{"id":1187,"date":"2009-03-22T16:49:27","date_gmt":"2009-03-23T00:49:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/2009\/03\/22\/a-question-regarding-a-hymn\/"},"modified":"2009-03-22T16:49:27","modified_gmt":"2009-03-23T00:49:27","slug":"a-question-regarding-a-hymn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/2009\/03\/22\/a-question-regarding-a-hymn\/","title":{"rendered":"a question regarding a hymn"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I have been thinking a little lately about the popular hymn by Aaron Wolfe,<em> Complete in Thee<\/em>. The tune is lovely and the thoughts of the hymn are generally appreciated.<\/p>\n<p>I am wondering, however, about the second verse:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Complete in Thee! No more shall sin,     <br \/>Thy grace hath conquered, reign within;      <br \/>Thy voice shall bid the tempter flee,      <br \/>And I shall stand complete in Thee.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Is this verse teaching some kind of perfectionism? It seems odd that it should, the author being a Presbyterian and the year being 1858, but it is the &quot;no more shall sin&quot; line that makes me wonder.<\/p>\n<p> <!--more-->  <\/p>\n<p>I haven&#8217;t been able to find any comments on this elsewhere, so thought I would throw this out for discussion to see what others might think. It could be that the writer is thinking of the future, not the present, although all but the last verse of the song seems to refer to the present:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Complete in Thee! no work of mine     <br \/>May take, dear Lord, the place of Thine;      <br \/>Thy blood hath pardon bought for me,      <br \/>And I am now complete in Thee.<\/p>\n<p>Refrain:     <br \/>Yea, justified! O blessed thought!      <br \/>And sanctified! Salvation wrought!      <br \/>Thy blood hath pardon bought for me,      <br \/>And glorified, I too, shall be!<\/p>\n<p>Complete in Thee! no more shall sin,     <br \/>Thy grace hath conquered, reign within;      <br \/>Thy voice shall bid the tempter flee,      <br \/>And I shall stand complete in Thee.<\/p>\n<p>Complete in Thee\u2014 each want supplied,     <br \/>And no good thing to me denied;      <br \/>Since Thou my portion, Lord, wilt be,      <br \/>I ask no more, complete in Thee.<\/p>\n<p>Dear Saviour! when before Thy bar     <br \/>All tribes and tongues assembled are,      <br \/>Among Thy chosen will I be,      <br \/>At Thy right hand, complete in Thee.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.cyberhymnal.org\/bio\/w\/o\/wolfe_ar.htm\" target=\"_blank\">An interesting paragraph<\/a> on CyberHymnal gives a bit of a background to Aaron Wolfe and the quality of his spiritual life.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" title=\"don_sig2\" style=\"border-right: 0px; border-top: 0px; display: inline; border-left: 0px; border-bottom: 0px\" height=\"50\" alt=\"don_sig2\" src=\"http:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/03\/don-sig28.png\" width=\"150\" border=\"0\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I have been thinking a little lately about the popular hymn by Aaron Wolfe, Complete in Thee. The tune is lovely and the thoughts of the hymn are generally appreciated. I am wondering, however, about the second verse: Complete in Thee! No more shall sin, Thy grace hath conquered, reign within; Thy voice shall bid [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[70,86],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2fYWj-j9","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1187"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1187"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1187\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1188,"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1187\/revisions\/1188"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1187"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1187"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1187"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}