My Hope Is Built On Nothing Less

My hope is built on nothing less

Than Jesus’ blood and righteousness;

I dare not trust the sweetest frame,

But wholly lean on Jesus’ name.

On Christ, the solid rock, I stand;

All other ground is sinking sand,

All other ground is sinking sand.

When darkness veils His lovely face,

I rest on His unchanging grace;

In every high and stormy gale,

My anchor holds within the vale.

His oath, His covenant, His blood

Support me in the whelming flood;

When all around my soul gives way,

He then is all my hope and stay.

When He shall come with trumpet sound,

O may I then in Him be found!

Dressed in His righteousness alone,

Faultless to stand before the throne!

EDWARD MOTE (1797–1874)

MANY of the British hymnwriters were children of the clergy or came from middle- or upper-class backgrounds. But not Edward Mote. His parents kept a pub in London, and Mote says, “My Sundays were spent in the streets; so ignorant was I that I did not know that there was a God.” He was apprenticed to a cabinetmaker who took him to church, where he heard the gospel message. Mote himself became a successful cabinetmaker in a London suburb and was active in his local church.

Mote wrote this hymn while he was working as a cabinetmaker. The chorus came to his mind as he was walking to work, and during the day the stanzas came to him. Two years later he published it in a collection of his own hymns and titled it “The Immutable Basis of a Sinner’s Hope.” It is a hymn that combines deep biblical theology with sincere personal experience.

If we are living in the light, as God is in the light, then we have fellowship with each other, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, cleanses us from all sin. If we claim we have no sin, we are only fooling ourselves and not living in the truth. But if we confess our sins to him, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all wickedness.

1 John 1:7-9