1 Corinthians 3:11 vs. “The Solid Rock (My Hope Is Built)”

Why it matters

Most people file this hymn under Matthew 7, because the refrain sounds like the parable and the parable is the famous one. The picture is Matthew's. The load-bearing word is Paul's.

That matters for what a singer expects to find when they go looking. Matthew 7 will not tell you there is only one foundation, and 1 Corinthians 3 will not give you the sand. It will give you something else instead: an argument aimed at people who build churches, in a congregation that had started sorting itself by which teacher it preferred, with a warning that the work laid on top gets tested. Using the verse for personal assurance is fair, and the hymn does it well. It is still a narrower use than the occasion Paul wrote into.

Helpful comparison

Two matters of record, since a proof that prints a date should say where the date came from.

The first is the date itself. Hymnary and most modern hymnals give 1834, and the arranger's own chord page credits Edward Mote, 1834. Hymnology Archive dates the first printing earlier, to The Spiritual Magazine, vol. 1, no. 8, around December 1824, printed unattributed under the title "The Immutable Basis of a Sinner's Hope," and notes that Mote's own account gives no year at all. Nothing in the hymn turns on this. It is simply not as settled as a hymnal page makes it look.

The second is the origin story, which is retold constantly and is better documented than most such stories. Mote wrote the account himself in a letter printed in The Gospel Herald in 1852: the refrain arrived while he walked up Holborn on his way to work, four stanzas were finished that day, and the last two were written by his fireside that evening after he met a deacon named King whose wife was gravely ill. He visited her daily for the five or six days she lived. That is Mote's own testimony rather than later legend. The cabinetmaker detail is documented too; he worked the trade for years before taking a Baptist pastorate at Horsham late in life. What is retold beyond the record is mostly the tidying: six original stanzas were cut to four in modern hymnals, and Bradbury's 1864 tune setting printed only three.

Sources

• Reawaken Hymns — The Solid Rock · (the arranger's own page: credits Edward Mote, 1834, arrangement by Nathan Drake, CCLI 7197497, four verses and a refrain with no added sections)
• The Solid Rock (My Hope is Built), Reawaken Hymns official lyric video · (the recording checked for this proof)
• Hymnary.org — My Hope Is Built on Nothing Less · (Edward Mote, 1834; tune SOLID ROCK by William Bradbury; a scripture index of more than fifty passages that includes both 1 Corinthians 3:11 and Matthew 7:24-28)
• Hymnology Archive — The Solid Rock · (Mote's own 1852 Gospel Herald account; first printing dated around December 1824 in The Spiritual Magazine as "The Immutable Basis of a Sinner's Hope"; the refrain tied to Matthew 7:24-27 and the foundation idea to 1 Corinthians 3:11; Bradbury's 1864 three-stanza setting)
• UMC Discipleship Ministries — History of Hymns: "My Hope Is Built" · (Mote a cabinetmaker; four verses in a day and two the following Sabbath; six original stanzas edited to four; Hymns of Praise, 1836)
• Baptist History Homepage — Edward Mote · (cabinet maker, 1797-1874, pastor at Rehoboth Baptist Church, Horsham; the 1852 Gospel Herald letter and the deacon King account)
• MultiTracks — The Solid Rock (My Hope Is Built), Reawaken Hymns · (album Hymns of the Son; the recorded arrangement's section order)
• Spotify — Hymns of the Son (Reawaken Hymns) · (release year 2022, with this track on it)
• Worship Together — My Hope Is Built (Shane & Shane) · (a publisher page for a different arrangement of the same hymn, listing Revelation 11:15 as its scripture reference)