Lord’s Day, Vol. 9 No. 17

Amazing Grace

• From Slave Ship Owner to Salvation

One of the most popular and beloved hymns, “Amazing Grace,” was penned by John Newton of England in the 1700s. The hymn relates the pilgrimage of its author, who was radically transformed by the grace of God.

John Newton’s devout mother dedicated him early to the ministry and began his religious training at an early age. He could recite the catechism and hymns by the age of four. His mother died when he was eleven, and at the age of eleven, after several years of school away from home, he went to sea with his sea captain father. Later he served in the British Navy, deserted and when caught was put in irons and whipped in public.

Then Newton abandoned the religious principles taught by his mother and embarked on a life of such debauchery that his friends despaired of his sanity. He signed on a slave ship and soon was master of his own ship, dealing in the monstrous evil of bringing slaves from Africa. With one whip in one hand and a gun in the other, often given to drunkenness and lust, he sank deep into the deepest depths of sin.

In 1748 at the age of twenty-three, he ran into a savage storm that threatened to carry him and his ship to the bottom. They say there was no atheists in foxholes during a war and perhaps it is equally true that there are no atheists on the ship caught in a vicious storm at sea.

Newton thought of himself, like Jonah, as the cause of the mountainous waves and raging wind that threatened to engulf the boat and its passengers. This close brush with death set him thinking about the true meaning of life and led him to read at sea Thomas Kempis’s classic, Imitation of Christ.

The Holy Spirit used the storm and the book to convict him of his need of Christ. Sick of his pitiable condition and of the filthy slave business, he was led to leave the slave trade and ultimately to go into the ministry. All through his life John Newton never ceased to marvel at the grace of God that transformed him so completely. While pastoring his church in the town of Olney, he wrote his spiritual autography in a song that God gave him from the dark night of his soul.

Most people who sing his words about God’s grace “that saved a wretch like me” do not feel that they have been “wretches.” But that is exactly what John Newton realized he was when Christ saved him. Wherever he went to preach, large crowds gathered to hear the “old converted sea captain.” He declared. “Had you known that my conduct, principles and heart were still darker than my outward condition – how little would you have imagined that such a one was reserved to be such an instance of the providential care and exuberant goodness of God.” His testimony has been resonated around the world in his beloved hymn:

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!

Through many dangers, toils and snares
We have already come;
‘Tis Grace that brought us safe thus far,
And grace will lead us home.

When we’ve been there ten thousand years,

Bright shining as the sun,

We’ve no less days to sing God’s praise

Than when we first begun.

The tune, so perfectly wedded to these words, is an early American folk melody, a plantation tune from the southern United States.

 In his later years Newton joined William Wilberforce and other leaders in the crusade to abolish the slave trade in England. In the year of Newton’s death, 1807, the British Parliament finally abolished slavery throughout its domain.

From his new life in Christ Newton also wrote, “How Sweet the Name of Jesus Sounds” and “Come My Soul, Thy Suit Prepare,” along with many others. He set down his own epitaph, which today can be read on his granite tombstone:

John Newton, minister

Once an infidel and libertine,

A servant of slaves in Africa,

Was, by the rich mercy of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ

Preserved, restored, pardoned

And appointed to preach the faith he

Had long laboured to destroy.

Our spiritual biography no doubt is quite different and less dramatic. However, we are debtors to the same grace of God for saving us from sin and granting us the blessings of his salvation. We echo Newton’s testimony of amazing grace.

[Edited and extracted from Songs in the Night – Inspiring Stories behind 100 Hymns Born in Trial and Suffering by Henry Gariepy]

Yours lovingly,

Pastor Lek Aik Wee