this is exactly what we deserved …the wrath of God … and which Christ suffered in our place. It was the wrath of God that caused Jesus to plead in the Garden of Gethsemane that the cup might pass from Him. He knew the Old Testament well, and knew from Isaiah 51:22 that was the wrath of God that He would have to drink in order to save His people. More than that, this is why He cried from the cross of being forsaken by the Father.
And going one step further, this is at the heart of the prophecy in Deuteronomy 21:23 (and repeated in Galatians 3:13), “cursed is everyone who dies on a tree.” When Jesus died on Calvary’s tree, He was cursed by the Father, receiving the curse we deserved. Jesus did not shrink from the pain of the cross: the nails and crown and spear. He shrank from the curse of the cross, the judicial wrath of the Father. Those who have suggested that Jesus “deflected” the wrath of the Father fall short of the biblical truth. Jesus didn’t “deflect” the wrath of the Father; He “absorbed” it! As Sinclair Ferguson and Derek Thomas have pointed out, in going there as our substitute, Jesus endured the opposite of the Aaronic blessing. We hear God saying to us when we stand before Him in our justified status, “The LORD bless you and keep you,” only because Jesus first heard God say to Him in the moment of His bearing our sin, “The LORD curse you and damn you.”
Finally, Isaiah 53:10 leaves no doubt when the prophet wrote under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit that the Father was pleased to crush Him and cause Him to suffer, as He who knew no sin became sin for us (2 Corinthians 5:21). That pleasure of the Father in causing Jesus to suffer was not with a vindictive spirit against His only begotten Son, but rather because of His great love for us, His adopted sons and daughters (John 3:16).