To Live Is Christ

To live is Christ, to die is gain
Should any love of flesh remain?

Once dead, now live, my spirit slept
‘Til Christ on high, His blood He wept
For wrathful weight of Father Just
Pressed hard on Him who knew no lust.

Hung as did the desert snake
Did He, the Lamb, both bleed and quake
For wretched heart and sin-stained land
Abandon, abandoned, abandoned Man.

Judgment full and fully spent!
Dead and raised His earthly tent:
The Father Good, the Spirit mine
His death, my life now intertwined.

To live is Christ, to die is gain
Should any love of flesh remain?

Vessel shamed, yet mended true
In my soul, blood runs blue;
Royal priest and Kingdom bound:
“Journey forth to Heaven’s ground."

“Yet on the earth My Kingdom still
Sojourns with thee; obey My will.
In the world a stranger be
And make thine life My homily.”

To live is Christ, to die is gain
Should any love of flesh remain?
From care and fear for Him alone
Mortify, mortify thine fleshly home.