The Story Behind the Song
A brief biography of 19th-century Baptist pastor Robert Lowry (1826-1899) was shared in “The Story Behind the Song” for the Easter hymn Christ Arose. You will also find there a list of the songs still being sung to this day for which he wrote both words and music, or only music for another author’s words.
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Nothing but the Blood falls into the former category. It was first published in the hymnal Gospel Music (New York, 1876), compiled by Lowry and his associate William H. Doane. It was inspired by Hebrews 9:22, which reads, “And almost all things are by the law purged with blood; and without shedding of blood is no remission” (KJV).
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The theme of blood—specifically, Jesus’ blood—permeates the song. If all four stanzas are sung with the chorus after each stanza, the phrase “Nothing but the blood of Jesus” will be heard twelve times. It’s a stark reminder of the gravity of sin. As Romans 6:23 tells us, “The wages of sin is death.”
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But the song also tells us of the grandeur of grace and how Jesus paid the penalty our sin deserved by giving His own life in place of ours. The Old Testament law referenced in Hebrews 9:22, which foreshadowed the work of Christ and was in fact fulfilled by Jesus (Matthew 5:17), made very clear the connection between the blood of a sacrifice and the atonement that that blood made possible. Leviticus 17:11 reads, “For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it for you on the altar to make atonement for your souls, for it is the blood that makes atonement by the life.”
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Lowry used a tried-and-true technique in Nothing but the Blood. Call and response is a compositional method in which a series of different “calls” are all answered by the same “response.” In that way, a person who is not familiar with a song can easily begin to participate in it by learning and repeating the response. In the hymn, the various calls are either questions (“What can wash away my sin?… What can make me whole again?…”) or statements (“For my pardon this I see… For my cleansing, this my plea…”) that are all answered by the same response (“Nothing but the blood of Jesus”).
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A good gospel song will pack deep truths in an easily accessible medium. In just the repeated phrase “Nothing but the blood of Jesus,” three important doctrines are addressed. First, the words “nothing but” speak to the exclusive nature of salvation, how it is possible only through Jesus. As Peter boldly declared to the very people who had had Christ killed just weeks earlier, “This Jesus is the stone that was rejected by you, the builders, which has become the cornerstone. And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:11-12).
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“The blood” speaks to the seriousness of sin. Sin is not harmless. It destroys. King Jeroboam in the Old Testament discovered that sobering fact first-hand: “Jeroboam did not turn from his evil way, but made priests for the high places again from among all the people. Any who would, he ordained to be priests of the high places. And this thing became sin to the house of Jeroboam, so as to cut it off and to destroy it from the face of the earth” (1 Kings 13:33-34). Sin is serious, and it takes blood to atone for it.
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But not just any blood. The blood of bulls and sheep and goats was powerless to deal with sin (Hebrews 9:13-14). But the blood of Jesus—that blood “cleanses us from all sin” (1 John 1:7). His blood does not merely cover over sin; it takes it away. “…much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God” (Hebrews 9:14).
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A proven method for teaching is to pose questions, allow the learners to ponder and then supply the correct answer. A kindergarten teacher may ask her class, “Which is the red star on this paper?” before pointing it out. The psalmist asked, “How can a young man keep his way pure?” before giving the answer—“By guarding it according to your word (Psalm 119:9). Paul asked, “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?” then stated that “neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:35, 38-39).
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Robert Lowry asked, “What can wash away my sin? What can make me whole again?” Christians have been answering for almost 150 years, “Nothing but the blood of Jesus!”
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