Olney Hymns · Chapter
The Way of Access explained
This poem reflects on the all-seeing nature of God and the sinner's inability to hide from His gaze.
What happens
This poem reflects on the all-seeing nature of God and the sinner's inability to hide from His gaze. It acknowledges human sinfulness and the despair of appearing before a holy God, but finds hope and safety in the intercession of Christ, who stands between the sinner and God, taking the sinner's sins and giving His obedience.
Themes in this chapter
Human Sinfulness and Depravity
The narrator confesses his own vileness and blackness before a holy God, acknowledging the depth of his sin.
Grace and Unmerited Favor
The poem celebrates the wondrous love and mystery of Christ's substitution, where the sinner's sins are laid on Christ and His obedience is imputed to the believer.
Characters to notice
- God
The eternal Lord who sees all things and from whom nothing is hidden.
- Jesus Christ
The Saviour who stands between the sinner and God, pleading before the throne.
- The Narrator
The speaker who acknowledges his own sinfulness and relies on Christ's intercession.
Key passages
“One glance of thine, eternal Lord, Pierces all nature through; Nor heaven nor earth nor hell afford A shelter from thy view!”
Your single look, eternal Lord, sees through everything in creation; neither heaven, earth, nor hell can hide anything from your sight.
The opening stanza emphasizes God's omniscience and the impossibility of hiding from Him.
“But since my Saviour stands between, In garments dyed in blood, ’Tis he, instead of me, is seen, When I approach to God.”
But because my Savior stands in the gap, clothed in blood-stained garments, it is He who is seen in my place when I come before God.
This stanza introduces the central theme of substitutionary atonement.
“My breaches of the law are his, And his obedience mine.”
My violations of the law are counted as His, and His perfect obedience is credited to me.
The final lines summarize the doctrine of imputation.