We Love
Oh, we love you Lord.
Oh, we love you Lord.
Oh, we love
Because You first loved us.
This is how God
Showed His love among us,
He sent his one
And only Son
Into the world.
That we might live through Him.
And this is love,
Not that we loved God,
But that He
He loved us.
© 2022 JG Songs
CCLI Song # 7200730
Written at the Resound Worship songwriting retreat at Wydale Hall, North Yorkshire, UK. I love writing scripture, and to be able to write a song that is very nearly word-for-word scripture (NIV) is a great privilege. What I particularly love about this song though is that it comes from 1 John, one of my favourite parts of the Bible, and a part that reminds us so very beautifully of the great love that has won us and which should constantly motivate us to win others for Him.
You can find out in detail how this song came about by clicking the Genesis tab above.
This song started very early in the morning when at about 5:30 a.m., I woke up with the line in my head which would eventually give me the first line of the chorus: “Oh, how I love you Lord.”
Repeating that over and over again led me to the beginning of the chord sequence for the chorus, and once I had that, I started to make up a melody for the verses.
I thought that with such a strong claim of loving God in the chorus, I needed something that challenged this in the verses so started singing about how if we say we love God, we need to obey Him.
I then remembered 1 John 4:19 which says, “We love because He first loved us.” I started to weave that into the end of the chorus and lengthen the “Oh” at the start. I still wasn’t sure exactly how the melody and therefore the chord sequence would go at this point.
I was struggling with the lyrics and verse melody at this point, but I did at least move to some fingerpicking which I thought was promising.
At this point, I did what I should have done at the very start and opened the Bible up to 1 John chapter 4. Soon, I had the beginnings of the verse as the words of scripture fed themselves naturally and very quickly into a melody.
And that was pretty much it. Although I tried hard to find a second verse, nothing else in that part of 1 John 4 would scan as well as what I already had so I left it at that.
Two simple changes found their way into the final song. I dropped the “how” from the first line of the chorus so that the final version is “Oh, we love you Lord”. Also, at the end of the verse, I had the awkward:
But that…
He loved us
A one-on-one songwriting clinic session with the great Ryan Flanigan of Liturgical Folk provided the final piece of the puzzle. After listening thoughtfully to me play that part a few times, he suggested the simple solution:
But that He
He loved us
