And can it be that I should gain
An interest in the Savior’s blood?
Died He for me, who caused His pain?
For me, who Him to death pursued?
Amazing love! How can it be
That Thou, my God, shouldst die for me?
‘Tis mystery all: the Immortal dies!
Who can explore His strange design?
In vain the firstborn seraph tries
To sound the depths of love divine.
‘Tis mercy all! Let earth adore,
Let angel minds inquire no more.
Long my imprisoned spirit lay,
Fast bound in sin and nature’s night;
Thine eye diffused a quickening ray,
I woke, the dungeon flamed with light;
My chains fell off, my heart was free,
I rose, went forth, and followed Thee.
No condemnation now I dread;
Jesus, and all in Him, is mine;
Alive in Him, my living Head,
And clothed in righteousness divine,
Bold I approach th’ eternal throne,
And claim the crown, through Christ my own.
Public domain hymn text (1738). Words by Charles Wesley.
The Story Behind the Hymn
Charles Wesley wrote this hymn's text in May 1738, only days after his own dramatic personal conversion experience, the same formative spiritual event he would later commemorate directly in 'O for a Thousand Tongues to Sing' (hymn 16 elsewhere in this collection), making this hymn one of the very earliest pieces of writing to emerge from that pivotal moment in Wesley's own life, composed while the experience was still entirely fresh.
The hymn's repeated central question — how can it possibly be that Christ would die specifically for someone who had actively pursued Him 'to death,' a phrase referring to Wesley's own sense of having lived, before his conversion, in a manner hostile to genuine faith — reflects the same overwhelming sense of personal astonishment at grace that runs through much of Wesley's earliest post-conversion hymn writing, before the experience had settled into the more measured, established theological confidence of his later decades of ministry.
The hymn's third verse, describing Wesley's own conversion in vivid physical terms — 'my chains fell off, my heart was free, I rose, went forth, and followed Thee' — draws a deliberate parallel to the biblical account of the apostle Peter's own miraculous release from prison chains in Acts 12, using that specific biblical image of sudden physical liberation to describe Wesley's own, considerably more inward, experience of release from spiritual bondage.
The hymn's repeated refrain — 'amazing love! how can it be that Thou, my God, shouldst die for me?' — has made it one of the standard hymns of personal testimony sung at evangelical conversion and confirmation services across the more than two and a half centuries since Wesley first wrote it down in the immediate emotional aftermath of his own May 1738 experience.
