Scripture References:
st. 1 = Phil. 2:6-11
John 1:1
st. 2 = Ps. 33:6-9
st. 3 = Col. 2:15
st. 6 = Acts 1:11
Caroline Marie Noel (b. Teston, Kent, England, 1817; d. St. Marylebone, London, England, 1877) wrote this spiritually powerful text. The daughter of an Anglican clergyman and hymn writer, she began to write poetry in her late teens but then abandoned it until she was in her forties. During those years she suffered frequent bouts of illness and eventually became an invalid. To encourage both herself and others who were ill or incapacitated, Noel began to write devotional verse again. Her poems were collected in The Name of Jesus and Other Verses for the Sick and Lonely (1861, enlarged in 1870).
One of the hymns in the 1870 collection was this text (originally beginning "In the Name of Jesus"), designed for use as a processional hymn on Ascension Day. The Psalter Hymnal includes stanzas 1, 3-5, and 7-8 of Noel's original eight stanzas.
The text is based on the confession of faith that Paul quotes in Philippians 2:6-11, which may well have been an early Christian hymn. Stanza 1 announces the triumph of the ascended Christ to whom "every knee should bow" (Phil. 2: 10). In stanza 2 Christ is the "mighty Word" (see John 1:1-4) through whom "creation sprang at once to sight." Stanzas 3 and 4 look back to Christ's humiliation, death, resurrection, and ascension (Phil. 2:6-9). Stanza 5 is an encouragement for submission to Christ, for us to have the "mind of Christ," and stanza 6 looks forward to Christ's return as "King of glory." The text is not only concerned with the name 'Jesus," whose saving work it confesses, but also with the glory and majesty that attends "the name of Jesus."
Liturgical Use:
Advent; Easter; Ascension; Epiphany; as a sung confession of faith; many other occasions of worship.
--Psalter Hymnal Handbook, 1988
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