Lyrics
I am so glad that our Father in heaven
Tells of His love in the Book He has given;
Wonderful things in the Bible I see,
This is the dearest, that Jesus loves me.
I am so glad that Jesus loves me,
Jesus loves me, Jesus loves me;
I am so glad that Jesus loves me,
Jesus loves even me.
Though I forget Him and wander away,
Kindly He follows wherever I stray;
Back to His dear loving arms would I flee,
When I remember that Jesus loves me.
O, if there's only one song I can sing,
When in His beauty I see the great King,
This shall my song in eternity be:
O, what a wonder that Jesus loves me!
Public domain hymn text and tune (written 1870, published 1871). Words and music by Philip P. Bliss.
The Story Behind the Hymn
Philip P. Bliss wrote "Jesus Loves Even Me" in June 1870 out of a small moment of reflection at a meeting where the hymn "O How I Love Jesus" had been sung repeatedly. Turning the familiar refrain over in his mind, Bliss found himself questioning its whole direction: "Have I not been singing enough about my poor love for Jesus, and shall I not rather sing of His great love for me?" That small shift — from the singer's uncertain love for Christ to Christ's certain love for the singer — became the entire premise of the new hymn.
Bliss published it the following year, 1871, in his own Sunday school collection, The Charm. Written specifically with children and young singers in mind, the hymn deliberately avoids theological complexity in favor of a single, repeatable claim, simple enough for a child to grasp and remember: not that I love Jesus, but that Jesus loves even me.
That simplicity helped make it one of the best-loved children's hymns of its era, popular on both sides of the Atlantic well into the twentieth century, sung in Sunday schools long after most of Bliss's more adult-oriented hymns, such as "Almost Persuaded" and "Whosoever Will," had become primarily associated with revival meetings rather than classrooms.
Bliss did not live to see how long his small shift in perspective would last in children's hymnody — he and his wife died five years later in the Ashtabula train disaster of December 1876 — but the hymn born from one evening's irritation with an overused refrain has outlived nearly every other song sung at that same long-forgotten meeting.
