Hymn Highlight: Come Behold the Wondrous Mystery
For the most part, my goal with writing Hymn Highlights is to highlight rich old songs that exist to equip the church. I want to show the beautiful theology that the church has been singing for centuries. However, every fifth Hymn Highlight will feature a newer hymn. These newer songs will be just as theologically solid but will have been written in the last thirty years or so.
The first such newer hymn is Come Behold the Wondrous Mystery. Written in 2013 by Matt Boswell, Michael Bleecker, and Matt Papa, Come Behold has quickly risen to popularity in corporate worship services.
The song is an invitation for the congregant to look at, or “come behold” the wonder of the various components of the gospel, which has made salvation available for fallen humanity. The theme of mystery is carried through not because the gospel is hidden, but is confounding to the finite mind. We ought to ask ourselves, “Why does God love us, even in our sin?” and “How can the Perfect Son of Man put on humanity and live in the presence of sinners such as us?” Truly, pondering such questions will confound even the greatest thinkers.
In the first verse, we marvel together at the condescension of Christ, who, “though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped” (Phil 2:6). Christ, the eternal Son of God, came to earth, “robed in frail humanity,” in order to “ransom us.” The mystery of the Incarnation is on full display in the first verse.
If the first verse discusses who Christ is, the second verse displays what Christ did. Christ, “the perfect Son of Man,” “came to save the hell-bound man” by living a perfect life and fulfilling the law perfectly. Because of the active and passive obedience of Christ, we stand in Christ as those in Christ. Because of this wondrous mystery, we are given Christ’s righteousness and can stand in him by grace through faith.
The third and fourth verses explore the final events of Christ’s Passion week: Calvary and the tomb. The hymn-writers poetically take us to Good Friday: Christ is hanging on the tree “in the “stead of ruined sinners.” Christ, the God-Man, and his death on the cross is the price of our redemption. This grisly scene was the Father’s plan of redemption from before time began. This grisly scene is how “many sons” are brought to glory. This grisly scene is “grace unmeasured, love untold.”
However, in the hymn as in real life: we are not left at the cross! The final verse takes us to a glorious scene: The empty tomb! That grave could never restrain Jesus, and he is alive even now! The church can sing of our unwavering hope because Christ is resurrected in power, “as we will be when he comes.”
As we sing this great newer song (hopefully for decades and centuries to come), we ought to gaze at Christ. If sung on a Sunday, let this song inspire us to gaze at Christ more and more throughout the week.