MARTIN LUTHER on Christmas Carols (excerpt from INFANT HOLY INFANT LOWLY Advent Family Worship with the Carols of Christmas)

All Praise to Thee, Eternal Lord

Martin Luther (1483-1546)

(December 14)

All praise to thee, Eternal Lord,

Clothed in a garb of flesh and blood;

Choosing a manger for thy throne,

While worlds on worlds are thine alone.

Once did the skies before thee bow;

A virgin’s arms contain thee now,

While angels, who in thee rejoice,

Now listen for thine infant voice.

A little Child, thou art our guest,

That weary ones in thee may rest;

Forlorn and lowly is thy birth;

That we may rise to heaven from earth.

Thou comest in the darksome night

To make us children of the light;

To make us, in the realms divine,

Like thine own angels round thee shine.

All this for us thy love hath done;

By this to thee our love is won;

For this we tune our cheerful lays,

And sing our thanks in ceaseless praise.

About the poet

Every once in a while, in history, God raises up giants in the land, extraordinary individuals called upon to do mighty deeds against vicious enemies, and equipped by God’s grace to make a lasting impact for the gospel and Kingdom of God. Martin Luther was one of these men. Born the son of a Saxon miner in 1483, Luther would grow up to contend with popes and cardinals, dukes and monarchs, even an emperor.

One day, deeply troubled about his sins, a violent storm arose, and Luther was nearly struck by lightning. Terrified, he fell to the ground and promised that if God spared him, he would become a monk. Though he was scrupulous in doing all the good works he could, he found no peace with God in the monastery. “If ever a monk got to heaven by his monkery, it was I.” But however much he worked and tried to win God’s favor, it was never enough.

Finally, while studying the Bible, he came to see that he could never be justified before God by his good works; even his good works were filthy rags compared to God’s holiness. One day he read, “The just shall live by faith” (Romans 1:17); it all made sense. God justified sinners by his grace, and gives them the gift of faith; this saving faith produces good works, but no one is justified by their good works. Suddenly it was as if the gates of paradise opened to him, and he was wonderfully justified. From then on, Luther was a man on fire, proclaiming everywhere that the Bible alone teaches that we are justified by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, to the glory of God alone.

But the Roman Catholic Church had made it illegal to proclaim this Good News. Believing he would be condemned and burned at the stake, Luther was stalwart; he even declared before the most powerful emperor in Europe that he would preach the Bible alone, regardless of the cost. “Here I stand,” he said, “God help me; I can do no otherwise.”

Though he was under the sentence of execution, and many wanted him dead, Luther never stopped. He preached. He debated. He wrote so many books he became the most published author in the 16th-century. He translated the Bible into German so that common people could hear God speak to them in his Word. And he wrote hymns in German so that God’s people could respond in praise and adoration to Christ in their worship.

Giant that he was, you might think Luther was too busy for children, but you would be wrong. Some of his hymns were written specifically for children, and eventually, Luther himself would marry an apostate nun named Katharina von Bora, and they would have a number of their own children. Made fun of by some of his neighbors, Luther even helped with the diapers! “Let them laugh,” murmured Luther through the clothes pins. “God and the angels smile in heaven.”

Luther wanted to reform false teaching in the church, and he wanted to reform false worship in the church, but he also wanted to reform Christian marriage and the family according to the Bible. After writing a treatise on marriage, Luther composed “All praise to thee, Eternal Lord.” A carol all about the Christ child, Luther wrote it specifically for children to sing—his own children! Imagine Luther and his wife Katie and their ten children singing together in their family worship!

Luther on the role of music

Luther grew up during the Renaissance, or rebirth, of cultural things like art, poetry, and music. It was expected that an educated person would develop skill in poetry and music—and Luther did! “Next to the Word of God,” he wrote, “music deserves the highest praise. She is a mistress and governess of those human emotions... which control men or more often overwhelm them... Whether you wish to comfort the sad, to subdue frivolity, to encourage the despairing, to humble the proud, to calm the passionate, or to appease those full of hate... what more effective means could you find than music?”

