Bach wrote the cantata in 1724, his second year as Thomaskantor in Leipzig, for New Year's Day. The feast also celebrated the naming and circumcision of Jesus. The prescribed readings for the feast day were from the Epistle to the Galatians, by faith we inherit, and from the Gospel of Luke, the Circumcision and naming of Jesus. That year, Bach composed a cycle of chorale cantatas, begun on the first Sunday after Trinity of 1724. The cantata is based on the hymn for New Year's Day in three stanzas by Johannes Hermann who was also a Thomaskantor. Its melody is by Melchior Vulpius, who first published it in his Ein schön geistlich Gesangbuch, printed in Jena. The hymn calls Jesus by name first, fitting to the celebration of the naming. Otherwise it is more concerned with the beginning of the New Year. It was popular in Leipzig and was used in two more of Bach's cantatas for the occasion, Singet dem Herrn ein neues Lied, BWV 190 and Gott, wie dein Name, so ist auch dein Ruhm, BWV 171. An unknown poet kept the first and the last stanza as movements 1 and 6, and paraphrased stanza 2 to a sequence of alternating arias and recitatives, expanding the 14 lines by additional ideas, but not specifically referring to the gospel. Bach first performed the cantata on 1 January 1725, and reprised it at least once, between 1732 and 1735.
In the opening chorus, a chorale fantasia, Bach faced the problem of structuring the unusually long stanza of 14 lines and an additional repeat of the first two lines, as seems to have been customary in Leipzig. The concerto of the orchestra is dominated by a syncope fanfare motif from the trumpets. In the first four lines, repeated in the next four and the final two, the soprano sings the cantus firmus, with the lower voices in free polyphony. Lines 9 and 10, speaking of "in guter Stille" are marked adagio; the choir sings in homophony in triple meter, accompanied by the orchestra without the trumpets. Lines 11 and 12, repeated in 13 and 14, are a prestofugato, with the instruments playing colla parte, expressing "Wir wollen uns dir ergeben", an "enthusiastic rededication to spiritual values". The fugal subject is derived from the first phrase of the chorale melody. Lines 15 and 16 repeat lines 1 and 2, saying "behüt Leib, Seel und Leben". In contrast, both arias have been described as chamber music. The first aria is sung by the soprano, accompanied by three oboes in pastoral time. A short secco recitative leads to a tenor aria, which is dominated by an obbligato violoncello piccolo in expansive movement. The last recitative for bass contains one line from Martin Luther's Deutsche Litanei, which Bach set for four-part choir, marked allegro, as if the congregation joined the prayer of the individual. The closing chorale corresponds to the first movement. The lines are separated several times by its trumpet motif; the trumpets are silent in lines 9 to 14; lines 11 to 14 are in time; the final fanfare recalls the beginning. John Eliot Gardiner notes that Bach achieves a suggestion of the year's cycle by ending both the first movement and the end of the cantata as the work began, as a "closing of the circle".
