A few months ago, our church sang the song "Lord Have Mercy (For What We Have Done)" by Matt Papa and Matt Boswell. It's a very pretty song (and I'm a sucker for a good kyrie), and I was thinking over it that night and realized I wanted a little more to it. It wasn't so much that anything needed fixing, but in my mind it felt just a little bit incomplete, so that night I sketched out a rough draft for an additional verse. A couple of weeks later I mentioned it to our pastor who oversees worship (another Matt, because you can never have too many) and after a couple of weeks back and forth he helped me to get it to a spot that I am really quite happy with, so up front I'd like to thank Matt Pottenger for his help and feedback.
Before I get to the additional verse, I wanted to do a brief survey of the song as it was to provide a sort of justification for why I wanted the third verse. The song itself can be found on YouTube (or most of the streaming services).
Verse 1
“For what we have done and left undone
We fall on Your countless mercies
For sins that are known and those unknown
We call on Your name so holy
For envy and pride, for closing our eyes
For scorning our very neighbor
In thought, word, and deed, we′ve failed You, our King
How deeply we need a Savior”
The first verse opens with echoes of the Confession of Sin from the Anglican Book of Common Prayer: "We have left undone those things which we ought to have done, and we have done those things which we ought not to have done," and leads us into an admission of our sin and guilt before a holy God. It confesses that we are included in the "all" of Romans 3:23: "for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" (ESV), and recognizes that we are in need of a savior.
Verse 2
“For what You have done, Your life of love
You perfectly lived, we praise You
Though tempted and tried, You fixed Your eyes
You finished the work God gave You
And there on the tree, a King among thieves
You bled for a world’s betrayal
You loved to the end, our merciful friend
How pure and forever faithful”
The second verse then moves to God's response to our dilemma in the work and person of Jesus Christ. Here we have portrayed the work of Christ in his humiliation [1]. This is the Christ who "did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant...he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross" (Philippians 2:6-8, ESV). This verse speaks of His active obedience ("You perfectly lived...though tempted and tried...") so that "by the one man's obedience the many will be made righteous" (Romans 5:19, ESV), and of his passive obedience (that is, the obedience during His passion, His death on the cross).
Both are lovely verses and the music is good, but I didn't want to just leave the song where it ended. As it is, it ends with the Protestant's objection to the crucifix: "You loved to the end, our merciful friend / How pure and forever faithful." If this is "the end" then the song winds up leaving Jesus on the cross [2]. How then can he show the mercy we cry for in the chorus?
Verse 3
In my mind, the next logical verse then was to follow up the work of Christ in his humiliation with His work in his exaltation. This is the Jesus whom God raised up and exalted to His right hand (Acts 2) and of whom the book of Hebrews speaks extensively of as our High Priest. This is the direction I wanted to take with the new verse:
“Raised to the right hand, the Son of Man,
You are there a priest forever
The veil torn away, Your blood now saves
It washes the worst transgressor
In heaven above, you show your great love
You stand before God the Father
For us intercede, our perfect High Priest!
Remember our sins no longer”
This verse opens by raising Jesus both from His death that ended the second verse and to the right hand of God, as confessed in the Psalm quoted by Peter above and throughout Hebrews. This Psalm also speaks of Jesus being made a priest forever (after the order of Melchizidek, though I was not about to try to fit that name into the meter or rhyme scheme). It also now provides a reasoning whereby we can ask for mercy: the blood of Jesus which justifies us (Romans 5) and sanctifies us (Hebrews 9).
Finally, I draw on Romans 8: "Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?" (ESV). When we come to Him to ask for mercy, then, we can have confidence that He will hear us, and will then do as he promised by the prophet: "For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more" (Jeremiah 31:34, ESV). He who we cry "Lord have mercy! Christ have mercy! Lord have mercy!" to will do it (1 John 1:9).
Footnotes
[1] At the time we sang this and I started writing the new verse, I was working my way through Herman Bavinck's The Wonderful Works of God, and was right around (or perhaps just past) his chapters "The Work of Christ in His Humiliation" and "The Work of Christ in His Exaltation," without which I probably wouldn't have been thinking in these terms.
[2] There are certain settings where this kind of construct could work (thinking along the lines of a Good Friday service, perhaps), but I don't think it does here, where the song is served better by being able to be a self-contained unit.