I Am Born Again! (O Lord My God With Shame I Own)

Charles Wesley wrote a beautiful hymn about turning from false gods and being born again, as Jesus takes place on the throne of your heart. He based it on Isaiah 26:13-14, and it ends with the rousing statement “I am born again!” May this one bless you.

This is Wesley's Hidden Gems, number 9. I've taken these old Wesley hymns that have long been forgotten, or maybe never even sung, but that really are special to me as I've read them, and that I think we should sing, or at least know, because they really relate to our real Christian experience.

This one seems to be about his conversion, and I love it! I can relate to it. Maybe you can also relate to this beautiful song of how he came to faith. It comes from the 1742 Hymns and Sacred Poems hymnal, and it has the title, in the hymnal, of Isaiah 26:13-14. So let's just read that before we get into it, because it's interesting to see how he relates this verse to his own life.

"LORD our God, other lords besides you have ruled over us, but your name alone do we honor. They are now dead, they live no more; their spirits do not rise. You punished them and brought them to ruin; you wiped out all memory of them." (Isaiah 26:13-14 NIV11)

In the original context, Isaiah's talking about Israel and the different gods that they started to serve. But then they wiped them out. God wiped them out and brought His people back to Himself. Wesley, in this hymn, relates that as his conversion story, the way that he was serving other gods, but then he was born again, and those other lords were conquered. Very interesting, but such a true way to describe salvation.

So let me take you through his words, and then we'll sing it at the end.

What Do the Lyrics of "O Lord, My God, With Shame I Own" Mean?

Verse 1

O Lord, my God, with shame I own,
that other lords have swayed,
have in my heart set up their throne,
and abject I obeyed.

So where Israel had been doing this as a nation, he recognised in his own heart, "I have let other lords take the throne that only God should have." Isn't this the state of anybody who isn't born again? Other things are lords in their lives. Other things take the place of God and sit on the throne, and we just obey them and go along with them.

Even as Christians, we can do that. Israel had God, but allowed other gods into their way of life, and the same can happen to us Christians. We can start to put other lords on the throne, and maybe we need to repent of that today.

Verse 2

Verse two says:

Thy enemies usurped the place,
and robbed Thee of Thy due;
a slave to every vice, I was,
and only evil knew.

To usurp something is to use its power for yourself. He had given other gods, false gods, the power that only God should have, and robbed God of the worship and the glory due His name.

A slave to every vice, I was - that sounds a lot like Paul talking in Romans 6 and 7 about being a slave to sin. Before you're born again, you're a slave to sin, and you just follow along with your sinful desires.

Verse 3

Verse three - he talks about it even more.

With sin, I joyfully complied;
I yielded, unconstrained,
passion, and appetite, and pride;
and self and nature reigned.

Instead of going after the things of God, he just joyfully complied with his sins and yielded to them with no trying to fight temptation - just letting his passions and his appetites and his pride run loose.

Is this your story? Are you still there? If you were to honestly examine your life, are you living that way?

Paul says, examine yourself to see if you're in the faith. I believe that if you're joyfully complying with sin, and letting it run unconstrained, then you need to ask yourself: am I actually born again? Because the Christian is not one in whom self and nature reigns.

This is the very crux of Wesleyan theology: when you're born again, you no longer just go off into sin, but you live a life of holiness.

Verse 4

Here in verse four is where his own story seems to take a shift.

But ended is the shameful hour;
th’ usurper’s reign is past.
Blasted their strength, overturned their power,
and I am saved at last.

Wesley's telling the story of how “I lived that way - totally giving in to my sin all the time. But that part of my life is now ended because I've been saved, and the strength of my sin and my enemies has been overturned by God's grace, and their power and their position on my throne, that's all now ended, as I have been saved!”

So there's a clear "before" and "now being saved" moment. Remember, Charles Wesley - grew up in a very Christian household, extremely focused on God. He even became a priest at a young age. Yet he still realised that at some point he had been living apart from God, and needed a moment of being saved when he recognised his sinful life and needed that new birth that Jesus talks about.

How about you? Do you need to have that moment? Even if you've lived a sort of nominally Christian life by virtue of being born into a Christian household, you still need to have that moment of being saved.

Verse 5

It's now changed, because now he's saved, and his focus changes.

Thy love, by which redeemed I am;
forever be adored!
I now shall live to bless Thy name,
and call my Jesus Lord.

