LBW #309, "Lord Jesus, Think on Me"
1 Lord Jesus, think on me
And purge away my sin;
From selfish passions set me free
And make me pure within.
2 Lord Jesus, think on me,
By anxious thoughts oppressed;
Let me your loving servant be
And taste your promised rest.
Devotion
These short devotional pauses this week have looked at the tension between blessing and woe. The mission of God is not to divide all people into these two groups. The mission of God is that all might be saved. The woe statements call us to repentance and forgiveness. An ancient penitential hymn gives words to our repentance: "Lord Jesus, think on me and purge away my sin; from selfish passions set me free and make me pure within."
A millennium after Synesius of Cyrene wrote this hymn, Martin Luther would restate the tension between blessing and woe. In the theology of being simultaneously saint and sinner, Luther taught that we are bound to and oppressed by our sin, requiring that the old self be put to death daily. The new self then rises to eternal life.
Prayer
Lord Jesus, think on me, by anxious thoughts oppressed; let me your loving servant be and taste your promised rest. Amen.