How Deep the Father’s Love for Us

TOWNEND

I. Background

Very early in his career, after graduating from Sussex University in 1985, British musician Stuart Townend was shepherded into leadership by the staff at Church of Christ the King, and in 1987 he was offered a position in the music department at Kingsway publishers, where he was involved in producing songbooks and recordings. By 1994, he had established himself as a capable worship leader for large events, and he was involved in leading and producing music for the Stoneleigh International Bible Week. Up to that point, his songwriting endeavors had been focused on writing congregational songs in a popular, contemporary style, but in 1995, he took an important first step in a new direction—the craft of writing a hymn. His first-ever hymn, “How deep the Father’s love for us,” would turn out to be enormously successful. Townend has provided accounts of this experience on more than one occasion. One of the earliest accounts was given for a Worship Together New Song Café video in 2001 or 2002:

I wrote this a few years ago, and really wanted to set out to write a hymn. I was feeling there were lots of songs around, but there wasn’t a lot of content in the songs, and I really wanted to write something that was more hymn-like. I was finding in my own worship leading I was more and more going back to the hymns to introduce content, and I was thinking, “Why is it that we don’t have songs that are full of poetic, powerful language these days?” So I kind of set out to do that. 

I remember sitting down and just having that feeling, I want to write a hymn. I’m going to write a hymn. I found the melody came very quickly. It was one of those things where you feel the melody came so easily, you’re thinking, “I’ve borrowed this from something, from somewhere else.” So I probably spent the first two years of the song’s life in panic that someone was going to come up and say, “You stole my melody,” or “Did you realize it’s exactly the same as this?” And then the lyrics began to kind of just spill out, when we contemplate on the cross and the power of the cross, and it came very simply.[1]

On behalf of Mission:Worship, Stuart recorded a similar story, but elaborated more on his process of crafting the text:

This melody just kind of popped out of my head one day. I wasn’t listening to anything in particular or whatever. It was a very easy melody. It just came really easily and quite spontaneously in some ways. I was aware that it was quite hymn-like in a way and I thought, “I wonder what words would fit with that?” . . .

So I started kind of thinking about words for it, and because it had a kind of classic, hymn-like element to it, I thought, well, maybe I should actually just tell the story of Christ on the cross, but tell it perhaps from the point of view—and this is what I was thinking about at the time—was what it cost the Father to give the Son. You know, we have to think about Christ suffering, and there’s a lot of talk about the wrath of God, you know, and is that right to think that the Father’s wrath was poured out on Christ? And I think that is right to say that, but that’s not to say that God is a vengeful God, that actually it cost him to give up his Son. So that’s why the first line says, “How deep the Father’s love,” you know, that he should give his only Son. So that really was the starting place. And then in a sense, the second verse kind of develops my complicity in it, if you like, that actually it was my sin that actually held him there. He went to the cross because of what I’d done. So although it tells the story, it is telling the story from a personal viewpoint. And then the final verse goes into, you know, I won’t boast in anything except what he has done for me. So really that’s the thinking of the words. 

Melodically, it came quite spontaneously; as usual, I find with the words, takes a bit of crafting, takes a bit of work, rewrites, and stuff like that, so that probably took a few days to come together, but it kind of felt it settled in a good way in terms of feeling that it had a personal perspective, but it was pointing towards Christ. And that’s how the song came together.[2]

In his CD liner notes for The New Hymn Makers (2003), he offered another small detail:

I think I had “Amazing Grace” in mind as I was writing—not so much because of the content, but because of the wonderful tone of humble gratitude, which undergirds that great hymn as the hymnwriter contemplates the grace of God.[3]

The stated copyright date for the song is 1995, and it was probably premiered at Church of Christ the King (now called Emmanuel), in Brighton, England, where Townend was worship leader, but its published and recorded debuts happened in 1996.

II. Discography & Videography

Townend’s hymn was first recorded on the Stoneleigh International Bible Week album My First Love, performed live at the National Agricultural Centre, Warwick, in late July and early August 1996. The album was released on 4 October 1996. For that event, Townend was assisted by several of his long-time collaborators from the Fellingham clan: David (vocals, trumpet), Lou (vocals), Nathan (drums), and Luke (bass), plus other musicians and singers.

Townend has recorded the song many other times in his career. It was included on his solo album, Say the Word (1997), and on Spring Harvest Live Worship 97, vol. 1 (1997); Worship Together Live, Vol. 1: King of Love (1998), recorded at Stoneleigh; In Christ Alone: Yesterday, Today, Forever (2004), from an unspecified Mandate men’s conference; The Mandate: O Church Arise (2006), and The Mandate: See What a Morning (2006); Mission:Worship (2006), released on CD and DVD, recorded in Colorado Springs; Best of Stuart Townend Live (2007), from an unspecified event, reissued on Ultimate Collection (2013); Worship at the Abbey (2007), released on CD and DVD, sung by Kelly Minter at Abbey Road Studios in London; and Best of Stuart Townend Live, vol. 2 (2015) with an unspecified congregation and orchestra.

See also the tribute album, The New Hymn Makers: Stuart Townend (2003), performed by Paul Leddington Wright and St. Michael’s Singers; An Evening in Prague (2005), as arranged and conducted by Keith Getty for the Czech Television Studio Orchestra; and the compilation CD Introducing Stuart Townend (2010).

In 2020, Townend recorded a video for YouTube, demonstrating how to play the song on guitar using a DADGAD tuning.

III. Publication

The song was first published in The Best of Stoneleigh (Kingsway, 1996 | Fig. 1), and in New Songs 96/97 (Kingsway, 1996), in the format of a melody with a basic keyboard accompaniment and guitar chord symbols. Thus, although the song was conceived as a hymn, it was not intially offered in a hymnal-friendly, four-part choral score. It was also included in Kingsway’s Songs of Fellowship, vol. 2 (1998).

