Father, Thy most benign intent

Verse 1
Father, thy most benign intent
With warmest gratitude we own,
Thou hast in human likeness sent
Thy Son, for all our sins t’ atone,
Sinless, yet like his brethren made,
He died a victim in our stead.

Verse 2
He died, that sin in us might die,
Condemn’d, when Jesus breath’d his last:
Sin in the flesh we now defy;
Its guilt and tyranny are past;
And dying of its mortal wound,
It soon shall be no longer found.

Verse 3
The righteousness thy law requires,
Shall then be all in us fulfill’d,
Who now renounce our own desires,
And to thy Spirit’s motions yield;
And following our celestial guide,
Go on, ’till wholly sanctified.

Verse 4
In us the full obedience true,
Which Jesus for his people wrought,
Shall be by him perform’d anew,
While saints in deed, and word, and thought,
Fill’d with the Tri-une God, we prove
The righteousness of perfect love.

Hymnal/Album: Originally titled “God sending his own Son, in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh: that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.”—[Rom.] viii. 3, 4. Introduced in Charles Wesley, Short Hymns on Select Passages of the Holy Scriptures, Vol. 2 (Bristol: Farley, 1762). Published in The Poetical Works of John and Charles Wesley, Collected and Arranged by G. Osborn, Vol. 9 (London: Wesleyan-Methodist Conference Office, 1870), page 10.
Publishing: Public Domain