HE WASHED MY EYES WITH TEARS: The Song Jimmy Swaggart Never Stopped Singing
There are hymns you sing, and then there are hymns you live.
For Jimmy Swaggart, “He Washed My Eyes With Tears” was never just a song — it was his testimony in melody. A quiet confession. A cry of surrender. A reminder that grace doesn’t always arrive with fanfare, but often in the stillness after the fall.
From the earliest days of his ministry, Jimmy sang it with a trembling voice and a bowed head — not to impress, but to repent. The words told a story of brokenness and redemption, of a Savior who does not look away from our failures but meets us in them, with tears of His own.
“He washed my eyes with tears, that I might see…
The broken heart I had was good for me…”
And for Jimmy, that line was more than lyric — it was lived truth. Whether he stood behind a pulpit or at a piano, that hymn became a mirror. A sacred reckoning. A reminder that his calling was not built on perfection, but mercy.
Through scandal, through restoration, through the decades that followed, he returned to this song again and again. Sometimes in church. Sometimes alone. Always sincere. It wasn’t showmanship — it was soul work.
Because Jimmy Swaggart knew what it meant to be undone — and rebuilt by grace.
And in those moments, when the sanctuary lights were low and the music slowed to just him and the keys, you could feel it: a man singing not from pride, but from gratitude.
“He tore it all apart and looked inside…
He found it full of fear and foolish pride…”
In the end, it wasn’t the sermons that defined him. It was the songs.
And this one — “He Washed My Eyes With Tears” — was the one that never left him.
Even now, as his voice has faded from earth’s airwaves, it echoes still. In the hearts of those who wept as he wept. In the sanctuaries where his fingers once stirred chords into confession. In the silence that follows a man who knew he was flawed… and still chose to sing.
Because the tears didn’t break him.
They healed him.
And they made him see.