"If there is a secret to the Christian life, this is it."

Matthew Smith doesn't like to mince words. The 28-year-old singer-songwriter and East Nashville resident likes to get to the point of whatever topic is at hand, whether it be God, politics, or the relative merits of the latest U2 record. And at this moment, he's leaning forward, his dark brown eyes gleaming with intensity, drawing a line in the sand on a point of what some would call "practical theology."

"If Jesus didn't pay for everything, and I mean everything that I owe God, then I'm in trouble. We're all in trouble."

It might be helpful to back up for a moment and tell you how we got here. In Christian music, or in any kind of music, Smith is kind of an anomaly. He's a man whose personal passion bleeds through every line of his music, yet he rarely writes his own lyrics. He is an artist who plays music that is used for worship, but he's not a "worship artist." He's a songwriter who gushes over the talent of his collaborators, though he's never even met them. His music is most likely to be tagged as "contemporary," but he seems strangely traditional at times.

Matthew Smith writes brand new music to old hymn lyrics. Not grandma-used-to-sing-these-to-me-at-the-rickety-old-piano hymns, but very old hymns that were written well before grandma or even her grandma were born, many of them over three hundred years ago. And unlike other hymn revivals, there is nothing nostalgic about Smith's treatment.

"I didn't grow up singing hymns. We mainly sang praise and worship songs, and gospel songs like 'Softly And Tenderly,' but very few old hymns." Smith stumbled into hymns in college at Nashville's Belmont University, where he attended a weekly Bible study called RUF (Reformed University Fellowship), whose leader is both an ordained minister and a graduate of the prestigious Berklee College of Music in Boston. "There was something I had never experienced before at these Bible studies, and the hymns we sang somehow electrified me. God used them to wake me up to my sin and His grace," Smith admits.

To those who associate hymns with uncomfortable neckties and blaring organ music, the idea of a college student being turned upside down by them sounds like quite a stretch. But what Smith learned in these Bible studies was that he could relate as much or more to these hymnwriters who lived hundreds of years ago as he did to his peers. "The brutal honesty of writers like Anne Steele and Charles Wesley blew me away,” says Smith. “They were able to confess their sin in a way that wasn't just 'I'm a terrible person,' but actually used confession in order to see Jesus as a great Savior."

His Bible study leader, Kevin Twit, had been collecting tattered old hymnals for years and writing new music to the words he found there to go along with his sermons, and encouraged Smith to do the same. "I had been writing my own songs for a few years, but when I wrote music to a hymn for the first time, something clicked," he recalls. Twit soon decided to record an album of hymns that he and the students had redone in order for others to hear, hoping that it would sell enough to recoup the recording costs. The album, Indelible Grace, which included Smith’s “Come Ye Sinners,” not only recouped, but became a veritable indie phenomenon, selling tens of thousands of copies.

"We hit a nerve,” says Smith. “There was a hunger for the raw and real in an age of overly processed, manufactured spirituality, and these hymns impacted others in the way they had with us." Smith's "Come Ye Sinners," the opening track, is now a standard used in worship at churches nationwide.

Smith continued to write and record for what became a series of Indelible Grace albums, and began touring, playing concerts of hymns. He started to see that, in a small way, he could be a catalyst for others to experience what he had in the Bible study. "To hear people tell me that God has used this music to change their lives is amazing to hear, but I don't take it as a personal compliment. He's done the same in my life," Smith contends.

In addition to continuing his work with the Indelible Grace series, Matthew released his first solo EP, Even When My Heart Is Breaking, in 2004. The hymns on his new full-length album, All I Owe, explore the themes of grace, sin, and human identity in ways that are rarely addressed by modern writers.

Charles Wesley’s "Thy Blood Was Shed For Me" is a rawly emotional rock song, crying out to find hope in Christ's blood when circumstances dictate despair. “Wesley is one of the great songwriters. He loved to contrast the depth of our need with the overflow of Christ’s provision, and did so in the most seamless, poetic way imaginable.”

Other tracks continue the thematic thread of dependence on Jesus; the upbeat "None Among" asserts that seeing Jesus for who He is will be the only way to defeat the idolatry in a Christian's heart. The little-known hymn “The Lord Will Provide,” (by “Amazing Grace” writer John Newton) calls men and women to lives based not on what they can do, but on what Jesus provides. The title track is an anthem of thankfulness for Jesus paying for all that we owe— which brings us back to our conversation.

"What I want to communicate with my music is that Jesus sets us free from our obsession with ourselves," Smith says. "If Jesus hadn't paid for everything we owe and fulfilled God's law, then we would be trapped in an endless cycle of failure to measure up to His standards or ours. But because of Jesus, we are now set free to love God, our neighbors, and even our enemies, because there is nothing to lose.”

Smith concludes, "The truth is, I cling to these hymns for dear life. In the darkest times, they are the only way I can see past the lies and fears and find Jesus. And I’m finding that more and more people have the same experience. This record is for them, and for me.”