A few weeks ago, a friend sent me this paragraph from Charles Spurgeon’s sermon “Forgiveness Made Easy:”
All our transgressions are swept away at once, carried off as by a flood, and so completely removed from us that no guilty trace of them remains They are all gone!
O ye believers, think of this, for the all is no little thing: sins against a holy God, sins against his loving Son, sins against gospel as well as against law, sins against man as well as against God, sins of the body as well as sins of the mind, sins as numerous as the sands on the sea shore, and as great as the sea itself: all, all are removed from us as far as the east is from the west. All this evil was rolled into one great mass, and laid upon Jesus, and having borne it all he has made an end of it for ever.
When the Lord forgave us he forgave us the whole debt. He did not take the bill and say, “I strike out this item and that,” but the pen went through it all;—PAID. It was a receipt in full of all demands, Jesus took the handwriting which was against us and nailed it to his cross, to show before the entire universe that its power to condemn us had ceased for ever. We have in him a full forgiveness.
She suggested that there might be a corporate reading for our worship service in there. As I read it, song lyrics naturally emerged. Within a few minutes, I had the first draft of a song, which I sent off to David Ward.
A Song is Born
David polished the text, made some great additions, and wrote a striking tune. (If you’re unfamiliar with our collaborations, please visit Thousand Tongues, where we’ve written dozens of songs together.)
We hope you’ll be encouraged by the final product—All Gone—and use it in your personal devotions and your local church to celebrate the full forgiveness we have in Jesus Christ. (Lyrics, mp3, lead sheet, chord chart, and more available on the song page here.)
We appreciate you sharing with friends, church, and on social media.
Have you entered this month’s giveaway?