John Ernest Bode was as faithful and sincere as a pastor could be when he wrote the poem that has become popular in Protestant church hymnals around the world--"O Jesus, I Have promised to serve Thee to the end, be Thou forever with me, my Master and my friend."
Pastor Bode wanted to lift the spiritual experience of his church, and through them the moral tone of their town of Castle Camps near Cambridge, England, a worthy goal for any pastor.
In 1866 he has three teenage children, a daughter and two sons, who are to be confirmed Sunday morning in the Church of England. Teen temptations were as alluring then as they are now; thus he wrote, "O let me feel Thee near me; the world is ever near! I see the sights that dazzle, the tempting sounds I hear. My foes are ever near me, around me and within, but Jesus, draw Thou nearer, and shield my soul from sin." If my teen children will only promise from the depths of their hearts that they will be faithful to keep God's commandments, he thought, they will be faithful to Him. Thus this hymn.
Yes, Pastor Bode was faithful to the light as he knew it. But the advancing Protestant Reformation had not as yet discovered the old covenant confusion that lurks in this popular idea of making promises to God to be faithful to Him.
The principle is clear: the value of promises depends on the righteous fidelity of the Promisor: If the Promisor is God, be thankful and rejoice in His promise, for it will never fail; but if the promisor is a fallible sinful mortal, the promises are empty, for Scripture maintains that "all have sinned and come short of the glory of God" (Rom. 3:23).
We only set our clock back when we make these vain promises to God. Abraham experienced his sad foray into the old covenant when he married his second wife Hagar; finally he overcame by believing God's new covenant promises (cf. Gen. 12:2, 3; 15:6).
At Mt. Sinai 430 years later God sought to renew His new covenant promises to Israel, newly released from Egyptian slavery (cf. Ex. 19:5), but they were absorbed in the ideas of Pastor Bode's hymn and made their vain promises to keep God's law (vs. 8). Result: the "bondage" that Paul explains in Galatians 4:24 always follows absorption in the old covenant.
Pastor Bode's hymn is still beautiful and now effective when we sing it in its true wording, "O Jesus, I Have Chosen ..."
From the "Dial Daily Bread" Archive: February 3, 2008.
Copyright © 2011 by Robert J. Wieland.
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