Five Well-Loved Hymns by Paul Gerhardt

Paul Gerhardt (1607–76) is considered to be a prolific composer, writing 123 hymns during his lifetime that are still enjoyed by the church today. His dedication to hymn writing even during times of war and suffering showcase how Christ's love can be a rock of comfort no matter what. Read about his top five hymns below to see insights on both the hymn texts and history surrounding each one. 

O Lord, How Shall I Meet You

This Advent hymn first appeared in two sources published in Berlin, both connected with Johann Crüger (1598–1662), composer of the melody associated with this text. At its core, this text is about sin, forgiveness, and Christ’s incarnation as a necessity for the salvation of sinners. In this Advent hymn, Gerhardt masterfully proclaims the incarnation of Christ and its consequences for all who believe—the forgiveness and peace He won for humankind and the joyful hope of His second coming.

Stanzas 1 through 4 are addressed to Christ, with singers engaging in a personal reflection in the first-person singular. Stanza 2 recalls Christ’s Palm Sunday entrance into Jerusalem, and singers place their own adoration and praise of the Savior in the context of this scriptural precedent (Matthew 21:8–9), which is the traditional Gospel appointed for the First Sunday in Advent.

Stanzas 3 and 4 are the heart of Gerhardt’s hymn. Stanza 3 contrasts the sinner’s bondage and shame with the freedom and honor given because God’s Son was willing to become incarnate. In stanza 4, Gerhardt answers the question of why Christ would become incarnate for sinners—it is entirely a matter of His love (a word repeated five times in this stanza) for “our lost and fallen race” and of His “thirst for my salvation.” Stanza 5 is a gem of pure Gospel proclamation—Christ’s first coming was for the purpose of “procuring the peace of sin forgiven.” Stanza 6 then points singers to Christ’s second coming to judge the nations—a terror to His enemies who reject Him in unbelief, but to those who love His appearing, “a light of consolations” and the “blessed hope” that will “guide us safely home.” 

All My Heart Again Rejoices

This Christmas hymn was published in 1653. The original hymn has fifteen stanzas, but it has rarely appeared in English-language hymnals in its complete form. LSB retains six stanzas that beautifully proclaim the heart of the hymn, which is what the incarnation means for us.

Catherine Winkworth (1827–78) called this text “a song of joy at dawn,” and between her Lyra Germanica (1858) and the Chorale Book for England (1863) translated all of the original stanzas into English. Her treatment of the text is rich in imagery that is faithful to the original.

Paul Gerhardt’s Christmas texts are not so much about the specifics of the one-time event with shepherds, manger, and star; rather, they proclaim the “why?” and the “what does this mean?” of Christmas. Gerhardt presents the theological richness of the incarnation in eloquent sermons that can be sung. In this way, his hymns for Christmastide are very much like Martin Luther’s. Neither author is afraid to speak of sin, guilt, death, blood, suffering, the bearing of crosses, and even dying, even on Christmas Eve.

Gerhardt was surrounded by suffering and death as he lived through the Thirty Years’ War and then the death of five members of his immediate family; therefore, he cannot help but speak of it and have us sing of it, even on Christmas Eve. This is what makes his texts so timeless, yet timely for the Church. He speaks of the individual’s death in a way that is not reserved for the “death and burial” section of a hymnal; it is rather a constant theme to be sung regardless of the day being celebrated. Like Luther, the incarnation and the atonement are viewed together as they give theological insight regardless of the topic. In other words, all things are seen through the eyes of what Christ crucified means for the individual.

A Lamb Goes Uncomplaining Forth

Except for Gerhardt’s other Passion hymn, “O Sacred Head, Now Wounded” (LSB 449–50), this hymn is probably the most significant Good Friday text in Lutheran practice. Both hymns draw on a near-mystical tradition of passionate contemplation of the suffering Savior, and Gerhardt has sometimes been accused of forsaking the Lutheran focus on objective justification in favor of a more subjective Pietism. In truth, Gerhardt was giving voice to the painful, deeply emotional character of his times, pointing always to the fully Lutheran reliance on the grace of Christ’s redemption.

