Adoption in Christ

Representative Text

1 Now are we sons of God!
Nor doth it yet appear
What heights of bliss, thro' Jesus' blood,
For us prepared are.

2 This we already know,
When Christ, our righteousness,
Shall shew himself to men below,
We shall be as he is.

3 Yea in this world are we,
As Jesus is above;
As him, from sin and Satan free,
As perfected in love.

4 Invisible are we
To this blind world below;
There's none but such who Jesus see,
Can us discern or know.

5 All that which doth appear
Of us, or can be known,
By reason's eye, to mortals here,
We utterly disown.

6 We call it dung and dross,
The man from whom we cease;
To own it our's, is pain and loss,
And saps the christian's peace.

7 Jesus alone we own,
And nothing know beside;
In him, as free from sin, we're known,
His pure and holy bride.

8 In him we now confess,
We are the Lord's delight,
His rest, his joy and righteousness,
All glorious in his sight.

9 We are as we would be;
Nor have we yet to choose;
As Christ the Son, we're ever free,
Nor can that sonship lose.

Source: Psalms, Hymns and Spiritual Songs: selected and original, designed for the use of the Church Universal in public and private devotion #CXCIX

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Author: James Relly

James Relly was born about 1722 at Jeffreston, Pembrokeshire, Wales, and died in 1778. He was converted to Christianity during the Great Awakening ushered in by George Whitefield. He worked under George Whitefield as a Calvinistic Methodist preacher and missionary. However, Whitefield and Relly separated ways over Relly's seemingly universalist teaching that all humanity was elect (i.e. saved) when Christ took the punishment for all sin when he died. He also departed from both the Calvinists and Methodists by taking the doctrine of Justification further, in teaching that believers no longer sin and the Law's sole purpose is to condemn humanity and point them to Christ. He was the mentor of John Murray, the founder of the Universalist Ch… Go to person page >

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