Thanks be to God that you, once bound in sin

Thanks be to God that you, once bound to sin,

Are now obedient from the heart within

To what you learned when God's free grace broke in.

Alleluia! 

 

No more let sin have power in your life!

No more may sin's rule be so strong and rife.

Be no more bound by sin and storm and strife.

Alleluia! 

 

Present yourself to God as one set free

From death to life with gladness and with glee!

Show forth God's grace for all the world to see.

Alleluia! 

 

No more is death the price that you must pay; 

God's gift of grace, both now and every day,

Is life eternal following Christ's own way.

Alleluia! 

 

Praise be to God, the Giver of this grace;

Praise be to Christ, who sin's power did erase; 

Praise be to Spirit, with us in every place.

Amen!

 

 

TEXT: Charles Spence Freeman, June 2023, loosely after Romans 6:12-23

MUSIC: Tune ENGELBERG, Charles Villiers Stanford, 1904; alt.

The Romans series apparently continues. Some rearranging seemed necessary to start the hymn with something other than the negative commands found in verse 2 (roughly vv. 12-14 in the Romans reading); the exaltation of v. 17 provided a more joyous starting place for the hymn text. The text originally started forming to SINE NOMINE, but I frankly have enough texts to that tune for now, and this is a tune I've wanted to set for some time. It may have provided a cleaner and more fit setting for this text in the end as well.