The Amazing Grace Behind “Amazing Grace”

“For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast” (Ephesians 2:8-9).

When John Newton penned the words of Amazing Grace for his parishioners in Olney, England in 1772, little did he think that two and a half centuries later, men and women the world over would be singing those same words.

Who was this man whose lyrics so darkly and deeply spoke of his past? When he wrote of being lost and found, and of dangers and snares, and of grace which had brought him safe thus far, he was really speaking of his own life experiences.

Though he lived long ago, the story of his life has passed from generation to generation and has been quite accurately documented. With his father at sea, John spent the first six years of his life at home where a sickly mother, often lying on a couch, introduced him to Scripture, hymns, and poems. At age six, he had mastered the catechism and had begun learning Latin. Then, death finally claimed her.

At age eleven, young John Newton followed his father to sea and soon learned the foul language and debauchery of low-living seamen. He survived a shipwreck, living almost as a slave himself before escaping. Yet through it all, God had His hand on Newton and he couldn’t escape the influence of a Christian mother. He eventually became the captain of a ship which transported human flesh from Africa to the New World. On a trans-Atlantic voyage, he picked up a translation of Thomas à Kempis’ The Imitation of Christ, and read the words, “Life is of short and uncertain continuance… Today the man is vigorous … and tomorrow he is cut down, withered and gone.”

That night a ferocious storm struck. Newton listened to the screams of a sailor as he was swept overboard in the darkness to his death. For hours, Newton was at the helm, his hand clutching the wheel, fighting for his life. “I waited with fear and impatience,” he said, “to receive my inevitable doom.” For eleven long hours he battled the storm, later saying that day was never again absent from his memory. “The prodigal,” he said, “had never been so exemplified as by myself.”

Clutching the wheel, he knelt and he cried out, “Oh thou God of my dead mother, have mercy on me.” Eventually the storm passed, and God did have mercy on him, but He also touched his life with grace—something he never forgot. Though he continued to shuttle slaves to the Carolinas for several more years, Newton changed, and he walked away from the sea to become an Anglican pastor and one of England’s leading abolitionists.

No wonder he could write, “Through many dangers, toils and snares / I have already come; / Tis grace has brought me safe thus far, / And grace will lead me home.”

Today Newton’s lyrics, attached to a popular 19^th century American melody, have become the world’s favorite Christian song. Scottish bagpipes skirl the haunting melody, rock singers croon the words, and pipe organs resound with the full sound, rattling stained glass windows. The fact is, Newton’s experience of deliverance is the story of every true conversion, whether a man is coming through a storm off the coast of Newfoundland or out of the doors of surgery following a cancer surgery.

A final thought. Grace is getting what you don’t deserve, while mercy is not getting what you really deserve. Both are wrapped up in the answered prayer which Newton experienced, in the transformation that changed his life; and that which Newton wrote about is still flowing from the throne room of the Almighty.

Grace is free. Thank God for His amazing grace!

Resource reading: John 1:14-18.