Acts 12:6-7 vs. “And Can It Be?”

Grace Community Church Congregation & Orchestra · checked 2026-08-02

What we checked

PassageActs 12:6-7 chapter ↗

Translation shownBSB (Berean Standard Bible)

Presents itself asinspired-by

Categorynot a quote

Album2022

Words addressed tovaries by section

Teaching or experiencemixed

Graded against the standard

Quotation criteria not graded: this song never presents its words as scripture

Applies to every song the Name held holy · God shown holy · true of God · the standard

✓Reverent treatment

✓ What's good

The conversion stanza tracks Acts 12:6-9 in the chapter's own order: bound and sleeping, light in the cell, waking, the command to rise, chains falling, following out
Never says it is quoting, anywhere: no reference, no verse framing, nothing presented as the text itself
The order of the borrowed scene is the order of grace in the chapter: the prisoner is asleep and does nothing to free himself before the light comes
This recording keeps Wesley's traditional wording, four of the original six stanzas, from the church's own hymnal project

⚠ Cautions

No passage is named anywhere in the hymn, so a singer inherits the prison scene with no address and no way to know it belongs to a persecution narrative
In Acts 12 the rescue is bodily and external. The hymn re-sings it as conversion, which is an application the chapter itself does not make. Reading the chapter keeps the two distinct
The stanza about the Son leaving the throne says he emptied himself in wording that has drawn documented concern against Philippians 2:7; see the analysis for both sides

Verse Proof

Acts 12:6-7

The text in BSB (Berean Standard Bible)

“On the night before Herod was to bring him to trial, Peter was sleeping between two soldiers, bound with two chains, with sentries standing guard at the entrance to the prison. Suddenly an angel of the Lord appeared and a light shone in the cell. He tapped Peter on the side and woke him up, saying, “Get up quickly.” And the chains fell off his wrists.”

Herod Agrippa I has just executed James the brother of John, and, seeing that it pleased his audience, has arrested Peter during the Feast of Unleavened Bread, meaning to bring him out for a public trial after the Passover. The church is praying earnestly for him. These two verses are the night before the trial: Peter asleep, chained between two soldiers, guards on the door. The verses that follow finish the scene: the angel tells him to dress and follow, and Peter walks out past the guards thinking he is seeing a vision, until he finds himself alone in the street and realizes the rescue was real.

What the song says, described not quoted

This is Charles Wesley's conversion hymn, written in 1738 in the days after the experience he dated to May 21 of that year, and published under the title "Free Grace." The hymn opens with an amazed question: how can the singer possibly benefit from the death of the Savior he helped cause? A refrain returns after every stanza to put the same question directly to the God who died for him. The stanzas in this recording then take three steps: the Son leaves his Father's throne and bleeds for Adam's race; the singer tells his own conversion; and the hymn closes on assurance, no dread of condemnation, the singer clothed in a righteousness not his own and approaching the throne. The address genuinely shifts as it goes: the stanza bodies speak about God and about the singer in the third and first person, and each refrain turns to speak to Christ directly.

The conversion stanza is the reason this proof exists. The singer describes his spirit lying a long time imprisoned, bound in sin and the night of fallen nature. Then a quickening ray from God's eye; he wakes; the dungeon blazes with light; the chains drop away and the heart is free; he rises, goes out, and follows.

Set the stanza beside Acts 12:6-9 and the beats line up in the chapter's own order: a prisoner bound and sleeping, light suddenly in the cell, a waking, a command to rise, chains falling off, and a following out. This is not our inference alone. Hymnary.org lists Acts 12:6-8 against the text, Justin Taylor's stanza-by-stanza table of the hymn's allusions cites Acts 12:6-9 for this stanza, and Wikipedia's article ties it to the liberation of Peter. What shifted is the register. In Acts the rescue is bodily: a real cell, iron on the wrists, an angel who taps and speaks. In the hymn the prison is sin, the chains belong to the heart, and the waking touch comes from God's own eye rather than an angel's hand. And the hymn never says any of this out loud: no book, no chapter, no verse, anywhere in six stanzas.

