Johann Sebastian Bach

Copied from a Facebook post on this channel, 2 October 2025

Johann Sebastian Bach was born in 1685, and was a German Lutheran. He served for a time as a court musician, but he believed that God was calling him to devote his life to church music. Some have even call him, “the fifth evangelist.” That means Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and Bach. He is known as such because he wrote some 300 cantatas, musical sermons with the text usually taken from the Scripture lessons for the day. The minister would prepare the sermon with that text, and Bach would write the music. So, much of the great musical heritage that comes from Bach comes from his week-by-week production of these cantatas.

Bach was also a Bible student and a competent theologian. We know that his library contained many volumes of Luther, and also the writings of the Pietists. His Bible is at Concordia Seminary in Saint Louis—at least, one of his Bibles. It is interesting to have a look at the Bible that Bach owned. It is a version, a copy, of Dr. Martin Luther’s great translation, and it has notes in it, with Bach annotating the Bible in various places in the margins, especially in the book of Chronicles, where there is a great deal of information about music. Bach had written his comments in the margin, drawing from Chronicles and from other places in the Bible, about what he believed church music that is God-pleasing looked like.

Bach was certainly a Christian who knew his Bible, and his music flowed out of his theological Orthodoxy and biblical knowledge and out of his own personal piety. Often on his musical manuscripts, he would place the letters SDG, (soli deo gloria), “to the glory of God alone.” Or, sometimes, you will find the letters JJ, (Jesu juva), “Jesus help me” as he worked on these great musical contributions to the history of the church.

Bach died on July 28, 1750. His unfinished chorale, “To before the throne, my God, I stand,” which was being dictated because of his failing eyesight, reveals that Bach was genuine to the last bar. This closing verse was on his lips: “Grant that my end may worthy be / And that I wake Thy face to see.”

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