En La Cruz

Israel Houghton's "En La Cruz" is a Spanish rendering of the old Ralph Hudson hymn "At the Cross," and it keeps that hymn's central image intact: "en la cruz, en la cruz, do primero vi la luz" — at the cross, at the cross, where I first saw the light. The cross isn't described from a distance here; it's named as the exact place everything changed.

"Y las manchas de mi alma, Él lavó" — and the stains of my soul, He washed — leans on the same picture John gives in his letter, that the blood of Jesus cleanses from all sin. Not managed or excused, but actually washed away, a stain that genuinely stops being there rather than just being covered over.

"Fue allí por fe, yo vi a Jesús, y siempre feliz, con Él seré" — it was there by faith I saw Jesus, and forever happy with Him I'll be — turns the hymn from a memory of conversion into an ongoing promise. The closing call to "alguien da un grito de júbilo al Rey de reyes" — someone shout for joy to the King of kings — pushes the song from quiet gratitude into open celebration.