· Not a quote: The hymn quotes nothing and cites nothing. Its conversion stanza walks the sequence of Acts 12:6-9 in the chapter's own order. The hymnological reference works record that parallel. The stanza sings that sequence as the singer's own release from sin.

▸ Official upload. Now listen with the proof in mind.

The dungeon stanza never cites Acts 12. Its beats do, one at a time, in the chapter's order.

Why it matters

For nearly three centuries this stanza has handed singers their mental picture of conversion, and the picture is on loan from a chapter the hymn never names. That matters because the chapter and the stanza are doing different things. Acts 12 reports a bodily rescue in the middle of a persecution in which James stayed dead; the hymn applies the scene to the freeing of a soul. Both can be held honestly, but only a singer who knows the source can keep them distinct, and the hymn itself gives no address to look up.

Is it safe to dwell on?

Sung on repeat, this song moves between God and the singer.

Loop this hymn and what gets planted is a particular memory of conversion: the singer asleep and bound until acted on from outside, freed by a light he did not produce, following a voice he did not summon. That shape is worth planting, because it is the chapter's shape too. Peter contributes nothing to his own rescue; he is unconscious for the start of it. The refrain plants something else alongside it, an amazed question about Christ dying for the singer, asked to Christ himself, and a question rehearsed hundreds of times becomes a settled habit of wonder. The dwelling is mixed by honest count: the stanzas spend as many words on the singer's chains, heart, and freedom as on the One who broke them. But the direction of the whole is toward God, because every stanza's story ends at his act, and the last word of the borrowed scene is following.

Helpful comparison

Two notes for careful readers. First, the reference works also link the hymn's prison imagery to Paul and Silas in Acts 16, and the association is fair, but the specific sequence belongs to Acts 12. In Acts 16 an earthquake opens every door and looses every prisoner's bonds at once, and Paul stays in the cell; there is no light, no waking touch, no command to rise, no following out. The stanza's beats are Peter's night, not Philippi's.

Second, the self-emptying line. The stanza on the Son leaving the throne describes him emptying himself in a phrase some singers hesitate over, on the ground that Philippians 2:7 does not say Christ gave up his divine attributes, and read literally the line could suggest he kept only love. The concern is documented, and so is the defense: kenotic theology became a controversy around 1850, decades after Wesley died in 1788, so the line predates the error it is accused of, and the passage's own context is humility rather than attributes. We note both sides and grade neither, since the hymn presents the line as poetry, not as the verse.

Sources

And Can It Be? (Hymn 180) — Grace Community Church Congregation & Orchestra · (the recording checked for this proof, on the Hymns of Grace channel; its listing shows the four stanzas sung, uploaded October 2022)
Hymns of Grace · (the hymnal is a project of Grace Community Church and The Master's Seminary Press, with an official YouTube channel of its arrangements; establishes the upload as the church's own)
Justin Taylor, The Gospel Coalition — Charles Wesley's "And Can It Be": Background and Scriptural Allusions · (written immediately after Wesley's May 21, 1738 conversion; stanza-by-stanza allusion table citing Acts 12:6-9 for the dungeon stanza)
Hymnary.org — And Can It Be, That I Should Gain? · (composed 1738; republished as "Free Grace" in Hymns and Sacred Poems, 1739; six original stanzas with the fifth dropped from 1780; tune SAGINA; lists Acts 12:6-8)
Wikipedia — And Can It Be · (commemorates the May 21, 1738 conversion; the dungeon stanza tied to the liberations of Peter in Acts 12 and Paul in Acts 16)
Reformed University Fellowship — Charles Wesley and "And Can It Be?" · (lists Acts 12:6-8 among the hymn's references; notes scholars now hold "Where Shall My Wondering Soul Begin" to be Wesley's first hymn, with this one written soon after)
Baptist Bulletin — "Emptied Himself of All but Love" · (documents that many singers hesitate over or would alter the self-emptying line against Philippians 2:7, and the defense that kenotic controversy arose around 1850, after Wesley's death)

Corrections

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