My Savior's Love

Don Moen keeps this hymn's nineteenth-century language intact, and the opening verse states its own disbelief plainly: "I stand amazed in the presence of Jesus the Nazarene, and wonder how He could love me, a sinner, condemned, unclean." The hymn doesn't smooth over why that love is surprising.

The second verse gets specific about the cost rather than staying general: "for me it was in the garden He prayed, 'not My will, but Thine'... He had no tears for His own griefs but sweat drops of blood for mine." Luke's account of Jesus praying in Gethsemane, sweat falling like drops of blood, gives that verse its exact source.

"He took my sins and my sorrows, He made them His very own" echoes Isaiah's prophecy of a suffering servant who bore others' griefs, and the closing verse pushes the hymn's timeline all the way to heaven: "when with the ransomed in glory, His face I at last shall see, 'twill be my joy through the ages to sing of His love for me." The repeated "how marvelous, how wonderful" never resolves into an explanation — just repeated wonder.