Blessed assurance – Day 4

I mentioned Fanny Crosby previously when I wrote about the hymn Blessed Assurance. Another one of her hymns that we still sing today is To God Be the Glory. Fanny wrote To God Be the Glory around 1872 and included it in a collection of hymns. Many of the hymns in that collection became quite famous, but this one didn’t catch on – at least, not in America, and not at that time.

Evangelist Ira Stankey, however, thought it deserved a spot in his “Sacred Songs and Solos” and took it with him to England. It was received much better there and included in several hymnals.

It wasn’t until Cliff Barrows used the hymn in a Billy Graham crusade in Nashville, over eighty years after it was written, that it became one the favourites in American hymn books.

To God be the glory is often seen as a hymn of praise, which it most certainly is, but it’s also a hymn of grace. In the second verse, Crosby most clearly sets forth the conditions for entrance through this gate – faith, and faith alone:

“O perfect redemption, the purchase of blood,
To every believer, the promise of God;
The vilest offender who truly believes,
That moment from Jesus a pardon receives.”

Note that redemption is promised to “every believer” (John 3:16) and that regardless of the magnitude of one’s sins, even “the vilest offender” who puts his or her faith in Christ, such as the criminal crucified with Christ (Luke 23:43) or Saul of Tarsus (1 Timothy 1:15), will immediately receive pardon from Jesus.

The rest of the hymn continues to bring this point of grace home, proclaiming that it is God who has done great things, not us. Fanny Crosby was a woman of God who clearly understood the importance of God’s marvellous grace in salvation. Let us indeed rejoice in our salvation provided so freely by Christ Jesus!