Text · full lyrics
A Lamb goes uncomplaining forth,
The guilt of all men bearing;
And laden with the sins of earth,
None else the burden sharing!
Goes patient on, grows weak and faint,
To slaughter led without complaint,
That spotless life to offer;
Bears shame, and stripes, and wounds and death,
Anguish and mockery, and saith,
"Willing all this I suffer."
This Lamb is Christ, the soul's great Friend,
The Lamb of God, our Savior;
Him God the Father chose to send
To gain for us His favor.
"Go forth, My Son," the Father saith,
And free men from the fear of death,
From guilt and condemnation.
The wrath and stripes are hard to bear,
But by Thy Passion men will share
The fruit of Thy salvation.
"Yea, Father, year, most willingly
I'll bear what Thou commandest;
My will conforms to Thy decree,
I do what Thou demandest."
O wondrous Love, what hast Thou done!
The Father offers up His Son!
The Son, content, descendeth!
O Love, how strong Thou art to save!
Thou beddest Him within the grave
Whose word the mountains rendeth.
From morn 'till eve my theme shall be
Thy mercy's wondrous measure;
To sacrifice myself for Thee
Shall be my aim and pleasure.
My stream of life shall ever be
A current flowing ceaselessly,
Thy constant praise outpouring.
I'll treasure in my memory,
O Lord, all Thou hast done for me,
Thy gracious love adoring.
Of death I am no more afraid,
New life from Thee is flowing;
Thy cross affords me cooling shade
When noonday's sun is glowing.
When by my grief I am oppressed,
On Thee my weary soul shall rest
Serenely as on pillows.
Thou art my Anchor when by woe
My bark is driven to an fro
On trouble's surging billows.
And when Thy glory I shall see
And taste Thy kingdom's pleasure,
Thy blood my royal robe shall be,
My joy beyond all measure;
When I appear before Thy throne,
Thy righteousness shall be my crown
With these I need not hide me.
And there, in garments richly wrought
As Thine own bride, I shall be brought
To stand in joy beside Thee.
The lyricist
Paul Gerhardt
Gerhardt was a Lutheran pastor who spent his working life in and around Berlin — first in the small town of Mittenwalde, then at St. Nicholas' Church in the capital, and finally as archdeacon at Lübben, a post he took after the Calvinist elector dismissed him for refusing to soften his confessional Lutheran preaching. The Thirty Years' War shadowed his early life — in 1637 Swedish troops burned the town where his father had been mayor, destroying the family home — and he later outlived his wife and four of his five children, so that a long acquaintance with loss sits underneath even his most consoling texts. Unlike many of his contemporaries he wrote sparingly, only around 130 hymns across his life, most of them first set to music and published by Johann Crüger, the cantor at St. Nicholas', with whom he collaborated for years. "A Lamb Goes Uncomplaining Forth," his long Passion hymn drawn from the suffering servant of Isaiah 53, was among the texts that reached congregations through Crüger's hymnal Praxis Pietatis Melica in the 1650s.