Luther made this Communion hymn in 1524 from the Latin "Jesus Christus, nostra salus," which he believed was written by the Bohemian reformer Jan Hus (ca. 1369-1415). He headed it "Das lied S. Johannes Hus gebessert" ("the hymn of St. John Hus, improved"), and the improvement was substantial. Hus's Latin speaks only of the bread and offers the usual medieval homage to the mystery of the Sacrament. Luther confesses both the body and the blood of Christ, teaches that faith in Christ's words is the right preparation for receiving it, and says that a sanctified life should follow. He wrote it while preaching on the Lord's Supper during Lent and Holy Week of 1524, a year after his treatise The Adoration of the Sacrament, in which he concluded that the Bohemians confessed the real presence. In his German Mass (1526), Luther named it one of the hymns to be sung during the distribution, and German hymnals kept it as a standard Communion hymn from then on. The LSB tune was first printed at Wittenberg in 1533 as "another melody," and part of it appears to come from a fifteenth-century song on the Easter antiphon Regina caeli. The English is a composite of The Lutheran Hymnal (1941), F. Samuel Janzow (1980), and the LSB editors.
Sung at Our Saviour
2026