"He bore the burden to Calv'ry and suffered and died alone."

Pen & Ink Drawing by Viv Walden

"He bore the burden to Calv'ry and suffered and died alone."

Hymn: “I Stand Amazed in the Presence of Jesus” – Words & Music: Charles Gabriel (1856-1932)
Tune: MY SAVIOR’S LOVE

To get to the “burden” of this hymnline, we have to go back a line:
       “He took my sins and my sorrows; he made them his very own.”
My sins and my sorrows were taken upon himself as if they were originally his… he who was without sin – original or otherwise!

This is one of those theologically-charged concepts that we don’t necessarily fully grasp… yet we believe that our sin was embodied in the sinless body of Christ and carried to Calvary to be exchanged for an everlasting relationship with the Father of all life. It is sometimes called “The Great Exchange”: my sin for his righteousness.

I remember an old black-and-white Saturday morning cartoon based on the story of Aladdin in which a man is pushing a card, repeating the phrase, “New lamps for old. New lamps for old.” (I have no idea why I still remember that!) This notion of God through Christ exchanging tarnished lives for renewed ones resurrects that childhood memory. It is as if Christ walks among us, almost as a barker crying out “New lives for old.” Some of us believe his “sales pitch” and take him up on his offer.

In that process, we hand over the worst of us for the best of him. He takes our sins and our sorrows and makes them his very own, bears them to Calvary where he suffers and dies alone – the ultimate expression of his marvelous, wonderful love… that Savior’s love which shall ever by the subject of my song.

An intergenerational singing of this hymn – you’ll want to sing along for sure!