O Perfect Life of Love

For this year’s Good Friday, based on John 19:30 – ‘It is finished.’

O perfect life of love!

All, all is finished now,

All that He left His throne above

To do for us below.

No work is left undone

Of all the Father willed;

His toil, His sorrows, one by one,

The Scriptures have fulfilled.

No pain that we can share

But He has felt its smart;

All forms of human grief and care

Have pierced that tender heart.

And on His thorn-crowned head

And on His sinless soul

Our sins in all their guilt were laid,

That he might make us whole.

In perfect love He dies;

For me He dies, for me.

O all-atoning Sacrifice,

I cling by faith to Thee.

In ev’ry time of need,

Before the judgment throne,

Thy work, O Lamb of God, I’ll plead

Thy merits, not mine own.

Yet work, O Lord, in me,

As Thou for me hast wrought;

And let my love the answer be

To grace Thy love has brought.

Henry W. Baker, 1821-77