Let the beauty of Jesus be seen in me,
All His wonderful passion and purity.
May His Spirit divine all my being refine
Let the beauty of Jesus be seen in me.
When your burden is heavy and hard to bear
When your neighbors refuse all your load to share
When you're feeling so blue, Don't know just what to do
Let the beauty of Jesus be seen in you.
When somebody has been so unkind to you,
Some word spoken that pierces you through and through.
Think how He was beguiled, spat upon and reviled,
Let the beauty of Jesus be seen in you
From the dawn of the morning till close of day,
In example in deeds and in all you say,
Lay your gifts at His feet, ever strive to keep sweet
Let the beauty of Jesus be seen in you.
This one will probably go in a direction you never expected. Look at the third verse. Read it through once, twice, or as many times as it takes to find the problem.
If you haven’t found it after half a dozen readings, don’t be too hard on yourself. After all, I sang this song for five decades before I saw it. Will it help to tell you the problem is in the third line of that verse?
Hardly anyone I have spoken to sees it. But tell me this, when was Jesus ever “beguiled?” I have checked over half a dozen dictionaries, and that word always has something to do with being “deceived.” Look at 2 Cor 11:3: But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve in his craftiness...
I looked up every usage of that Greek word in the New Testament (5) and they all mean the same thing, sometimes even translated “deceived.” In fact, Rom 7:11, says sin beguiled us. Now tell me that has anything at all to do with our Lord.
What I really do not understand is the extent people will go to in order to make this lyric scriptural. One person frantically searched more and more dictionaries until he found some “forty-fifth” definition that might possibly make the word mean something besides deception. But tell me, is it a good word choice if I have to stand on my head and do cartwheels in order to find anything that will make the concept correct, when the easy, normal use of the word is anything but? Why would anyone be so desperate to prove a hymn written by a man did not have an error in it? (No, he was not related to the man.)
I find I cannot sing that line in the song any longer. The rest is perfectly fine and full of wonderful thoughts and I sing them “with the spirit and the understanding.”
But all this trouble over one word makes me wonder what else we try to hang onto that might be a whole lot more important. We have things to say about friends and neighbors who cannot seem to let go of a doctrine they have believed all their lives, even when we show them a clear passage on the subject. Maybe it’s time to ask ourselves if we would really be any better.
But I am afraid that as the serpent beguiled Eve by his cunning, your thoughts will be led astray from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ. 2Cor 11:3
Dene Ward
All His wonderful passion and purity.
May His Spirit divine all my being refine
Let the beauty of Jesus be seen in me.
When your burden is heavy and hard to bear
When your neighbors refuse all your load to share
When you're feeling so blue, Don't know just what to do
Let the beauty of Jesus be seen in you.
When somebody has been so unkind to you,
Some word spoken that pierces you through and through.
Think how He was beguiled, spat upon and reviled,
Let the beauty of Jesus be seen in you
From the dawn of the morning till close of day,
In example in deeds and in all you say,
Lay your gifts at His feet, ever strive to keep sweet
Let the beauty of Jesus be seen in you.
This one will probably go in a direction you never expected. Look at the third verse. Read it through once, twice, or as many times as it takes to find the problem.
If you haven’t found it after half a dozen readings, don’t be too hard on yourself. After all, I sang this song for five decades before I saw it. Will it help to tell you the problem is in the third line of that verse?
Hardly anyone I have spoken to sees it. But tell me this, when was Jesus ever “beguiled?” I have checked over half a dozen dictionaries, and that word always has something to do with being “deceived.” Look at 2 Cor 11:3: But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve in his craftiness...
I looked up every usage of that Greek word in the New Testament (5) and they all mean the same thing, sometimes even translated “deceived.” In fact, Rom 7:11, says sin beguiled us. Now tell me that has anything at all to do with our Lord.
What I really do not understand is the extent people will go to in order to make this lyric scriptural. One person frantically searched more and more dictionaries until he found some “forty-fifth” definition that might possibly make the word mean something besides deception. But tell me, is it a good word choice if I have to stand on my head and do cartwheels in order to find anything that will make the concept correct, when the easy, normal use of the word is anything but? Why would anyone be so desperate to prove a hymn written by a man did not have an error in it? (No, he was not related to the man.)
I find I cannot sing that line in the song any longer. The rest is perfectly fine and full of wonderful thoughts and I sing them “with the spirit and the understanding.”
But all this trouble over one word makes me wonder what else we try to hang onto that might be a whole lot more important. We have things to say about friends and neighbors who cannot seem to let go of a doctrine they have believed all their lives, even when we show them a clear passage on the subject. Maybe it’s time to ask ourselves if we would really be any better.
But I am afraid that as the serpent beguiled Eve by his cunning, your thoughts will be led astray from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ. 2Cor 11:3
Dene Ward
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