Skip to main content

William Cowper's Blood Fountain (Part I)

I am currently working my way through the famous hymn "There is a fountain filled with blood" by William Cowper, as sung to the English tune which has grown on me ever since I learnt it at a local church:

There is a fountain filled with blood
drawn from Immanuel’s veins;
and sinners plunged beneath that flood
lose all their guilty stains.

In plain english, the first verse says there is a natural spring filled with blood (not water) that is constantly flowing from the Messiah's veins. Any sinners that are bathed in this blood instantly lose their moral guilty before God, without fail. The fountain never stops flowing. It is so overwhelming that it has become a flood where your whole body can be totally immensed. Once the person is plunged totally beneath this flood all guilty stains are removed.

William Cowper's imagery draws inspiration from Prophet Zechariah who prophesied that, "On that day there shall be a fountain opened for the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, to cleanse them from sin and uncleanness"The graphic imagery of this God ordained fountain has drawn criticism and praise in equal measure. To be sure it is better to see it as "inspired by" Zechariah rather than as necessary an attempt to suggest one can get from Zechariah directly to the allegorical (and true) imagery. It seems to me that there a number of truths Cowper wanted to portray in this poetry.

First, Cowper wants us to appreciate the violence of the cross. If we saw Cowper's allegorical imagery in real life we would certainly shudder! It is deeply inhumane. What we have here is a man from whom blood pours endlessly. The people bath themselves in it. The people dipping themselves happen to be the same people morally responsible for his death. It is physically and emotionally violent. And that is exactly what the death of Jesus is. It is not simply that a certain man suffered innocently in the worst form of execution invented by man. It is that God suffered and took on man's violence once and for all eternity.

We must pause and reflect on that thought here. There is a temptation to see Cowper's imagery of the never ending flow of blood as depicting Jesus as repeatedly being sacrificed. The writer to the Hebrews reminds us that Christ suffered once and for all. What Cowper wants us to see is that the though the sacrifice is once and for all time, the violence inflicted on Christ is eternal. Even now in heaven, he bears the marks of his crucifixion in his resurrected body. And crucially by his nature Christ knows even now, without forgetting, the intimate pain of crucifixion for my sins. He has suffered eternal violence. As a result Jesus need not suffer violence repeatedly he has been crushed for all eternity. What a violent and mind boggling undertaking! What unmerited favour!

Secondly, we see the miracle of the cross. Cowper does not use the name of Yeshua or Messiah, instead he says Immanuel. This means 'God with Us'. The name not only tells us who this man is, God in the flesh, it also tells us what he has come to do. He has come to be with us, the guilty sinners! The name is immediate, but also prophetic because it points us to the violent death and the costly flowing fountain it provides. It also points us to that future union when God comes to live in us through his Holy Spirit when we repent. And beyond that ultimately for all eternity in the new heaven and new earth. The miracle of this blood fountain is that it not only God in our midst but also a God who never leaves us! The fountain is always there.

Finally, Cowper help us to see the demand of the fountain. Cowper is telling us that the world only consists of two sets of people. Those who have plunged in the fountain and those who are "sinking deep in sin" in the words of another hymn writer. These people are described as sinners with guilty stains. They are stained with guilt because they are not with God. They stand positionally apart from God, the only source of all goodness and moral perfection. Their only hope is turn to Immanuel's ceaseless, overwhelming and comprehensive blood cleansing spring.

Sinners plunged beneath that flood lose all their guilty stains! The key here is that plunging is pivitol to losing the guilty. This active step of faith, as it is made clear later in verse four, is the only thing that effects the removal. The blood therefore demands a response from us to enjoy its miraculous cleansing power. And when we take the plunge it truly cleanses us!

So when we sing the first verse we are making important confessions about Jesus and ourselves. We are acknowledging the violence of the cross; the miracle of the cross in redeeming us; and the demand it makes on us to plunge and be united with the crucified Saviour. We need to daily keep these elements in our minds because our propensity to embrace sin is due to the lack of appreciation of the blood filled fountain.

Have you taken the plunge? Are you resting in the plunge? And you drawing others to the plunge? These are important questions we must ask ourselves daily.

Copyright © Chola Mukanga 2013

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

I Am Mother

I think it is true to say that the Netflix film I Am Mother is one the most disturbing movies I have watched for a long time. The film is set in a near future. Human life has been wiped out. An artificial intelligence (AI) called Mother is living inside a bunker where thousands of embroyos are stored. It selects an embryo and initiates a program to grow a baby within 24 hours. The AI then goes on to raise the child as its mother over the next few years.  After 16 years, the girl, who now goes by the name of Daughter (Clara Rugaard) is a teenager. She has never been outside because Mother has told her that the air is toxic. Her time is spend being home schooled in science and ethics so that she can become a perfect human being. The bond between Daughter and Mother is unusually strong. To our surprise there does not appear to be any mental or pyschological trauma of having a machine as her mother.  The strength of the bond between man and machine is tested when a nameless Woman (Hilary

What is the best preparation for preaching?

The best preparation is not to be too anxious about it. Anxious care hinders liveliness and efficacy. It leads to too little dependence on the Spirit. Be not didactic. Aim at the conscience as soldiers aim at the faces. Consider I may be preaching my last sermon. This leads to setting forth Christ as The Way, the Truth and the Life . .. Make Christ the prominent figure…Pay less attention to dear self. JOHN NEWTON

White Fragility, A Review

Robin DiAngelo has a sermon to preach. It is in form of a short popular book called White Fragilit y. Straight off the bat she tells us not to expect balanced analysis but a forceful argument “unapologetically rooted in identity politics”.  She understands identity politics as “the [political] focus on the barriers specific groups face in their struggle for equality”. The group she wants to save is black people, whom she blankets under “people of colour”.  So what is White Fragility about?  DiAngelo is sick and tired of white racism in the western world, and specifically the USA. She believes every white person, including babies, are guilty of racism by virtue of being white. So she wants to use her “insider status” as a white American woman to challenge this white racism by getting her fellow “white progressives” to force forward her thesis. In her words, “I am white...and I am mainly writing to a white audience”. I was immediately tempted to put down the book because being black Afri