Luther wrote this hymn in 1523, and it stands first in the first Lutheran hymnal, the "Achtliederbuch" of 1524, followed at once by Paul Speratus's "Salvation unto Us Has Come" (LSB 555). Its earliest printing called it "A Christian hymn by Doctor Martin Luther, setting forth the indescribable grace of God and the true faith." The ten stanzas tell the whole story of justification in ballad form: the sinner bound by sin and the Law (stanzas 2-3), the Father's eternal mercy and the sending of the Son (stanzas 4-6), and Christ Himself speaking to the sinner, promising to stand in his place and to send the Holy Spirit (stanzas 7-10). The tune is most likely Luther's own, cast in the AAB bar form of the Meistersingers. Behind both text and tune may lie a fifteenth-century Easter processional from Mainz, "Rejoice, O women and men, for Christ is risen." The English comes mostly from Richard Massie (1854), whose translation has appeared in Missouri Synod hymnals since 1889; stanzas 3 and 6 are altered from Catherine Winkworth. LSB appoints it as the Hymn of the Day for Cantate, the Sunday on which the Introit bids the Church "sing to the Lord a new song."
Sung at Our Saviour
2026