2 Peter 1:4 vs. “Standing on the Promises”

Why it matters

A promise left unfilled gets filled by the singer, and a promise left unexplained gets sung as though its purpose were the singer's security. 2 Peter 1:4 is more specific than that and more demanding. The promises are the means by which people come to share in the divine nature and get clear of corruption. On those terms, standing on them is not a resting place. It is a supply line, and verses 5 through 11 are what Peter builds on it. Nothing in the hymn reaches that far, which is not an error in the hymn. It is a reason to read the sentence the hymn is standing on.

Helpful comparison

Carter's life is unusually well documented for a hymn writer, and the record matters here because it is a record about promises. He graduated from the Pennsylvania Military Academy in 1867 and taught there afterwards. In 1884, two years before this hymn was printed, he published “The Atonement for Sin and Sickness,” which argued that physical healing is included in Christ's atoning work. In 1897 he published “Faith Healing Reviewed After Twenty Years,” in which he revisited that position and described healing by faith in this age as a matter of special favour under the leading of the Spirit rather than a term of the atonement. He later worked as a physician and died in 1928. Two published books thirteen years apart, describing in different terms what God has promised about healing. That is a documented change in a published position and nothing more is claimed about the man here.

Sources also disagree about the hymn's circumstances. One account places the writing during a period of ill health, another places it at the military academy, and a third says the early evidence does not establish the healing story usually attached to it. None of that is needed for the finding. What the biography does show is why a specified promise is worth more than an unspecified one. The hymn's word stayed open for a century and a half, and its author spent a decade and a half publicly working out which promises about healing he thought God had actually made. 2 Peter 1:4 is the other kind of sentence. It says where the promises come from, what they are, and what they are for, in one line, so that nobody has to guess.

Sources

• Alan Jackson, “Standing On The Promises” · (the recording checked for this proof; oEmbed returns author_name “GaitherVEVO”, the label VEVO channel carrying the Gaither Music release of the album)
• Alan Jackson official site — Precious Memories album page · (the artist's own site: the 15-track listing with “Standing On The Promises” as track 10, album year 2006)
• Alan Jackson official site — Precious Memories re-release announcement · (the album was originally made as a private gift for Jackson's mother; the 2 April 2012 reissue on ACR and EMI Records Nashville)
• Wikipedia — Precious Memories (Alan Jackson album) · (second source for the track listing: released 28 February 2006 on Arista Nashville, produced by Keith Stegall, “Standing on the Promises” track 10 at 1:35, RIAA Platinum)
• Hymnary.org — Standing on the Promises (text authority page) · (author Russell Kelso Carter, 1886, first published in “Songs of Perfect Love”; five stanzas plus refrain; meter 11.11.11.9 with refrain; tune PROMISES; and the scripture index for the text, which lists 2 Peter 1:3-4 among its references)
• UMC Discipleship Ministries — History of Hymns: Stirring “Promises” serves as popular crusade hymn · (1886, “Songs of Perfect Love”, co-edited; Carter's Pennsylvania Military Academy posts; the original five stanzas with the present-cleansing stanza omitted in the current hymnal; Carlton Young's note that the hymn has no single clear biblical source text)
• HymnInfo — Standing on the Promises · (second source for the structure: four printed stanzas with a first-person refrain repeating after each, no chapter-and-verse citation anywhere in the text, and no named promise, covenant, or passage in any stanza; the five-to-four omission of the cleansing stanza; and the statement that reliable early evidence does not establish the healing story attached to the hymn)
• Hymnal Library — Standing on the Promises · (stanza-by-stanza subjects used in this entry, and the first-person framing of the refrain)
• My.Hymnary — Standing on the Promises · (third confirmation that no scripture citation appears within the hymn text; tune PROMISES)
• Hymndex — Russell Kelso Carter · (biography: 1849-1928, Pennsylvania Military Academy 1867 and teaching there to 1872, “The Atonement for Sin and Sickness” (1884), “Faith Healing Reviewed After Twenty Years” (1897) and the change of position it records, and “Hymns of the Christian Life” (1891))
• Wikipedia — Russell Kelso Carter · (second source for the dates, the military academy, the 1884 book, and his later work as a doctor in Baltimore; also the account placing the hymn's writing in a period of ill health, which other sources do not corroborate)