How Deep the Father’s Love for Us
Composer: Stuart Townend (1995); arr. Larry Shackley (Hope Publishing)
Text: Stuart Townend
Season: Sung March 23, 2025, in Lent, Beverly Heights Youth Choir
Stuart Townend wrote this hymn in 1995, and it has done something few modern hymns manage: it has moved into the regular rotation of churches that sing almost nothing written after 1900. The reason is the text. It says what the older Passion hymns say, that the Father gave his Son and the Son bore the wrath, and it says it in the first person without sentimentality: “It was my sin that held him there until it was accomplished.” There is no mood music in it, only the cross and the one who put him on it.
The Youth Choir sang Larry Shackley’s arrangement during Lent in 2025. Hearing it from young voices sharpens the last stanza, which refuses to boast “in gifts or power or wisdom” and boasts only in Christ. This recording has become one of the most watched on the church’s channel.
Scripture: Isaiah 53:4 to 6; Galatians 6:14