Matt Redman - Oh, How I Love Jesus Lyrics

Video

Matt Redman - 10,000 Reasons (Bless the Lord)

Meaning & Inspiration

There’s something almost disarming about how simple this is. No layered metaphors. No attempt to sound new. Just: “There is a Name I love to hear.” And I keep wondering if that simplicity is actually the point—or if it’s exposing something in me.

Because I don’t always love hearing His name.

I know I’m supposed to. I sing it. I’ve sung songs like this before. But sitting with Matt Redman’s version of “Oh, How I Love Jesus,” I catch myself realizing how easily the name of Jesus can become familiar without being precious. It can sit in my vocabulary without actually stirring anything. And this hymn doesn’t give me anywhere to hide from that. It just repeats it. Again and again. Oh, how I love Jesus. Not “I respect Him.” Not “I believe the right things.” Love.

The line that keeps pressing on me is almost too basic to notice at first: “Because He first loved me.”

I’ve heard that my whole life. It echoes First Epistle of John 4:19 so clearly it barely feels like interpretation—more like repetition. But when I slow down, it’s uncomfortable. Because it removes any illusion that my love for God is self-generated. It doesn’t start with me choosing Him. It doesn’t even start with me understanding Him. It starts with being loved first. Before response. Before obedience. Before I got anything right.

And if that’s true, then my love for Him isn’t something I can take quiet pride in. It’s evidence of something done to me.

Which makes the rest of the hymn feel different. “It tells me of a Savior’s love, who died to set me free…”

That’s not abstract. That’s the language of substitution. Of atonement. It pulls straight into the reality of the Crucifixion of Jesus—not as a distant theological claim, but as something personal enough to be sung simply. “The sinner’s perfect plea.” That phrase lingers. Because it assumes something I don’t always like admitting: that I don’t just need encouragement or guidance. I need a plea. A defense. Something outside of me that speaks when I have nothing to say.

And then there’s this quieter line: “Who in each sorrow bears a part that none can bear below.”

I almost skipped past it. It doesn’t sound dramatic. But the more I sit with it, the more it unsettles me. Because it suggests that Christ doesn’t just sympathize in a general sense—He actually enters into suffering in a way no one else can. Not friends. Not family. Not even the people who understand you best. There’s a kind of weight He carries with you that no one else is built to hold.

I’m not sure I live like I believe that.

If I did, I think I’d run to Him faster. Or maybe more honestly. Instead of managing things quietly. Holding it together. Letting His name sit at the surface while everything underneath stays guarded.

And that might be where this hymn is sharper than it sounds. It doesn’t try to impress. It doesn’t build a big emotional arc. It just keeps returning to the same confession, almost stubbornly. Oh, how I love Jesus. As if saying it again might reveal whether it’s actually true.

I think that’s what’s been sitting with me. Not whether the song is theologically sound—it is. Not whether it’s beautiful—it is, in a stripped-down way. But whether I can say that line without hesitation. Without qualifying it. Without mentally adding, “I’m trying to.”

Because if He really did love me first—before I responded, before I cleaned anything up, before I even understood what that love would cost—then the most honest response shouldn’t be complicated.

And yet, even now, I feel the gap between saying it and meaning it.