What Does the Lord Require: Meaning, History, and Theology
"What does the Lord require for praise and offering?"
- Written
- 1949
- Category
- Hymn
- Tune
- Standard Tune
- Status
- Verified
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Story
What Does the Lord Require is a 1949 hymn by English Congregational minister Albert Frederick Bayly, written from Micah 6:6-8 and first published in 1951. It is now most often sung to Erik Routley’s 1968 tune SHARPTHORNE.
Overview
What Does the Lord Require is a twentieth-century hymn that brings the prophetic challenge of Micah 6 into congregational worship. Albert Frederick Bayly wrote it not as a decorative retelling of an Old Testament text but as a Christian hymn about the relationship between worship and conduct. Its central question is whether religious devotion can be separated from justice, mercy, humility, and responsible action.
The hymn is especially striking because it turns a biblical ethical demand toward public as well as private life. Bayly’s broader text addresses leadership, economic responsibility, and the difficulty of faithful obedience, then places Christian discipleship under the sustaining grace of Christ. The result is a hymn that resists both empty ritualism and moral self-sufficiency.
For worship leaders, the hymn works naturally with Micah 6:6-8, services of confession, preaching on social holiness, stewardship, civic responsibility, justice, Lent, and discipleship. Its usefulness lies in holding together what churches can easily separate: praise of God, ethical accountability, and dependence on grace for the life God calls believers to live.
Historical Background
Albert Frederick Bayly wrote What Does the Lord Require in January 1949. Hymnological sources place it within a series of seventeen texts he was preparing on the Old Testament prophets, with the intention of reading the prophetic witness in relation to its Christian fulfillment. The immediate biblical source is Micah 6:6-8, where increasingly extravagant offerings are contrasted with the divine requirement for just, merciful, humble life. Bayly’s hymn carries that prophetic tension into modern social and congregational language.
The text first appeared in Bayly’s collection Rejoice, O People in 1951. The original form contained five stanzas and extended the prophet’s challenge beyond individual piety to rulers, economic life, and other forms of social responsibility before ending with a corporate Christian response. Later hymnals frequently altered or shortened the text. Some modern collections print only three or four stanzas, and authorized versions may contain editorial changes. This history explains why different hymnals do not always present precisely the same wording or stanza sequence.
Erik Routley’s musical relationship with the hymn began before SHARPTHORNE. When Bayly was preparing the 1951 collection, Routley supplied an earlier tune named TYES CROSS. According to later accounts, Sir John Dykes Bower noticed a phrase resembling John Ireland’s LOVE UNKNOWN when the hymn was being considered for 100 Hymns for Today. Routley reworked his earlier melody and described the result as a kind of minor-key paraphrase. The substantially revised tune became SHARPTHORNE, named for another Sussex hamlet near Tyes Cross.
SHARPTHORNE was composed in its revised form in 1968 and first published with the hymn in 100 Hymns for Today in 1969. It uses the distinctive meter 6.6.6.6.3.3.6 and has become the text’s principal tune in many English-language hymnals. The United Methodist Hymnal, the Presbyterian Hymnal, the Moravian Book of Worship, Common Praise, the Seventh-day Adventist Hymnal, and other collections have carried the pairing, while some books use alternative tunes.
The publication and copyright record is important for HymnInfo. Modern hymnals identify Bayly’s authorized text as copyrighted by Oxford University Press, with several instances giving © 1988 Oxford University Press; SHARPTHORNE is separately identified as © 1969 Hope Publishing Company. Bayly died in 1984 and Routley in 1982. Under the Philippines screening used for this record, literary and musical works are generally protected for the author’s life plus fifty years; current U.S. sources likewise show continuing protection for qualifying twentieth-century works, and major hymnals explicitly restrict reproduction of this text and tune. Accordingly, the represented hymn is not treated as public domain, and the complete lyrics are withheld.
Biblical Foundations
Micah 6:6-8 is the documented biblical foundation of the hymn. The prophet first asks what acts of worship or sacrifice might satisfy God, then answers by shifting attention from escalating offerings to the moral shape of covenant life. Bayly deliberately made that prophetic confrontation the framework of the hymn, so Micah is not merely an editorial cross-reference but the source text behind the work.
Deuteronomy 10:12-13 provides an important Old Testament parallel. It likewise asks what God requires and answers with reverence, love, obedience, and wholehearted service. Read beside Micah, the passage shows that biblical worship joins devotion to God with a life ordered by God’s commands.
Matthew 23:23 gives a close New Testament resonance. Jesus rebukes religious leaders who attend carefully to ritual detail while neglecting weightier matters of justice, mercy, and faith. James 1:22 makes the same ethical point in another register by insisting that hearing the word must become action. Together these passages illuminate the hymn’s conviction that worship is incomplete when it does not shape conduct.
Verse Explanation
The hymn opens by setting religious devotion under examination: it asks what kind of response God actually seeks from worshipers and frames the answer through Micah’s prophetic message.
Its middle sections broaden the challenge from individual devotion to public and economic responsibility. Different forms of power are brought under the same divine judgment, emphasizing that faith must shape the way communities are governed and people are treated.
The later movement asks how human beings can meet such a demanding moral calling. Rather than ending with bare command, the hymn turns toward Christ and grace as the source of faithful obedience.
In the original five-stanza form, the conclusion becomes corporate rather than merely individual: the worshiping community takes the prophetic demand upon itself. Modern hymnals often shorten or alter the text, so stanza numbering and sequence vary between authorized editions.
