Text · full lyrics
And can it be that I should gain
An interest in the Saviour's blood?
Died He for me, who caused His pain?
For me, who Him to death pursued?
Amazing love! How can it be
That Thou, my God, would die for me?
He left His Father's throne above,
So free, so infinite His grace;
Emptied Himself of all but love,
And bled for Adam's helpless race.
'Tis mercy all, immense and free;
For, O my God, it found out me.
Long my imprisoned spirit lay,
Fast bound in sin and nature's night;
Thine eye diffused a quickening ray,
I woke, the dungeon flamed with light;
My chains fell off, my heart was free,
I rose, went forth, and followed Thee.
No condemnation now I dread;
Jesus, and all in Him, is mine!
Alive in Him, my living Head,
And clothed in righteousness divine,
Bold I approach th'eternal throne,
And claim the crown, through Christ, my own.
Amazing love! How can it be
That Thou, my God, would die for me?
The lyricist
Charles Wesley
Charles Wesley was an Anglican clergyman who, with his older brother John, set the Methodist revival in motion — though his lasting work was the writing, more than six thousand hymns over a single life. He composed "And Can It Be" in the days around his evangelical conversion in May 1738; the astonishment in its opening question, that grace could reach the one writing it, reads as freshly felt rather than rehearsed. For decades he rode the Methodist preaching circuits alongside his brother, and was known to work out verses on horseback and fix them to paper at the next stop.