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New Music: The Love of Christ

Jun 10, 2025 | Musings, new

I thought for a while about using some fancy-schmancy poetic name for this song–“Reflections on Romans 8” or somesuch thing–but after a bit of thinking, in true Hobbit fashion, I settled on the plainest and simplest option:

Hobbits have it right.

“The Love of Christ.”

I decided that expresses what I wanted to say best.  As the Gaffer said, “Make it short, and then you won’t have to cut it short before you can use it.”

Romans 8 is such a gorgeous chapter, and the last few verses are full of such conviction and triumph that it would be one of my most well-worn pages…  if digital pages actually became dogeared. As Peter, Paul’s contemporary, remarked in his writings, sometimes Paul is hard to understand. That’s often true, but not so much here. This is a chapter full of hope and promise and rejoicing and I love it.

This chapter called me for years, but since I’m not great at verbatim scriptural settings (and this song certainly isn’t one of those!) it took me until now to get around to answering.

Here’s my take on Romans 8, for Solo voice, and for Solo with optional treble duet:

Solo (in F major) by James Loynes:

 

And here’s the duet (in G major) sung by Rebecca Lord:

So there you have it. This song is the first one I’ve posted with a Dorico file available. If try your hand at transposing it, let me know how it goes?

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