Christ The Lord Is Risen Today
GodTube Staff
1 Christ the Lord is risen today, Alleluia!
Earth and heaven in chorus say, Alleluia!
Raise your joys and triumphs high, Alleluia!
Sing, ye heavens, and earth reply, Alleluia!
2 Love's redeeming work is done, Alleluia!
Fought the fight, the battle won, Alleluia!
Death in vain forbids him rise, Alleluia!
Christ has opened paradise, Alleluia!
3 Lives again our glorious King, Alleluia!
Where, O death, is now thy sting? Alleluia!
Once he died our souls to save, Alleluia!
Where's thy victory, boasting grave? Alleluia!
4 Soar we now where Christ has led, Alleluia!
Following our exalted Head, Alleluia!
Made like him, like him we rise, Alleluia!
Ours the cross, the grave, the skies, Alleluia!
5 Hail the Lord of earth and heaven, Alleluia!
Praise to thee by both be given, Alleluia!
Thee we greet triumphant now, Alleluia!
Hail the Resurrection, thou, Alleluia!
6 King of glory, soul of bliss, Alleluia!
Everlasting life is this, Alleluia!
Thee to know, thy power to prove, Alleluia!
Thus to sing, and thus to love, Alleluia!
“Christ the Lord Is Risen Today” was written by Charles Wesley in 1739, the same remarkable year of his evangelical conversion and the birth of the Methodist revival. Originally titled “Hymn for Easter Day,” it was first published in Hymns and Sacred Poems, a collection he produced with his brother John Wesley. The hymn drew inspiration from an older Latin text, Surrexit Christus hodie, which had circulated in Bohemia in the 14th century and later appeared in a 1708 English translation as “Jesus Christ Is Risen Today.” Charles Wesley did not merely revise that earlier hymn but reshaped the Resurrection theme with his own theological richness and poetic vigor.
The hymn was first sung at the Foundry Meeting House in London, the first Methodist chapel, placing it at the heart of early Methodist worship. Wesley’s original version contained eleven stanzas of four lines each, unfolding the meaning of Christ’s victory over death and its implications for believers. Over time, editors reduced the number of verses and added the repeated “Alleluia” after each line, a feature not found in Wesley’s earliest text. That addition, likely influenced by the older Latin tradition, gave the hymn its ringing, triumphant character and helped restore “Alleluia” to a central place in English Easter worship.
Set most commonly to the tune “Easter Hymn,” composed later by Lyra Davidica in 1708, the text and melody together created one of the most enduring Easter processional hymns in the English-speaking Church. Its opening line is not reflective but declarative, calling the gathered congregation to lift their voices in celebration of the risen Lord. More than two centuries later, “Christ the Lord Is Risen Today” remains a bold proclamation of the Resurrection, inviting believers to join heaven’s praise and to live in the power of a Savior who has conquered the grave.
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