By Jack Wyman

He was born premature.

His mother wrapped him in warm wool blankets. It was shortly before Christmas.

The infant neither cried nor opened his eyes until his original due date arrived when, as if on cue, he suddenly did both.

Raised in a loving and godly home, he was still not impervious to the temptations of youth. Attending Westminster School and then Oxford, he later confessed, “My first year at college I lost in diversions.”

He began to take a keen interest in spiritual matters. After graduation, he and his older brother volunteered as missionaries to Georgia, a new colony in America established to help those who had been in debtors’ prisons in England.

The young man was a disaster as a missionary. He was arrogant and autocratic. He believed babies had to be baptized by immersion—three times in a row. This did not sit well with parents. One angry woman fired a gun at him.

Discouraged, depressed and sick, the young man eventually headed back across the Atlantic to home. He was followed by his despondent brother soon after. They had both been fervent and righteous, but still they were seeking and not finding. Genuine faith seemed a mirage.

The brothers began attending worship services led by a Moravian Christian named Peter Boehler. They listened, thought, prayed, and considered.

God was at work. Moving in his mysterious ways and infinite grace, he would now apprehend the hearts and lives of these two young men, and forever change the course of Christendom.

On Sunday evening, May 21, 1738, as he sat at his desk by candlelight, it seems Charles Wesley’s spiritual eyes were opened as suddenly and dramatically as his physical eyes had been as an infant. The love of Jesus Christ now burst forth upon him with such clarifying and transforming power that he could no longer be the same.

“At midnight, I gave myself to Christ . . . I now found myself at peace with God,” Charles wrote, “and rejoiced in hope of loving Christ. I saw that by faith I stood.” He was 31.

His brother John was having a similar awakening. “I felt my heart strangely warmed.” John Wesley would be the founder of Methodism, which would become one of the biggest and most active global religious movements in history.

And so it was that these two evangelistic titans of the Christian church—who would contribute so much to its music and theology over their long lives—were born. Again.

We don’t know exactly when or how Charles Wesley began writing hymns. He penned an astonishing 6,500 of them. He was a prodigy of melodic verse. On the night of his conversion, he turned in his Bible to Psalm 40:3 

"He hath put a new song in my mouth; many will see and fear and will trust in the Lord."

Two days later, Charles entered into his journal: “I began a hymn upon my conversion.” Thus was its power, its reason, its passion, its amazement. How a mere mortal could find the words to so wondrously and beautifully express for all time the staggering magnificence and joy of God’s atonement, and its profound stirrings upon the heart and mind of man, is beyond our comprehension.

Wesley did.

It is a song of praise, drenched in scripture and hallowed by the richest of biblical truths. Its refrain is a central rhetorical question to which there is no final answer, only a humbling contrition and adoration.

"Amazing Love, how can it be, that Thou, my God, shouldst die for me?”

How can it be?

Wesley’s verses don’t tell us. We only know God’s love is so amazing, so great, that He would die for us. Wesley didn’t write in his refrain that Jesus died for us, though he did. “Thou, my God. . ." (emphasis added).

God, the Creator and Ruler of the universe, it was He who died on our behalf. Knowing this, remembering this, contemplating this, makes the love of God even more amazing. It makes Wesley’s hymn even more majestic, powerful and profoundly moving.

Wesley begins with a blunt acknowledgement:

“And can it be that I should gain

An int'rest in the Savior's blood?

Died He for me, who caused His pain?

For me, who Him to death pursued?”

Seven hundred years before the death of Christ, the prophet Isaiah wrote:

“But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed” (Isaiah 53:5).

He was wounded . . . He was bruised . . . upon Him . . . by His stripes . . . our transgressions . . . our iniquities . . . we are healed.

You and I, the whole human race, like sheep, have all gone astray—all of us, for there is none righteous; no, not one—following our wayward paths of sin and rebellion—"and the Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all” (Isaiah 53:6, emphasis added).

The sins of the whole world.

"Died He for me, who caused His pain?

For me, who Him to death pursued?”

Though we caused His pain, still it was for us He suffered, bled and died. It was to the very agony of Golgotha’s cross that He pursued you and me.

Wesley writes of the sacrifice and humiliation Jesus endured for us:

“He left His Father's throne above,

So free, so infinite His grace;

Emptied Himself of all but love,

And bled for Adam's helpless race;

'Tis mercy all, immense and free;

For, O my God, it found out me.”

The apostle Paul tells us that Jesus “emptied himself”—the Kenosis. He left His throne in glory. He took on human form, the form of a suffering servant, becoming obedient to death, “even death on a cross” (Philippians 2:1-8, emphasis added).

Jesus Christ, the Son of God, humbled himself.

Jesus bled for our helpless race.

God’s mercy, “immense and free”, found out me. It found out you.

May we ever rejoice that our salvation is all of God and all of grace.

Amazing love! How can it be?

To order Jack Wyman’s book, “Everything Else: Stories of Life, Faith and Our World”, go to amazon.com, Christian Book Distributors or barnesandnoble.com. It is also available on Kindle and eBooks.

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