Amazing grace

The grace of God was most famously exhibited in the salvation of John Newton, the eighteenth century pastor who wrote the hymn Amazing Grace.  Newton was raised in a Christian home and his godly mother died after her husband had died earlier, when Newton was only six years old. The little boy had been nurtured as a young Christian, but off he went to an uncle’s house. His uncle was a very violent and ungodly man. It was so bad that a little later on Newton ran away. And back then if you ran away, you were likely to end up in the Navy and that was a bad thing. In the Navy he went into sin. He was taught sin and he liked sin. When one time they were in Africa because they were trading slaves, he actually ran away from his sinful ship because he knew he could sin even more if he went to certain tribal areas. At one point, his biography tells, he was actually chained as a slave and they actually made him eat with the dogs. He was able to escape that and he found himself back on a ship heading back home to Scotland.

They came into a terrible storm and they thought they were going to sink. Newton was sent down with the slaves into the darkness of the hull to pump the water out hours on end. And while he was doing that, the Spirit of God brought to his mind the Bible verses that his mother had taught him when he was a little boy. She taught her young son Bible verses that speak of the grace of God, of the forgiveness that is in Christ, of the love of God by which sinners are forgiven and clothed and brought into the family of God, and it began a process. He went ashore; he began reading his Bible, he turned to the God of grace and he was converted; his life was changed. He had the peace of God working in his life and he became a preacher of that peace, one of the most useful gospel preachers of his generation.

His story was a story of grace. Newton was a vile sinner, but he saw that God had sent His Son to die for him, and that God’s free grace was available, by which he could be renewed, forgiven and strengthened in Christ. He realized that all of his plan was within the great plan of God’s grace for salvation. He came to know the power of God’s grace to overcome his sin. The result was peace: peace with God, peace from God, the peace of God. And writing about his own salvation he spoke about the grace of God by which we are saved:

Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me.
I once was lost, but now am found, was blind, but now I see.
’twas grace that taught my heart to fear, and grace my fears relieved;
how precious did that grace appear, the hour I first believed.¹

Dr. Richard D. Phillips