How sweet and awesome is the place
with Christ within the doors,
while everlasting love displays
the choicest of her stores.
“Why was I made to hear your voice,
and enter while there’s room,
when thousands make a wretched choice,
and rather starve than come?”
Pity the nations, O our God,
constrain the earth to come;
send your victorious Word abroad,
and bring the strangers home.
While all our hearts and all our songs
join to admire the feast,
each of us cries, with thankful tongue,
“Lord, why was I a guest?
‘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.
We long to see your churches full,
that all the chosen race
may, with one voice and heart and soul,
sing your redeeming grace.
Do you love the Church? Is the fellowship of believers a greatly cherished reality in your life? Immediately, some of you will nod your heads enthusiastically in agreement, and some of you will feel a bit sheepish and more than a little guilty that you don’t seem to possess the love for God’s people that you think every other good Christian does. And then there’s the last group, who read those two questions with a snort of sarcastic laughter and thought, Okay lady, just stop with your sanctimonious guilt trip. Churches are full of difficult people and trainwrecks of relationships. No, I don’t love the church! I do my best to endure it. I’ve been burned one too many times; they’re all a bunch of hypocrites.
Sound familiar? Guess what? The church is full of people who say they believe one thing and occasionally do the opposite. It’s called being human. Medical centers are full of sick people, gyms give out memberships to overweight patrons, and financial counselors have dockets of clients in dire financial straits. The church is full of sinners in varying stages of sanctification with baggage of all kinds, mental instabilities, taxing personalities, and honestly some of the most socially daft and awkward people I’ve ever met. It’s ok, you can laugh; sometimes laughing is all you can do.
So how do you cultivate love for the dysfunctional family that is God’s people? It doesn’t happen overnight, or over a few months, but slowly, painstakingly, laboriously; over years and years of serving, forgiving, pulling your hair out, grieving and rejoicing, through periods of peace and strife, hilarity and misery, love for the brethren will begin to grow. God commands us not to forsake the fellowship of believers, and not because they are this amazing group of people, but because the fellowship of believers serves, worships, and seeks to glorify the same amazing God. We are to love our brethren because the Father loves them, Christ died for them, and the Holy Spirit resides within them. We were not created to worship alone, but with other saints. God designed us to need each other, and so he commands us to love each other. I hope this hymn will help you and your family to love the church and cherish her as much as it has helped me.
Isaac Watts (1674–1748) penned the text to this lovely hymn, although his initial title read: “How Sweet and Aweful is the Place.” Aweful, meaning full of awe, was eventually modernized to “Awesome,” and although part of me actually prefers the old text, modern singers might raise an eyebrow or two at the original vocabulary. Because of the meter, this hymn can be sung to a number of different tunes, but my personal favorite, and the one I believe best suits its text, is an old Irish melody by the name of “St. Columba.” Folk melodies are usually very simple to learn, a delight to sing, and thus are easily impressed upon the memory. Our hymnbooks use a rather recent (1990) arrangement of “St. Columba” as a setting for this hymn; it is a wonderful example of how modern music can be written and skillfully arranged in such a timeless fashion as to helpfully accommodate the needs of congregational singing.
“How sweet and awesome is the place with Christ within the doors.” This could be a church, a Christian home, a family of believers: anywhere that the body of Christ resides. We all know those believers, who, upon leaving their company, we are spiritually refreshed and greatly edified; they are like a breath of fresh air to our sometimes-stale faith. These words are reminding us of the splendor of communion with Christ, whether that takes place during corporate worship or among the fellowship of the saints. “That is the beauty of Christian fellowship, not the communication of their gifts, but the virtue of the Christ on their spirits. If there is anything alluring in this world, it is the virtue of Christ seen in his people.”
“While everlasting love displays the choicest of her stores.” It is so important for us as the Lord’s children to recognize what a wonderful, benevolent Father we have. We have been given so much and our response is often to ignore the bounty of our eternal riches and to instead fixate on the few trinkets that we don’t possess. The phrase, “the choices of her stores,” asks us to envision a vast market square or an enormous banquet hall, with table upon table of the finest, choicest offerings. The Lord’s love for his children is lavish! I love this observation from Derek Thomas: “It is a prevailing tendency of the devil to make us think that God’s love is…miserly, stingy, that God loves reluctantly, and that when He loves His arm is twisted behind His back and that love is given not in its fullest extent.” Far from it dear Christian! It is an opulent, costly, elaborate, and marvelously splendid love.
We are overwhelmed by this feast; we are dumbfounded by its plenty. Our hearts are filled to bursting, and burst forth we do in thankful song. But as we marvel at our great fortune, there is a gut-wrenching question which begs asking: “Lord, why was I a guest? Why was I made to hear your voice and enter while there’s room, while thousands make a wretched choice and rather starve than come?” I can never make it all the way through those words without losing my voice, ending in a grateful, choked-up whisper. This is the basic doctrine of election right here, but presented in such a way as to deeply affect the hardest of hearts. Even the smallest of children will understand the tragedy of choosing to starve instead of partaking of the choicest, freely-offered sweets imaginable.
“‘Twas the same love that spread the feast that sweetly drew us in.” Not only did God in his love lay out such lavish delicacies for us, but he also had to invite us, make us willing to come eat, “else we had still refused to taste and perished in our sin.” In the famous words of Jonathan Edwards, “You contribute nothing to your salvation except the sin that made it necessary.”
But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ…For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of
works, so that no one may boast. (Eph. 1:4–5, 8–9)
“Pity the nations, O our God, constrain the earth to come; send your victorious word abroad and bring the strangers home.” Our response to the abundancy of riches God has lavished on us should be the kind of thankfulness that longs for God to be gracious to countless others. May God raise up many faithful ministers of the Gospel, may many churches be planted, and may every tribe, tongue, and nation be compelled to come. O Father, bring the strangers home so that we may rejoice alongside the angels in heaven.
“We long to see your churches full that all the chosen race may, with one voice and heart and soul, sing your redeeming grace.” There’s something magnificent, other-worldly almost, about singing this last verse, acapella, with a full-to-bursting congregation. Our church tends to get louder the longer they sing, so that by the end of this hymn we are nearly shaking the rafters of our building. It is spectacular! We are afforded a tiny glimpse into what awaits us in eternity; singing with the great multitude of saints, our cups overflowing, without tiring and never ceasing. This is why I love the church—not because its people are perfect, or because all my felt needs are met, or because I’ve never been deeply wounded by the sheep —but because these are the children my Father loves, ransoms, redeems, and in his wise and glorious providence, are the saints he has chosen for me to spend the rest of eternity alongside.
Do not persist in your resentment of the church, in haughty cynicism and fermented bitterness, belligerently clinging to your every grievance against her. Remember that Christ died for the church; what have you done? Have you been even a fraction as forgiving towards your brethren as Jesus has been with you? “For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.” (Col 3:1–3) And so is theirs. Loving the church is not an emotional command. God is not saying that the entire congregation should be best friends, that you should have endless feelings of fluffy bunnies and unicorns towards her people, or even that you have to like everyone all the time. Love is an action, not a feeling.
Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.
(1 Cor. 13:4–8)
God’s love is a gift that has been unduly lavished upon us. Let us therefore be imitators of Christ and strive to cherish all those whom he cherished, and for whom he died.
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