Power in the Blood
“There's wonderful pow'r in the blood!” A rousing hymn written by a classmate of the famous evangelist Billy Sunday. A camp meeting inspired the song, and Christians everywhere have loved it simple explanation of the effectiveness of the shed blood of Christ.
Welcome back to Friday Classic Hymns, and today's hymn is not going to take long, but it's been on my mind because ever since I did a series of daily devotions on Holy Week about the blood of Christ, this song has been playing in my mind. I wanted to share it because it's such a great song: "There's Power in the Blood."
This is a song that I didn't really know. I think I must have heard it maybe on a Gaither video, or I know that I've heard Alan Jackson sing this one, but I can't say for sure that I ever sang it anywhere. I don't remember ever singing it in church. Learning to play it and learning to sing it has been great. It's a powerful little song. It's quite simple, and it always amuses me how some people who love hymns are very scathing of modern Christian music. They say, "Ah, they just repeat the same thing the whole time." Well, here's a song with a lot of repeats, but it's a hymn. Just because it repeats itself a lot doesn't mean that it's bad. Just because it's new doesn't mean that it's bad either. What you've got to look for is good theological truths, and some old songs have them and some new songs have them. Here is a simple song that might repeat itself a lot, but it's so good.
Do you know this song? If you do, if you have a memory of it, or if the song has meant something to you, please share that in the comments below. Maybe if you haven't ever heard the song but it touches you in some way today, or the lyrics resonate with you, share that in the comments below. As always, if you could do me the favour, please, of subscribing to the channel and liking the video, maybe sharing it, it all helps to get this channel out there and get these videos to more people.
The Story Behind "Power in the Blood"
Truth is, there's not a lot to say about the history of this song. The author is a man named Lewis Edgar Jones, born in 1865 in Yates City. He lived on a farm for a while and then he studied at Moody Bible Institute, one of the premier Bible colleges of its day. One of his classmates was the great Billy Sunday, who became a very well-known and successful evangelist of his time.
Jones went on to work for the YMCA, but hymn writing was something that he really enjoyed doing. He would often tinker around and write all sorts of different songs based on sermons or based on things that he'd heard. Really, the only thing known about this hymn of his was that it was written at a camp meeting.
Here in South Africa, camp meetings aren't as big a thing as they are in the States, although here in the Nazarene church—because of course the Church of the Nazarene was born in the US and missionaries from the US came here and planted our Nazarene Church—the camp meeting was pretty popular. But growing up for me in the Methodist Church, it wasn't really a thing, although I do remember going on youth camps and stuff like that. Do you have any experience of camp meetings? Do you have stories to tell about camp meetings you've been to?
It seems as if it was at a powerful camp meeting that Jones must have heard something about the power of the blood that really impacted him, and he sat down and wrote this amazing song. He also wrote the music, and the song has been popular over the years. It really is simple and easy to sing and easy to remember because of that repetition, but powerful because it reminds us of some really important truths.
Jones died in 1936, but this song carries on and still has great popularity around the world today.
What Do the Lyrics of "Power in the Blood" Mean?
Verse 1: Freedom from Sin's Burden
Verse one says, "Would you be free from the burden of sin? There's power in the blood, power in the blood."
Free from the burden of sin. Sin burdens us in many ways, doesn't it? It burdens us because it brings us guilt, and so we feel disconnected from God. It burdens us because it breaks relationships down. It ruins our lives in many ways. There is often a playing down of the seriousness of sin in our churches, and yet if you read the Bible, God is not saying, "Oh, I want to kill all your joy by making you not sin." He's saying sin is dangerous. Sin will have a bad impact on your life.
The songwriter says, "Would you be free of that? Would you be free of the burden that sin places on your life? There's power in the blood. The blood of Jesus can lift that burden off of you."
"Would you o'er evil a victory win? There's wonderful power in the blood."
We've all known this fight against evil. Every human being knows how evil has a way of coming at you and tempting you. We've all got a sinful nature that we're born with, and so we all end up finding ourselves doing evil things. Then the more you try not to, the more you do them, as Paul says in Romans 7. But Paul ends that section by saying the answer is in Christ Jesus, and in Romans 8 he says if you walk in the Spirit, you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. You'll be able to have a victory over evil in your life through the blood of Christ and being filled with the Spirit.
I love this verse. It's positive, it's upbeat. If you want victory over sin, if you want the burden of sin to lift, the blood of Christ that He shed on the cross is the answer.