In the United States, the song had appeared in the Worship Together Songbook 1.0 (1999). Its first appearance in a hymnal was in Sing Glory (Suffolk: Kevin Mayhew, 1999), followed by inclusion in the Irish Church Hymnal (2000), using a harmonization by Donald Davison, and in Praise! (2000). In hymnals, the tune is usually called TOWNEND.

IV. Analysis

Fellow hymn writer Christopher Idle found much to admire in the hymn, even though he believed it was a little raw:

Its theology is bold and biblical. Judged by the strict standards of classic hymns, it falls some way short of rhyme scheme. Watts, Wesley, or Dudley-Smith might see it as a first draft to be duly worked at. The same is true of many Kendrick or Redman songs; their advocates would say we are using the wrong yardstick. But a couple of lines mark this out for me as something special. . . .

Would we have stood by Jesus, come to his rescue, fought for truth? No way. We would have fled from danger, denied the Saviour, or worse. . . . “Behold, the man upon a cross, my sin upon his shoulders; Ashamed, I hear my mocking voice call out among the scoffers. It was my sin that held him here . . .” If there are other songs which make that point so clearly, I do not know them. . . . Jesus died to save, not loyal followers, staunch defenders, or worthy friends, but the ungodly—his enemies, persecutors, mockers and sinners. He calls us to repent and believe in him; part of our expressed response comes in the heartfelt and thoughtful singing of some nourishing biblical hymns.[4]

In another resource, Idle thought the tune was reminiscent of NEAR THE CROSS by William H. Doane.[5]

Vince Wright, whose website The Berean Test aims to provide detailed Scriptural vetting of congregational songs, found the song to be thoroughly scriptural. The first stanza, for example, connects well to John 3:16, Romans 5:6–8, and Romans 8:17. In the second stanza, we find substitutionary atonement, as in Isaiah 53:5 (“he was wounded for our transgressions”) and elsewhere; Wright calls the personalization of the singer being in the crowd a form of “poetic license,” and the last part of the stanza recalls Scriptures such as 1 Peter 2:24 (“He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness,” ESV). Regarding the third stanza, Wright called the first four lines “A great rewording of Galatians 6:14”; he saw the next line (“Why should I gain from his reward?”) as a statement of unmerited grace; and the final two lines repeat or build upon earlier ideas.[6]

Wright’s only complaint was against the line “The Father turns his face away,” which he believed was a misinterpretation of Psalm 22:1–2 and/or Habakkuk 1:13. The contradiction is clear in Psalm 22:24 (“For he has not despised or abhorred the affliction of the afflicted, and he has not hidden his face from him, but has heard when he cried to him,” ESV).

See also Stuart Townend’s website for his own preferred Scripture references related to the song.

Some modern editors with strong convictions against generic masculine language might be troubled by the term “sons” (“bring many sons to glory,” an allusion to Heb. 2:10). Of course, Townend’s intent was for the term to be interpreted broadly (children, or sons and daughters), in accordance with a long historical precedent for that usage, but not all singers or editors will affirm that kind of latitude.

V. Legacy

Townend believed much of the success of the song is related to its ability to cross stylistic barriers:

It’s been interesting to see the response, that actually it’s quite useful not only in the more modern, contemporary churches, but in the more traditional churches as well, because of the style, and I’m kind of excited about that, I’m excited about the fact that you can write something that actually feeds the broader church, rather than just particular musical pockets of the church, and that’s something that motivates me, and probably why I’ve thought more and more about writing hymns, [because] I’d like to be able to try and feed, if you like, the whole church, not just a part of it.[7]

On his website, he mentioned how his status as a hymn writer has sometimes come with a curious assumption: “[I]t has perhaps branded me as an old man before my time. It was fed back to me that at a conference a couple who loved the song were surprised to hear I was still alive. . . .”[8]

Perhaps more importantly, the song laid the groundwork for significant songwriting opportunities, which came just a few years later. For Keith Getty, this song was a key reason why he decided to approach Stuart Townend in 2000 for help in writing modern hymns,[9] and the first fruit of that partnership was “In Christ alone.”

by CHRIS FENNER
for Hymnology Archive
15 March 2022

Footnotes:

1. Stuart Townend & Rick Cua, “How deep the Father’s love for us,” New Song Cafe (2001): YouTube

2. Stuart Townend, “How deep the Father’s love for us (Story behind the song)” Mission:Worship (9 Feb. 2009): YouTube

3. Stuart Townend, “How deep the Father’s love for us,” The New Hymn Makers, CD liner notes (East Sussex, UK: Kingsway, 2003).

4. Christopher Idle, “Monthly column on hymns and songs,” Evangelicals Now (April 2003): EN

5. Christopher Idle, “How deep the Father’s love for us,” Exploring Praise! vol. 1 (Darlington, UK: Praise Trust, 2006), pp. 302–303.

6. Vince Wright, “Stuart Townend—How Deep the Father’s Love for Us,” The Berean Test (4 Mar. 2020): BT

7. Stuart Townend, “How deep the Father’s love for us (Story behind the song)” Mission:Worship (9 Feb. 2009): YouTube

8. Stuart Townend, “How deep the Father’s love,” Stuart Townend: ST

9. Stuart Townend & Keith Getty, “How was In Christ Alone written?” We Are Worship (7 Apr. 2016): YouTube

Additional Resources:

Edward Darling & Donald Davison, “How deep the Father’s love for us,” Companion to Church Hymnal (Dublin: Columba, 2005), pp. 328–329.

“How deep the Father’s love for us,” Hymnary.org: https://hymnary.org/text/how_deep_the_fathers_love_for_us