The Bible gives us many words that describe the Lord. That’s especially evident in the Psalms, where we are told that He is our rock, our fortress, our strong tower, our Savior, our Redeemer, our shield, our hiding place, our keeper, our shade, our refuge, our shelter, and our strength, just to name a few. But one of the most wonderful privileges we enjoy is that we can call Jesus our friend. And even more amazing is that He calls us His friends! This is what we read in the Gospel of John in 15:14-15. “You are My friends if you do what I command you. No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from My Father I have made known to you.”
We all have people in our lives who are our friends and who would consider us their friends. Friendship is a wonderful relationship. Our friends bring us joy as we share experiences together, as we tell one another what we appreciate about that friend, and the things we love to do to bring happiness into their hearts. Friends accept each other despite their mutual faults and failings, they lift up one another when things don’t go well, and they stand up to defend each other when they or their reputations are attacked. Friends stand beside us when others reject us. Friends speak the truth to us when we are heading in the wrong direction. Friends sit with us when we’re hurting physically or emotionally.
The secular world has its songs about friendship, but none of those come close to the friendship we are privileged to enjoy with Jesus. We find that theme and language in hymns like “What a Friend We Have in Jesus” and “I’ve Found a Friend, O Such a Friend.” And it’s in the opening line of “Jesus, What a Friend for Sinners,” a description that is echoed in Luke 7:34 where Jesus was known as “… a friend of publicans and sinners!” Jesus is the friend who responds to the greatest need we have: deliverance from the guilt and power and penalty of sin. The hymn is found in almost all modern hymnals today. The lyrics were written in 1910 by John Wilbur Chapman (1859-1918), one of the most prominent and widely travelled evangelists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Born in Richmond, Indiana, he attended Quaker Day School and Methodist Sunday school. At the age of 17 he made a public profession of his faith in Christ and joined the Richmond Presbyterian Church. He received his seminary degree from Lane Theological Seminary, Cincinnati, Ohio. He was later awarded a Doctorate in Divinity from the College of Wooster, and an LL.D. from Heidelberg University. In 1882 he married Irene Steddon with whom he had a daughter. His wife died in 1886. In 1888 he married Agnes Pruyn Strain, and they had four children. His second wife died in 1907. In 1910 he married Mabel Cornelia Moulton, the same year he composed “Jesus, What a Friend for Sinners.”
He held six pastorates in Ohio, Indiana, New York, and Pennsylvania before becoming an evangelist, generally traveling with gospel singer, Charles Alexander. In 1893 he preached with Dwight Moody. Billy Sunday was one of his disciples on the circuit. In 1895 he was appointed Corresponding Secretary of the Presbyterian General Assembly’s Committee on Evangelism, overseeing the activities of 51 evangelists in 470 cities. He developed campaign tactics to maximize evangelistic successes, trying them first in Pittsburgh, then Syracuse. With funding from wealthy Presbyterian philanthropist, John H. Converse (1840-1910), Chapman joined with Alexander to launch evangelistic campaigns in 1907. Converse also set up a trust fund so as to finance Chapman’s crusades posthumously, and offered to underwrite Chapman’s expenses if he would re-enter the evangelistic field full-time.
Chapman assembled 21 evangelistic teams after that to cover 42 sections of Philadelphia, preaching for several weeks, resulting in 8000 conversions! They repeated this in North Carolina In 1909 they started a worldwide campaign in Vancouver, BC, with an itinerary that included Melbourne, Sydney, Ipswich, Brisbane, Adelaide, Ballarat, Bendigo, and Townsville in Australia; Manila in the Philippines; Hong Kong, Kowloon, Canton, Shanghai, Beijing, and Tientsin in China; Seoul in South Korea; Kobe, Kyoto, Tokyo, and Yokohama in Japan. Mass evangelism was losing favor in 1910, so he was back holding large revivals with Alexander in 1912. He was also elected moderator of the Presbyterian Church’s General Assembly, and came under so much stress, he developed gall stones. The surgery was too much for him, and he died two days later on Christmas Day at the age of only 59. He was also a prolific writer of religious works and hymn lyrics.
During these years, Chapman was also heavily involved in the promoting of religious summer conferences. He was at one point the director of the Winona Lake Bible Conference in Indiana and also helped to establish Bible conferences in Montreat, North Carolina and the Stony Brook Assembly summer conferences on Long Island, New York, founded in 1909. Chapman remained heavily involved in the Stony Brook conferences in his later years, seeing that it had the most promise of flourishing because of its close proximity to New York City. After his death, his widow, Mabel Cornelia Moulton, gave to the Stony Brook Assembly the gift of a paved driveway in his memory. Today, 1 Chapman Parkway still serves as the address of The Stony Brook School, which was founded in 1922 as an extension of the summer conferences.
What Chapman wrote in his five verses seems almost biographical. The first four verses are allusions to trials and disappointments, perhaps ones that its author had concluded only his heavenly Friend could resolve. Is that what it means to become 51 years old and suffer the loss of two wives? Wounded, but wiser. And, leaning…no, in fact clinging to your ally. Seeing the end coming, you grip Him tighter, and appreciate Him more and more. It’s said that Chapman once related that his life-theme was to turn away from anything that drew him away from God. So, evidently if you’re Wilbur Chapman, you tell people you meet WHO really matters to you, and you gather people about you who want to stare at Him too. “Don’t let my gaze drift elsewhere, despite troubles. He’s not left me alone,” I think, if I’m J. Wilbur Chapman. That shouldn’t just be Chapman’s story!