Luther practiced what he preached. He played the lute, a stringed instrument that looks like a pear-shaped guitar, and he wrote a number of hymns; at least two of them were Christmas carols.

Though Luther did compose music for his hymns, including the tune for his most famous hymn “A Mighty Fortress,” called the battle hymn of the Protestant Reformation, the music for “All Praise to Thee, Eternal Lord” was composed by another German from Saxony named Robert Schumann. Schumann’s father, like Luther’s, wanted him to become a lawyer, but he preferred playing the piano and composing music instead of studying law. He probably wouldn’t have made a very good lawyer. But he would go on to be one of the greatest musical composers.

While studying piano with a master teacher, Schumann first met Clara, his teacher’s nine-year-old daughter and piano prodigy. Schumann was smitten with the girl's piano playing, and the remarkable story of her trauma-induced deafness; when she was five, her mother had committed adultery and abandoned Clara and her siblings. In the intervening years, she had been raised by her father, who’s nurture and piano instruction had restored her hearing—and had set free her musical gift. As the years passed, Schumann became smitten with the young woman herself. It took years before he finally persuaded her protective father to let him marry Clara!

Schumann’s best-loved works were the many piano compositions he wrote especially to be played by his beloved and skillful wife Clara. Canonbury he composed in 1839, almost 300 years after Luther’s death. Once it was arranged to accompany Luther’s carol, it was a poetic and musical marriage made in heaven.

Looking more closely

There is a beautiful simplicity in Luther’s poetry, as if he wanted to captivate the mind, imagination, and heart of a child—which is exactly what he wanted! Notice that each stanza is written in direct address as a sung prayer to Jesus the “Eternal Lord.”

Luther wants us to be in awe at the irony of God choosing a lowly feeding trough for cattle in which to be born “While worlds on worlds are thine alone”; ironies like these make us amazed. In fact, each stanza features a situational irony, contrasting realities that don’t at first seem like they should go together. The earth, the sky, the sea and everything in them all bow down to Jesus their Creator—but here he is a little baby contained and enfolded in Mary’s arms. How can it be? Imagine with Luther the hosts of angels straining to hear the first sounds of Jesus’ infant cooing like any other baby would do.

Then in stanza three, Luther wants us to contemplate the littleness of the child, of the baby, but in whom “weary ones in thee may rest.” And wonder of wonders, Jesus’ low and humble birth, his coming from heaven to earth, was for the saving purpose “That we may rise to heaven from earth.”

Continuing the ironies in stanza four, Luther contrasts the darkness of the night in which Jesus was born with his purpose in coming, “To make us children of the light.” What irony! And further, to make us shine like the angels that encircle the Savior with unending praises “in the realms divine.”

In the final stanza, Luther ends where he began. In poetry that’s called an inclusio. “We love him because he first loved us.” And what else can we do for such a loving Savior? We tune our voices, and offer cheerful songs, “and sing our thanks in ceaseless praise.” The Good News is too wonderful! We just can’t stop singing “All praise to thee, Eternal Lord”!

For discussion

1. Luther used to think that he had to love God, do good works, win God’s favor—and then if he did all that God would love him in return. Read I John 4:19 and discuss how Luther expressed these words in the carol and what this truth means.

2. List and discuss some of the ironies in this carol (remember, ironies are things that seem like opposites, things that contrast with each other and don’t seem to go together).

3. What is a poetic inclusio? And give an example of how Luther uses the inclusio in this carol.

4. Though Luther wrote this carol before he had any children of his own, once he and Katie had children, they had daily family worship; there’s even paintings of Luther accompanying his family’s singing with his lute. Do you think the Luthers sang this carol together at Christmas? Shall we join them?

Douglas Bond is author of more than thirty-five books (including his newest, INFANT HOLY INFANT LOWLY Advent Family Worship with the Carols of Christmas), leader of church history tours in Europe (Bond France Tour in 2026), editor, father of six, and doting grandfather of ten and counting.