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What Love Is This

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Description

While at Together for the Gospel 2006, Bob Kauflin led us in singing "How Sweet and Aweful is the Place." I had neither read this beautiful text by Isaac Watts nor sung the Irish melody it was set to, ST COLUMBA. Nevertheless, both of them remained stuck in my mind for the days that followed.

I found the hymn on The Cyber Hymnal and began to read and sing it often. The middle three stanzas struck me:

While all our hearts and all our songs
Join to admire the feast,
Each of us cry, with thankful tongues,
Lord, why was I a guest?

“Why was I made to hear Thy voice,
And enter while there’s room,
When thousands make a wretched choice,
And rather starve than come?”

’Twas the same love that spread the feast
That sweetly drew us in;
Else we had still refused to taste,
And perished in our sin.

This led to extended meditation on the sovereign love of God that pursued me, called me, drew me, all while I was yet a spiritually dead sinner that hated God. This theme (and this tune) filled my mind one afternoon and forced me to sit down and pen a text on the theme of God's love to this tune.

David helped me polish the last verse of the text. I pray this blesses your hearts and helps the church to celebrate the redeeming love of God in Christ.

Lyrics

What love is this? What love is this
That from eternity,
Before I had done right or wrong,
Had made its choice of me?

What love is this that chooses me–
A corpse, long dead in sin–
To be revived by sovereign grace
To live and reign with him?

What love is this that moved my Lord
To die on my behalf,
To take on flesh, to taste of death
For me, a child of wrath?

What love is this that has supplied
All that the Law demands,
That shows the riches of his grace
To one with empty hands?

What love is this that ends my boast
And turns my gains to loss?
Were it not for his gift of faith,
I too would hate the cross.

What love is this that frees my will
From bondage to my sin
So that his very choice of me
Decrees my choice of him?

What love is this that gives me sight
To find the narrow gate,
While countless more in blindness pass
Unto a dreadful fate?

What love is this that takes the whore
Who pierced his hands and side
And washing her with water pure
Makes her his spotless bride?

What love is this that sets a feast
Of costly bread and wine,
Then bids the poorest of the earth
To at his table dine?

What love is this? The love of God
Displayed at Calvary.
O, cause my heart to love you, Lord,
As you have first loved me.

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