Jesus Loves Me This I Know: Story of the Song a Dying Child Asked For

The Room Where Jesus Loves Me This I Know Began

The story of Jesus Loves Me This I Know begins in a quiet room, with a feverish little boy who is getting worse by the hour. His name is Johnny Fax, a character in a nineteenth-century novel called Say and Seal. His Sunday School teacher, Mr. Linden, is there, and so is a young woman named Faith Derrick. Both of them are worried sick.

Johnny is in pain. He asks Mr. Linden to pick him up, so Linden lifts the boy into his arms and walks back and forth across the floor, like he would with any child who can’t settle. Then Johnny asks him to sing. Linden sings a soothing song, Jesus Loves Me This I Know, that neither Johnny nor Faith has ever heard before. A few hours later, the little boy goes to be with Jesus.

That scene is fiction, but the song in it is not. The words of Jesus Loves Me This I Know began as a poem written in 1860 by Anna Bartlett Warner for her older sister Susan, who was writing the novel and needed something gentle for that exact moment. Two years later, in 1862, composer William Batchelder Bradbury added the tune and the chorus (“Yes, Jesus loves me”). Bradbury also set music to hymns such as He Leadeth Me and Just As I Am.

The Turn: How Does Something So Small Carry So Much?

Here is the question that keeps pulling me back. The words of Jesus Loves Me This I Know are so plain that a toddler can sing them. So how did this little song end up in the hardest places on earth?

Jesus Loves Me This I Know was sung by cadets at West Point on the battlefields of the American Civil War. It brought comfort to soldiers on both sides of the lines. Missionaries taught it to new believers and to children around the world, and it has been translated into more languages than perhaps any other spiritual song. People have been singing it for about 160 years.

A song that simple shouldn’t be able to hold up under that much weight. Yet it does, and I think the story of the women who wrote it helps explain why. Before we dive into the story, why don’t we sing it together? Let the words fill the room first.

Jesus Loves Me Song

Jesus Loves Me This I Know Lyrics

1 Jesus loves me, this I know, 
For the Bible tells me so. 
Little ones to him belong; 
They are weak, but he is strong. 

Refrain:
Yes, Jesus loves me!
Yes, Jesus loves me!
Yes, Jesus loves me!
The Bible tells me so.

2 Jesus loves me, he who died 
Heaven’s gate to open wide. 
He will wash away my sin, 
Let his little child come in. [Refrain]

3 Jesus loves me, this I know, 
As he loved so long ago, 
Taking children on his knee, 
Saying, “Let them come to me.” [Refrain]

Additional Verses

Jesus loves me still today,
Walking with me on my way,
Wanting as a friend to give
Light and love to all who live.

Jesus loves me! He will stay
Close beside me all the way;
Thou hast bled and died for me,
I will henceforth live for Thee.

Scripture in Conversation: What the Warner Sisters Knew

Anna Bartlett Warner traced her family line back to the Puritan Pilgrims, and she and her sister Susan did not grow up expecting hardship. Their father, Henry, was a successful New York City lawyer and investor, until the financial panic of 1837 and the lawsuits and poor investments that followed took most of his money. In 1838, the family left their home in Manhattan and moved to a rundown Revolutionary War-era farmhouse on Constitution Island, near West Point. The sisters had already lost their mother when they were young. Now they had lost their comfortable life too.

It is hard not to feel for them.

They did not sit and wait for things to improve. They started writing to earn a living, and between them they produced more than a hundred stories and poems. Along the way, they held Bible studies for the West Point cadets, and Anna wrote a new hymn every month for her Sunday School class. Neither sister ever married, and sharing the love of Jesus became the mission of their lives. When they died, they were buried with military honors in the West Point Cemetery, the only civilians given that honor, in gratitude for what they had given those soldiers.

So when Anna wrote Jesus Loves Me This I Know, she was not writing from a place of ease. She knew what it was to lose security and still hold on.

I wonder whether that is what Jeremiah was getting at when he wrote, “I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore I have continued my faithfulness to you” (Jeremiah 31:3, ESV). Notice that he doesn’t say God loves us when we are doing well. He says the love is everlasting, and that the faithfulness continues.

Then there is Paul’s line in 1 Corinthians 13:8: “Love never ends” (ESV). Careers end, fortunes can vanish in a single financial panic, and even our strength gives out. Paul says love is the one thing that outlasts all of it.

I also keep noticing the first line of Anna’s poem: “Jesus loves me, this I know.” It does not say “this I feel” or “this I hope.” Maybe that is why Jesus Loves Me This I Know works at a bedside and on a battlefield, because it holds on to something known even when feelings are shaky. A dying child doesn’t need a theology lecture. He needs one thing he can be sure of.

That raises a question I’m still working through. Do I really know that Jesus loves me the way Johnny Fax needed to, or do I only know it when life is going well?

Putting It Into Practice This Week

A song like Jesus Loves Me This I Know is easy to appreciate and easy to leave on the shelf. Here are a few small ways to bring it into an ordinary week:

• Hum it on a hard morning. When anxiety hits before your feet touch the floor, sing or hum the first line of Jesus Loves Me This I Know. It isn’t magic, but it works.
• Say it plainly to someone. You don’t need a sermon, and Jesus Loves Me This I Know can be shared in about ten seconds. A short, honest word like “God loves you, and so do I” can mean the world to someone who is struggling.
• Sit with someone who is hurting. Mr. Linden in the novel didn’t fix anything. He picked the boy up, walked the floor with him, and sang. Next time you want to say the perfect thing to someone in pain, try just being there and keeping it simple.
• Notice the days you feel unworthy. The song reminds us that God’s love holds even with our failings and unfaithfulness. This week, when you catch yourself thinking you have to earn your way back, answer that thought with the opening line of Jesus Loves Me This I Know.

A Closing Prayer

Father, thank You for a love that doesn’t depend on how strong we feel or how well things are going. Teach us to know what the children already sing: that Jesus loves us. Help us to carry that to someone who needs it this week. Amen.

What is one simple truth, as Jesus Loves Me This I Know, that you hold on to when everything else feels uncertain?

Come and sing with our collection of classic hymns, timeless songs that can lift your heart and help you worship God with joy and gratitude. The stories behind each hymn will help you hear every verse in a new light and encourage you to follow Jesus with deeper faith and love.