What Can Wash Away My Sin?

We just wrapped up a five-week worship series in my local church called “True Grit” that was all about Jesus. The sermon titles were cool: “Trailblazer,” “Risk-taker,” “Fighter,” “Leader,” and “Liberator.” Here’s the blurb about the series I wrote for our website:

We’ve all seen those pictures of the fragile, frail Jesus with long eyelashes. Or the nice blondish guy with blue eyes and a baby sheep in his arms. Who was Jesus, really? Was he a wimp and a softy? Or was he a leader of leaders, challenging the political and religious institutions of his day, turning commonly-held beliefs on end — a historical, gritty figure who forever changed the world as we know it? Join us as we look at another side of Jesus, an edgier side, a side of him you may have never seen…TRUE GRIT.

For our song services we did some some deep and moving songs about Jesus (“Here I Am to Worship,” “Have You Seen Jesus My Lord,” “Glory Be to Jesus,” “We Fall Down,” “In Christ Alone,” and others) but we also did some “grittier” songs about Jesus – “Power,” “Jesus Jesus I Love Thee,” “Victory Chant,” upbeat and rockin versions of “Lord of All” and “I Want Jesus to Walk with Me” (we even did the Foo Fighter’s song, “My Hero”). Included in these was an upbeat version of “What Can Wash Away My Sin?” (otherwise known as “Nothing But the Blood”) that my friend Chris Aleshin came up with. Here is a video from our singers’ rehearsal the night we were learning it. (By the way I have a nice mellow arrangement I do of this too. I’ll have to post that another time.)

WHAT CAN WASH AWAY MY SIN

What can wash away my sin?
Nothing but the blood of Jesus!
What can make me whole again?
Nothing but the blood of Jesus!

O precious is the flow
That makes me white as snow.
No other fount I know,
Nothing but the blood of Jesus

For my pardon this I see
Nothing but the blood of Jesus!
For my cleansing, this my plea
Nothing but the blood of Jesus!

Nothing can for sin atone,
Nothing but the blood of Jesus!
Naught of good that I have done,
Nothing but the blood of Jesus!

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