It’s God’s love to feeble me, not my love to him that gives me peace with God. Salvation is entirely by grace alone, God’s sovereign power alone, his effectual work alone, “No other work, save thine,” no human strength, or effort, or perceived ability can break my bondage.

For the first time in five weeks, I went to church on Reformation Day. Staggered to church would be more accurate. Hard hit by the Covid-19 virus, I spent two harrowing weeks in the hospital, and am recovering with excruciatingly slow baby steps as my lungs grope for oxygen, and as I try to learn how to breathe again. God has been very merciful to me, giving me the best medical and home care, and providing encouragements from so many people who have prayed and continue to pray for my full recovery.

In it all, God is teaching me many things: I’m learning more about God’s sovereign good pleasure; I was in good physical shape, healthy immune system, a great candidate for a mild case of the virus and quick recovery—so I thought. God had ordained a more difficult path for me. I’m also learning more about the frailty of life (in the early days of my hospitalization, my doctor said honestly that my case could go either way); I’m learning the comfort of being known and loved by Christ and being safe in his arms, come what may (during one particularly long wakeful night, it occurred to me I was going to die, but in that realization, I had an overwhelming sense of the presence of the Comforter, that I was safe in the arms of Jesus—and I was not afraid), and I’m learning what it means to be utterly dependent on others, to be able to do nothing for myself, to acknowledge with the psalmist that I am poor and needy—I have no strength, only weak knees and feeble hands.

And then my first Sunday back in corporate worship we sang one of my favorite hymns from one of my favorite hymn writers, Scots Presbyterian Horatius Bonar. First published in 1861, Bonar’s hymn, theologically undergirded and adorned by this gifted poet, laid hold of my heart afresh.

Not what my hands have done
can save my guilty soul;
not what my toiling flesh has borne
can make my spirit whole.
Not what I feel or do
can give me peace with God;
not all my prayers and sighs and tears
can bear my awful load.

One of the great advantages of having no strength, of having weak knees and feeble hands, is that my physical condition aligns with my spiritual condition. The fact that my hands have not done, nor are able to do, anything to “give me peace with God,” makes more sense to a man whose entire system has been ravaged by this virus, leaving me a wheezing wreck of an invalid. But we persist in thinking that there’s some work required of us, some contribution we feel able to make, some change of posture, or affection. Aren’t we supposed to seek him, come to him, choose him? Aren’t we supposed to love God? Surely we can’t expect to have peace with God unless we first love him. Bonar points us away from our delusions:

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