“A Lamb Goes Uncomplaining Forth” is a profound example of Gospel comfort. Picture the troubles of Hildegard Schaeder (d. 1984). Imprisoned by the Nazis in 1944 for “aiding and abetting Jews,” she was listed for the gas chamber. In the darkness of solitary confinement and realizing her desperate condition, as she wrote to her mother her lips unconsciously repeated the hymn “A Lamb Goes Uncomplaining Forth.” Her “hymnal of the heart” gave her the same prayer the poet had uttered in his own dark times and helped her survive to the war’s end. All this points to the core truth of the hymn: the love of God in offering His Son for our salvation.

The four stanzas in LSB lead us through a dialogue between the Father and the Son that determines the final obedient sacrifice of the Son because of divine love. Such love leads the believer into an apostrophe to Love (stanza 3, lines 5–10) and an anticipation of union with the Lord as the Bride of Christ before the throne of heaven (stanza 4). Beyond all sin, suffering, pain, or sorrow in this life, the Christian can anticipate salvation in Christ, leading to eternal joy in heaven.

O Sacred Head Now Wounded

This quintessential hymn for Passiontide is the last of seven Latin meditations on the crucifixion attributed until the early twentieth century to Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–1153). Each meditation is a complete hymn; they address in turn the feet, knees, hands, side, breast, heart, and face of Christ on the cross. Paul Gerhardt translated all seven into German (somewhat loosely), and the last and best known of these has been rendered into English as “O Sacred Head, Now Wounded.”

Paul Gerhardt wrote 123 hymns, fourteen of them on the Passion of Christ. In all his Passion hymns, as Gerald Krispin notes, he “rivets the eye of the believer on Christ in his suffering and death.”¹  This hymn is no exception, for it focuses in graphic detail on the wounds inflicted by the crown of thorns on the Savior’s head. What normally would appear as a sign of humiliation is in this hymn a source of joy to the believer, whose sins are being forgiven. Gerhardt was writing during the Thirty Years’ War (1618–48), a time of confessional fervor. Although he participated in the confessional struggles of the period, this did not hamper his efforts as a hymn writer. As Krispin likes to point out, the Lutheran confessions were “the bedrock upon which Paul Gerhardt’s faith was built, and consequently the same foundation upon which his hymnody was fashioned.”² Throughout the hymn, a close relationship is fostered between the Savior and the saved. Faith looks to the despised and suffering Christ and declares, “I joy to call Thee mine.”

Awake, My Heart, with Gladness

This strong, personal Easter testimony, appeared in the first edition of Johann Crüger’s Praxis Pietatis Melica (Berlin, 1647). Editions of this influential hymnal, the most important German hymnal of the seventeenth century, continued to be produced almost sixty years after Crüger’s death. “Auf, auf, mein Herz” was one of Gerhardt’s eighteen occasional poems that merited publishing in this book.

In 1666–67, Johan Georg Ebeling, who succeeded Crüger as cantor of the Nicolaikirche in Berlin upon Crüger’s death in 1662, published 120 hymns by Gerhardt under the title Pauli Gerhardi Geistliche Andachten (Paul Gerhardt’s spiritual devotions). “Auf, auf, mein Herz” appeared here with a four-part harmony (in Crüger’s Praxis, the accompaniment was given merely as melody with basso continuo).

German Lutheran immigrants to America brought this and other beloved hymns by Gerhardt with them; but it was England, with poets such as Frances Elizabeth Cox, Richard Massie, Catherine Winkworth, and John Kelly, where a large number of Lutheran hymns were being translated. The translation “Awake, my heart, with gladness” originated with John Kelly, whose 1867 collection Paul Gerhardt’s Spiritual Songs helped to make Gerhardt’s hymns accessible to English speakers.

Adapted from the Lutheran Service Book: Companion to the Hymns, Volume 1 © 2019 Concordia Publishing House. All rights reserved.

1 “Paul Gerhardt’s Confession of Christ in Song,” Lutheran Theological Review 20 (2008), 82.

2 “Paul Gerhardt’s Confession of Christ in Song,” Lutheran Theological Review 20 (2008), 70.

Order below to read more about Paul Gerhardt and other hymn writers in Lutheran Service Book: Companion to the Hymns.