We trust in Christ

We trust in Christ, both God and fully human, 

Who showed to all the coming reign of God:

Who brought good news to those lives poor and broken,

Freedom to captives snared in systems flawed; 

Who taught not only in those words he spoke then, 

But also in the works and deeds he showed.

 

He blessed the children, healed the sick and wounded,

Bound up the hearts broken by cruel fates;

He ate with those unwanted by the masses,

Forgave us all bound fast in sinful states.

He called us all to live in true repentance

And to believe in God who for us waits.

 

Wrongly condemned by lies of cruel hatred,

Jesus was taken, bound, and crucified.

The depths of human pain he fully suffered,

And for the sinfulness of all, he died.

But God did raise him from death's cruel prison!

No more could sin our souls from God divide.

 

The power of sin and evil now is broken;

We are delivered now from death to life. 

The sinless life that Jesus lived among us

Is vindicated, no more caught in strife.

We trust in Christ, both God and fully human,

Who brings us home to God's full reign of life.

 

 

TEXT: Charles Spence Freeman, September 2022, based on PC(USA) Book of Confessions 11.2 from A Brief Statement of Faith.

MUSIC: Tune FINLANDIA, Jean Sibelius, 1898.

 

A second hymn text developed from the PC(USA) A Brief Statement of Faith. It occurs to me that next year should mark the 40th anniversary of the Presbyterian unification that this statement was created to commemorate. Hmm...I feel a sermon-and-hymn series coming on some time next year.