Monday, September 19, 2016

No Wiggle Room: The Five Unshakeable Solas NRH 07

Rome to Geneva Bond Tour 2015
NEW REFORMATION HYMN 07 (NRH 07)

Creator God, Our Sovereign Lord (8.8.8.8.8.6.)

I originally collaborated on this hymn with Paul Jones, Music Director, organist, and composer at Tenth Presbyterian, Philadelphia, he providing the excellent musical composition, and I the poetry. It's based on the five "solas" of the Reformation, sola Scriptura, sola fide, sola gratia, solus Christus, soli Deo gloria, with a refrain based on John Calvin's personal seal, "My heart I offer thee, O Lord, promptly and sincerely." We entered it in a Calvin 500 commemorative hymn writing contest based in Geneva... and lost; they said it was too doctrinaire, or something like that, and preferred a hymn written in commemoration of Calvin's 500th birthday (July 10, 1509) to be more conciliatory with modern ideas about God and religion.

Watch for this hymn and others on a forthcoming album composed and arranged by Greg Wilbur.


Creator God, our Sovereign Lord,
The heavens tell, the stars have shown,
Your splendor, might, and Deity,
Yet Truth lies in your Word alone.
                        My heart to you, O God, I give,
                        And by your Word I live.                                               
                       
In Truth your Word reveals my guilt,
My lost, unworthy self makes known,            
But now made new I’m justified
And live and move by Faith alone.
                        My heart to you, O God, I give,
                        And now by Faith I live.

Before you made the world you chose,
In love, to send your only Son
To ransom me and make me one
With Christ, my Lord, by Grace alone.
                        My heart to you, O God, I give,
                        And now by Grace I live.

O Christ, Redeemer, Savior, King,
Subdued by grace, I am your own;
Enthrall my soul and make me free,
Reformed, redeemed by Christ alone.
                         My heart to you, O God, I give,
                         And now in Christ I live.

O glorious God, who reigns on high,
With heart in hand, before your throne,
We hymn your glory ‘round the world   
With psalms adoring you alone.
                          My heart to you, O God, I give
                          And for your glory live.

                                 Douglas Bond, Copyright, October 31, 2007

Brief commentary:
Creator God, our Sovereign Lord, by Douglas Bond, is written in quatrains of iambic Long Meter with a developing refrain arranged in an 8.6 couplet in iambic meter. The five stanzas are organized around the five theological priorities of John Calvin and the Protestant Reformation, expressed in Latin as, Sola Scriptura, Sola Fide, Sola Gratia, Solus Christus, Soli Deo Gloria, and in English as the Bible alone, Faith alone, Grace alone, Christ alone, to God alone the glory. The refrain makes parallel references to these five solas, and also alludes to Calvin’s inscription on his personal seal, Cor meum tibi offero, Domine, prompte et sincere, or in English, “My heart I offer thee, O Lord, promptly and sincerely.”

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