Theological Reflection
The hymn’s theology begins with the prophetic critique of religious formalism. Sacrifice, praise, and offering are not dismissed as meaningless; rather, they are judged by whether worshipers also live in ways consistent with God’s character. Justice and mercy therefore belong inside the life of faith rather than being optional social concerns added after worship.
A second theme is social holiness. Bayly extends moral responsibility beyond the isolated believer to leaders, economic relationships, and communal structures. That emphasis fits later Methodist and ecumenical hymnal classifications that place the text under justice, stewardship, integrity, social concern, and discipleship. Christian ethics here is both personal and public.
The hymn also avoids reducing discipleship to moral effort. Its final movement is explicitly Christian: obedience to God’s demanding will depends on grace rather than self-generated virtue. This holds moral seriousness and grace together. The church is called to concrete faithfulness, yet it confesses that the strength to live faithfully is received from Christ.
Church Impact
What Does the Lord Require has achieved substantial ecumenical circulation. Hymnary records the text in dozens of hymnals, while SHARPTHORNE itself appears in more than twenty. Documented instances include the Seventh-day Adventist Hymnal, The United Methodist Hymnal, The Presbyterian Hymnal, the Moravian Book of Worship, Common Praise, the Australian Hymn Book tradition, and Community of Christ Sings.
Its hymnal classifications show how churches have used it: justice, mercy, humility, stewardship, social concern, commitment, Lent, penitence, integrity, and Christian life recur across editions. The hymn is therefore especially suited to services where biblical proclamation is expected to lead toward ethical response, including civic observances, social-justice preaching, confession, renewal, and discipleship.
The hymn’s continuing significance also lies in its place before the better-known British 'hymn explosion' of the 1960s and 1970s. Written in 1949, it anticipates later hymn writers’ determination to address contemporary public life in direct language while remaining anchored in Scripture and Christian theology.
Musical Notes
Erik Routley composed SHARPTHORNE in 1968 as a substantial revision of his earlier tune TYES CROSS, which had accompanied Bayly’s text in Rejoice, O People. The revised tune was prepared for 100 Hymns for Today and published in 1969. Both tune names come from Sussex hamlets near the landscape of Routley’s early life.
SHARPTHORNE is written for the unusual meter 6.6.6.6.3.3.6, though some hymnals display the same structure as 12.12.12 by joining shorter phrases. Hymnary commonly indexes the tune in D minor, while particular hymnals may transpose it. Its repeated motives and firm contours give it a sober, declarative quality suited to a text that asks difficult ethical questions rather than offering uncomplicated celebration.
The tune has become the principal musical partner for Bayly’s hymn and is indexed in more than twenty hymnals. It remains a separate copyrighted work, identified in major hymnals as © 1969 Hope Publishing Company. Other tunes, including BISHOP TUCKER and MICAH, have also been associated with the text, but SHARPTHORNE is the most established pairing in the sources consulted.
Application
- Examine whether worship practices are matched by just and merciful conduct in daily life.
- Consider how Christian responsibility applies not only to personal choices but also to leadership, work, commerce, and public life.
- Use Micah 6:6-8 as a framework for confession that moves from religious activity toward ethical self-examination.
- Practice mercy in ways that cost time, attention, resources, or status rather than leaving compassion at the level of sentiment.
- Depend on the grace of Christ for obedience instead of treating Christian ethics as a program of moral self-improvement.
Discussion Questions
- Why does Micah 6 place ethical faithfulness alongside questions about worship and sacrifice?
- How does the hymn challenge the idea that religion is mainly a private matter?
- Where do justice and mercy need to become more visible in the life of a congregation or community?
- How does the hymn hold together moral responsibility and dependence on grace?
- What changes when a congregation sings a prophetic text as a corporate commitment rather than hearing it only as a sermon?
Teaching Tips
- Read Micah 6:1-8 before introducing the hymn so learners hear the prophetic dispute and the questions that precede verse 8.
- Explain that Bayly wrote the text in 1949 and that the familiar tune SHARPTHORNE dates from 1968; do not merge those dates into a single composition year.
- Compare the categories assigned by several hymnals—justice, stewardship, social holiness, penitence, and discipleship—to show the breadth of the text’s use.
- Teach the distinction between TYES CROSS, Routley’s earlier setting, and SHARPTHORNE, his later revision for 100 Hymns for Today.
- Because the text and tune remain copyrighted, use an authorized hymnal or licensed projection source rather than reproducing the lyrics from this record.
Sources
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Hymnary.org — What Does the Lord Require text authority, authorship, date, Scripture basis, and hymnal instances
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Hymnary.org — Psalter Hymnal 1987 no. 293, historical notes on Bayly, first publication, TYES CROSS, and SHARPTHORNE
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Hymnary.org — The United Methodist Hymnal 1989 no. 441, text and tune copyright information
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Hymnary.org — SHARPTHORNE tune authority, Erik Routley, 1968, meter, and copyright
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Praise! — What does the Lord require, January 1949 origin, publication history, and tune-development notes
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The Canterbury Dictionary of Hymnology — Albert Bayly biography
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The Canterbury Dictionary of Hymnology — Erik Routley biography
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eBible.org — World English Bible Classic, Micah 6
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eBible.org — World English Bible Classic, Deuteronomy 10
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eBible.org — World English Bible Classic, Matthew 23
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eBible.org — World English Bible Classic, James 1
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U.S. Copyright Office — How Long Does Copyright Protection Last
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Lawphil — Republic Act No. 8293, Sections 213 and 214, term and calculation of copyright protection
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