Lyrics
One there is, above all others,
Well deserves the name of Friend;
His is love beyond a brother’s,
Costly, free, and knows no end;
They who once His kindness prove
Find it everlasting love.
Which of all our friends, to save us,
Could or would have shed his blood?
But our Jesus died to have us
Reconciled in Him to God:
This was boundless love indeed!
Jesus is a Friend in need.
Men, when raised to lofty stations,
Often know their friends no more;
Slight and scorn their poor relations,
Though they valued them before:
But our Savior always owns
Those whom He redeemed with groans.
When He lived on earth abased,
Friend of sinners was His name;
Now, above all glory raised,
He rejoices in the same:
Still He calls them brethren, friends,
And to all their wants attends.
Could we bear from one another,
What He daily bears from us?
Yet this glorious Friend and Brother
Loves us though we treat Him thus:
Though for good we render ill,
He accounts us brethren still.
O for grace our hearts to soften!
Teach us, Lord, at length to love;
We, alas! forget too often
What a Friend we have above:
But when home our souls are brought,
We will love Thee as we ought.
Public domain hymn text (1774). Words by John Newton.
The Story Behind the Hymn
John Newton wrote this hymn’s text in 1774, five years before its eventual publication in the 1779 ‘Olney Hymns’ collection.
He built its entire text around a single sustained comparison, between ordinary human friendship, however genuine, and the considerably deeper, more costly friendship Newton believed Christ offers. That directly echoes John 15:13, in which Jesus tells His disciples, ‘greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.’
The hymn’s repeated, deliberately plain question is: ‘which of all our friends, to save us, could or would have shed his blood?’
That reflects Newton’s characteristic pastoral style throughout much of his hymn writing. He favored direct, conversational rhetorical questions addressed to the ordinary experience of the singer, rather than more elevated or abstract theological language — a style well suited to the small, informal parish prayer meetings in Olney the hymn was originally written for, rather than for large formal congregational worship.
Newton had spent years as a slave-ship captain before his conversion, described at length elsewhere in this collection in connection with ‘Amazing Grace’. Given that dramatic personal history, his own understanding of costly, undeserved friendship carried particular personal weight.
Newton frequently wrote in his private journals and letters about his own profound sense of having received entirely unearned kindness from God. This hymn translates that theme into the more universally relatable language of ordinary human friendship, extended to an extraordinary, sacrificial degree.
The hymn remains less widely known today than several of Newton’s other Olney Hymns contributions represented elsewhere in this collection, such as ‘Glorious Things of Thee Are Spoken’ and ‘How Sweet the Name of Jesus Sounds’.
But it continues to appear in hymnals, specifically valued for its unusually warm, personal, friendship-centered approach to describing the believer’s relationship with Christ — a tone somewhat gentler than the more dramatic conversion-and-rescue imagery found in Newton’s better-known work.
