When I Survey The Wonderous Cross

MercyMe's recording of "When I Survey the Wondrous Cross" leaves Isaac Watts' eighteenth-century text almost entirely untouched — a rare choice for a band better known for original songs, and a sign of how little this hymn needs updating. The opening line sets the terms immediately: everything the singer might otherwise be proud of — "my richest gain" — becomes "but loss" next to what happened on the cross.

That's almost a direct echo of Paul's own words in Galatians: "far be it from me to boast, except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ." Watts isn't paraphrasing loosely; he's restating Paul's refusal to boast in anything except what Christ did there. The third verse turns to the physical detail — "see from His head, His hands, His feet, sorrow and love flow mingled down" — refusing to let the cross stay abstract or symbolic.

The hymn ends on a scale too large for tidy language: "were the whole realm of nature mine, that were a present far too small." No gift big enough exists to match what's being described, so the only fitting response left is everything — "my soul, my life, my all." MercyMe's arrangement trusts the words enough to just let them stand.