The Chorus: Wonder-Working Power
Then the chorus is so catchy and it's very repetitive. It says, "There is power, power, wonder-working power in the blood of the Lamb," and then it repeats almost identically, except it says "in the precious blood of the Lamb" the second time around.
There is wonder-working power. The blood of Jesus that was shed—when we place our faith in Him as Saviour of our lives, when we place our faith in Him as the one who died in our place and we realise that His blood shed paid for our sins and broke the power of sin, when we place our faith in it—oh, it works wonders in our lives. Those things we spoke of in verse one, about the burden being lifted and about the victory being won, those are wonders. They're wonders because they're miraculous. You can't do that without the blood of Christ. It is only the blood of the Lamb that can effect these wonders in your life.
Verse 2: Cleansing from Passion and Pride
Verse two says this: "Would you be free from your passion and pride?"
In those days, "passion" was not seen as it is in our day. The word "passion" in our day means enthusiasm and positive feelings, but passion in those days was seen as kind of your sinful desires. So would you be free of your sinful desires and your pride?
"There's power in the blood. Come for a cleansing to Calvary's tide."
I love that—Calvary's tide. It's not just a drop, although a drop was all that it would have taken, but it was a tide that can cover the sins of the world, the blood that He shed. Okay, He was a human. He only had so much blood physically, but the spiritual implications of how His blood covers the sin of the world—if the world, or the people in the world, put their faith in Him—oh wow, it can bring cleansing to your soul like nothing else can.
"There's wonderful power in the blood."
You need to have your faith in the blood of Christ having been shed for you, for your sin, to have these wonders worked in your life.
Verse 3: Whiter Than Snow
Verse three says, "Would you be whiter, much whiter than snow? There's power in the blood, power in the blood."
There's a verse in Isaiah that says, "Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be white as snow"—a picture of God washing our stains away. I remember a video that I once watched as well. We used to watch it as kids. It was Snow White, but it was a very strange version that was produced in the '80s by Cannon Movie Tales. Go and look for Cannon Movie Tales Snow White—it is very strange, but we loved it. There's a scene where she pricks her finger and a drop falls into the snow, and I remember I always have this picture of there's blood going dark, dark as it drops into the snow. It wasn't like a red, bright red, but it was black. That picture, that contrast, always stuck with me when I encountered this verse about how your sins can be washed white as snow.
All that dark, awful stuff in your life which sin has brought can be cleansed. You can be forgiven of these things, and they can be washed away.
As the next line says, "Sin stains are lost in its life-giving flow."
When your soul is stained with your sin—and remember, each one of us has sinned and fallen short of the glory of God—so often we think of, "Oh, you know, Hitler and those guys, those are the bad guys who will end up separated from God in hell for eternity, but I'm okay. I'm living a generally good life." But oh, the smallest thing, the smallest sin, will separate us from God because He's holy. What we need is for our sin stains to be washed away, and there's power in the blood to do it. It's only the blood of Christ that can do it.
Verse 4: Service for the King
Verse four: "Would you do service for Jesus your King? There's power in the blood, power in the blood."
Now he's moving from your forgiveness, which is brought by the blood, to your Christian life lived out. If you want to serve God and serve Jesus your King in your life, the power of the blood will enable you to do it. With your faith in the blood of Christ, you've got new power to do what you didn't know you could do before.
As the next line says, "Would you live daily His praises to sing? There's wonderful power in the blood."
If you want to live a lifestyle of singing His praise and worshipping Him in everything, you need to be covered in the blood. You need your faith in the blood of Christ, what He did on the cross, because that is what effects this change in your life.
There's wonder-working power in the blood. God can do wonderful things in your life, but it all starts at what Jesus did on the cross of Calvary. If you place your faith in Him as your substitute, recognise that what He did—when you grab hold of it by faith—breaks the power of sin in your life and cleanses you. Oh wow, what wonders God will work in your life as a result of what Jesus did.
Conclusion
So what do you think of these words? Did something in particular resonate with you or give you hope today? I hope so. I love this song.
Just to say thank you to those who donate to my online work. Between my daily devotions, Encounter, Friday Classic Hymns, and all the rest that I do, your support really gives me the opportunity to come and do this every week. So thank you for doing that. You can head over to my website to find the devotions on the power of the blood, which I'm going to put a link below, and to find out how you can support through Patreon or PayPal. But really, it's for free. I don't want anybody to feel that they should support if they can't. I hope you'll just enjoy this content and be blessed by it.
References
Lewis Edgar Jones, "Power in the Blood" (1899)
Isaiah 1:18
Romans 7
Romans 8