So there were all those other false lords - all the sinful stuff that had taken residence in his heart. Now he's saying “his love is going to be my adoration. I'm going to adore Him all my days, and I will live to bless His name and call Jesus Lord.”

This is the Christian life! No other lords on your heart! No other things take up His place on the throne! Jesus is your Lord, and you bless Him and worship Him all day long.

Verse 6

Those other lords, no more;
no more their slave am I.
I tread them down with strength divine;
I all my sins defy.

He's saying, "I'm not just going on in my sins and asking for forgiveness. Those other lords are gone. I'm not a slave to them anymore, but I tread them down!“ So they still come after him. Notice that they still tempt him - you'll never be free from that. But he defies them, and he does it not in his own strength, but with strength Divine. I think that's very important - the Christian can overcome sin and temptation through divine strength and faith in the indwelling presence of the Spirit.

Verse 7

Freed am I now, forever freed,
from their destructive power.

You see, the born-again Christian has power over sin. Do you remember another Wesley hymn that says, "He breaks the power of cancelled sin, He sets the prisoner free"? Well, this is the same thought!

Nailed to the cross, they all are dead,
and shall revive no more.

Let me ask you again - and I ask myself too - is this true in our lives? Having been born again, having been saved, have we actually nailed sin to the cross and walked on in freedom? Or are we still playing with the world? If so, maybe we need to see if our conversion was actually real.

Verse 8

The glorious presence of my God
hath all the tyrants slain;
their name, their memory is destroyed,
for I am born again!

His presence is what kills the enemy and the sin in our lives - with God's presence in us, and the Spirit in us, the enemy has no power. Isn't that powerful? Their name - the name of my sins, the memory of my sins - they're all nailed to the cross, and I'm born again. I'm free from all of that.

Wesley had a very positive view of what happens to the person who has been born again: he sees that by grace they may now be free from the power of sin.

You must know that he - or at least his brother, John Wesley - wrote a sermon called On Sin in Believers. He was not saying that when you're born again, you are free from sin now forever. But what he was saying is that you're free from the power of sin. Outwardly, you no longer do things that are anti-God and just hope that He's going to forgive you, or claim His forgiveness. That sort of stuff you now overcome. There is still an inward inclination that the new birth doesn't remove. According to Wesley, only entire sanctification will remove that, and that's not what he's writing about in this hymn. He's talking about just outwardly giving in to sin - giving other things lordship in your heart. That's over now, and you're living free of that. Yes, there's still that inclination, and those inner attitudes and thoughts that are sinful, that you still need to be cleansed. But no longer are you living as a slave to sin.

Now, I ask us: is this true for us? Or have we bought into a kind of cheap view of salvation that says, "God loves you, and He just doesn't really mind your sin"? You can just go on doing it because He loves you and forgives you. That's not - at least, that's not how Wesley understood it, and I don't think that's how the Bible puts it either. You know, John talks about those who are born of God: they cannot go on sinning. Those who are born of God do not sin any more, because the works of the devil are destroyed by grace.

Conclusion

So I read this, and I was so taken with Wesley's words, because they gave me such hope for what the new birth can, and should, do in our hearts, if we know what it's about!

What do you think of these words? Did anything really bless you? Share in the comments below if you'd like to get these songs before I release them as an album in 2027.

Head over to my Patreon - any amount a month - to support the work I do; all my music is there. Everything I've ever released, including these, ahead of the album release, is there too - go and check out the others. The first eight are brilliant: all sorts of themes that Wesley covers in these hymns, and I hope you'll enjoy those. Please subscribe - by the way, that's free - and share this with somebody who you think will enjoy it.

Now let me share my version of the song, my melody that I wrote. I feel like the arrangement needs more - I don't know, I've recorded it and I just can't quite figure it out. It feels like something's missing. So maybe by the time I release the album, I'll have figured it out. This is an acoustic guitar thing, and quite easy to sing - so sing along, and let the words be a prayer for you. If you are still living with other lords on your heart, and other gods in control, maybe today, as you hear these words, you'll have a moment of being born again: placing your faith in Christ, turning away from those things, committing to a life of discipleship, and seeing His death on the cross as the only merit for your salvation, trusting in Him for that, you'll be born again as you place your faith in Him in that way.

Although maybe you have done that a long time ago, other gods have started to creep in again, and you've lost that state of commitment to Him. Maybe today you need to recover that, and recommit.

Whatever it is, do it. I hope that as we sing it, God's going to do something as you hear these words.