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Jesus, Thy Blood and Righteousness
Isaiah 61:10
GERMANY | Hymn History | Same-Tune Hymns | Bible Passage
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Author: |  |
Nicolaus L. von Zinzendorf, 1700-1760
Trans. By John Wesley, 1703-1791 |
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Musician: | |
William Gardiner's Sacred Melodies, 1815 |
 |  Play MP3 • Click to listen to the music for this hymn.
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Jesus, Thy blood and righteousness
My beauty are, my glorious dress;
'Midst flaming worlds, in these arrayed,
With joy shall I lift up my head.
Bold shall I stand in Thy great day,
For who aught to my charge shall lay?
Fully absolved through these I am,
From sin and fear, from guilt and shame.
Lord, I believe Thy precious blood,
Which, at the mercy seat of God,
Forever doth for sinners plead,
For me, e'en for my soul, was shed.
When from the dust of death I rise
To claim my mansion in the skies,
E'en then shall this be all my plea,
Jesus hath lived, hath died for me!
O let the dead now hear Thy voice!
Now bid Thy ransomed ones rejoice!
Their beauty this, their glorious dress,
Jesus, the Lord our Righteousness.
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HYMN HISTORY:
The family of Count Nicholas Ludvig Von Zinzendorf was one of the wealthiest in all Saxony. So when the young nobleman wound up his law studies in the university of Wittenberg he set out to see the world in luxury.
However, he only got as far as an art gallery in Dusseldorf. There, pondering a painting of Christ with his bowed head and the inscription 'This have I done for thee, and what hast thou done for me"', the young count was smitten with conviction.
He went back to his estate in Berthelsdorf with a heavy heart - and miserable. But God was dealing with him. At twenty-two, on his wedding day, he and his bride put aside their rank of nobility to follow in the simple footsteps of the lowly man of Galilee.
Shortly after this a religious outcast named Christian David wandered into Berthelsdorf. Christian David belonged to a society known as 'The Moravian Brethren'. The Moravians had been founded some three hundred years earlier by John Huss, known in history books as 'The Old Goose of Bohemia.' Zinzendorf took David in and then rounded up all the other brethren he could find so that within ten years, six hundred Moravians were living on his estate. He organised them into missionary groups and sent them off to the far corners of the earth.
To Greenland they went, to Holland and India, to America and the Indies these pioneers of missionary endeavour set forth with holy zeal.
Long before William Carey put down his cobbler's last to take up the Bible and long before John and Charles Wesley had preached a sermon or wrote a hymn, the Moravians had one hundred and sixty-five missions scattered throughout the world.
They faced disease, poverty, loneliness and persecution; but nothing stopped them from carrying on the work of the crucified Christ, whose picture their leader had seen in an art gallery at Dusseldorf.
On December 21st 1741, Zinzendorf himself founded a mission and preached to the Indians in Pennsylvania. As it was only four days to Christmas he named the colony Bethlehem. It's a great steel centre today and the Moravian capital of the United States.
The former Count saw the world - but not in luxury. When he died, back in his native Saxony, aged sixty, there wasn't even enough money to pay for his grave.
Zinzendorf wrote 2,000 hymns during his long life of service for Christ, among them this one penned in 1739 while on board a ship on the way to establish a mission in the West Indies.
Jesus: Thy blood and righteousness,
My beauty are, my glorious dress,
'Midst flaming words, in these arrayed;
With joy shall I lift up my head.
When you think of all that Count Zinzendorf gave up and all he endured for the sake of Christ's kingdom surely you're bound to be persuaded that he meant everything he wrote.
OTHER HYMNS with the SAME TUNE:
• Eternal Spirit! Praise We Bring Isaac Watts, 1674-1748
• Jesus, Where'er Thy People Meet William Cowper, 1731-1800
• Lord Jesus Christ, We Seek Thy Face Alexander Stewart, 1843-1923
• Thou Sweet Beloved Will of God St. 1-2: Gerhard Tersteegen, 1697-1769
BIBLE PASSAGE:
10 ΒΆ I will greatly rejoice in the LORD, my soul shall be joyful in my God; for he hath clothed me with the garments of salvation, he hath covered me with the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decketh himself with ornaments, and as a bride adorneth herself with her jewels.
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