In addition to his evangelistic labors, he served in these pastorates: the Presbyterian Church in College Corner, Ohio (1882); the Presbyterian Church in Liberty, Indiana (1882); the Dutch Reformed Church in Schuylerville, New York (1883-1885); First Reformed Church in Albany, New York (1885-1890); Bethany Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (1890-1892, 1896-1899); and Fourth Presbyterian Church in New York City (1899-1902).
The text of the hymn is set as a public testimony, as if Chapman were himself preaching at one of those many evangelistic gatherings, inviting people to come to Jesus, whatever their need, and assuring them that they would find Him to be the one who is able and willing to meet that need in one of a series of images. Chapman makes himself the one testifying about how Jesus had met that need in his own life, with the repeated first person pronouns, “I – me – my.” In each stanza, that image of the Savior is emphasized by having the first letter of the word capitalized. Not surprisingly, Chapman’s lyrics are filled with scriptural phrases and allusions.
In stanza 1, Jesus is described as “a Friend for sinners.” He is that Friend (John 15:13-15) who loves us (John 3:16) and whose love makes us whole spiritually, just as His power made Aeneas whole (healed) physically (Acts 9:34). This stanza reminds us what true friends do. When other friends fail us and foes assail us, Jesus will be there for us. And most importantly, He is that truest Friend who can do for us what we most need, and what none other can do, deliver us from sin, for that is His title: “a Friend for sinners.”
Jesus! what a Friend for sinners!
Jesus! Lover of my soul;
Friends may fail me, foes assail me,
He, my Savior, makes me whole.
In stanza 2, Jesus is described as “a Strength in weakness.” We need that strength not only when we are tempted and tried, but also when we have failed and fallen into sin again. He will not only forgive us, but will lift us up to continue moving forward in our labor of sanctification. We can be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might (Ephesians 6:10). To be strong we must hide ourselves in Him (Psalm 27:5). His strength will enable us to gain the victory by faith (1 John 5:4).
Jesus! what a Strength in weakness!
Let me hide myself in Him;
Tempted, tried, and sometimes failing,
He, my strength, my vict’ry wins. [Refrain]
In stanza 3, Jesus is described as “a Help in sorrow” and a “comfort.” Job 5:7 tells us what we have all come to know: “man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upward.” We can come before Christ’s throne to find grace to help in time of need (Hebrews 4:14-16). There are times in life when it seems that something is breaking our hearts (Acts 21:13). But in such times, the God of all comfort offers comfort through Christ (2 Corinthians 1:3-5).
Jesus! what a Help in sorrow!
While the billows o’er me roll,
Even when my heart is breaking,
He, my Comfort, helps my soul. [Refrain]
In stanza 4, Jesus is described as “a Guide and Keeper” and “Pilot.” The Lord will be that trustworthy guide through our wilderness journey (Exodus 13:21), that faithful keeper who promised this in Psalm 121, and whom Paul assured us will guard us from the evil one (2 Thessalonians 3:3). Tempests and storms represent the various trials into which we all fall at times (James 1:2). But thinking of the pilot who steers the ship as it approaches the harbor, we trust Jesus as our Pilot, as He hears our cries (Psalm 40:1).
Jesus! what a Guide and Keeper!
While the tempest still is high,
Storms about me, night o’ertakes me,
He, my Pilot, hears my cry. [Refrain]
In stanza 5, the singer (Chapman) reaches out, “I do now receive Him.” That is what each of us has needed to do, and has been enabled to do only by the sovereign grace of God. To obtain all these blessings, we must receive Him (John 1:12-13). (Some books change the first line to “Jesus! I do now adore Him.”) When we do thus receive Him, He grants us forgiveness (Ephesians 1:7). Then we are His because we will eternally belong to Christ (Mark 9:41).
Jesus! I do now receive Him,
More than all in Him I find,
He hath granted me forgiveness,
I am His, and He is mine. [Refrain]
The refrain celebrates all this with the Hebrew word, “Hallelujah,” which means “Praise Yahweh.” The two titles of Savior and Friend wind up being repeated numerous times for emphasis. Four powerful words wrap up those blessings as “saving, helping, keeping, loving,” and assuring us that He will be “with me to the end.”
Hallelujah! what a Savior!
Hallelujah! what a Friend!
Saving, helping, keeping, loving,
He is with me to the end.
We all sing the lyrics to the tine HYFRYDOL, composed by Rowland Hugh Prichard (1811-1887) as arranged by Ralph Vaughan Williams. The Welsh word means “delightful, agreeable, pleasing, pleasant, beautiful, fair, fine; sweet, melodious.” It is often paired with William Chatterton Dix’s “Alleluia! Sing to Jesus” and Wesley’s “Come, Thou Long Expected Jesus.” Prichard (sometimes spelled Pritchard) was born in Graienyn, near Bala, Merionetshire, Wales, and he lived most of his life in that area. He was a textile worker and an amateur musician. He had a good singing voice and was appointed precentor for the church in Graienyn. Many of his tunes were published in Welsh periodicals. In 1880 Prichard became a loom tender’s assistant at the Welsh Flannel Manufacturing Company in Holywell. In 1844 Prichard published “Cyfaill y Cantorion” (The Singer’s Friend), a song book intended for children. He died at Holywell in Flintshire, Wales, and is buried there at Saint Peters Church.
Here is a link to the hymn as sung in Grace Community Church in California.