John Newton and the Grace that is Truly Amazing

Finale in a series on Most Loved Hymns, by Rev. James Moore

Ephesians 2: 1-10, John 1: 10-18

Sept. 4, 2005

I have to confess that often I am not amazed by God, or by that quality of God that is called grace. I should be amazed. I should be overwhelmed and grateful, with the gratitude that moves someone to tears or laughter or both, and occasionally I am - when something causes me to stop and remember and take stock of life. But often – and here I I’ll speak only for myself, but I suspect most of you are in the same boat – often I live my life with a sense of casual, spoiled, American-ized entitlement. The unthinking assumption of such a life is that I am entitled not only to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, but to the happiness that doesn’t even require much effort in the pursuit. The unthinking conviction of such a life is that God is supposed to bless me with abundance of every kind; that forgiveness and mercy are automatic; that I deserve a God who loves me no matter what. Such an attitude takes for granted all of life’s joys and blessings, and reacts to even minimal suffering with indignation against a God who is “unfair.”

Grace is the cornerstone of Christian faith – this conviction that God desires to give a divine unmerited love to all of humanity, not because of our worthiness but because God has an overwhelming capacity for love. The idea, and the experience, of grace were powerfully liberating for someone like the apostle Paul, a Pharisee whose religious life had been bound by chains of legalistic requirements and laws. For men like Martin Luther or John Wesley, both burdened with a sense of guilt and the fear of a vengeful God, this idea of God’s grace was incredibly significant. Instead of a life of desperate actions which they hoped might be enough to satisfy an oppressive God, these ancestors of ours were liberated and enabled to live in new ways – with a sense of gratitude to a generous God. For them the idea of grace – God’s unmerited love – was the key that unlocked a rich and faithful life.

But for us – for those of us who already live with a sense of entitlement? I’m concerned that unthinking acceptance of grace feeds our worst natures. If we already assume that we are supposed to be given everything – blessings, forgiveness, heaven, etc. – does grace seem amazing? Does the idea of a God who loves us no matter what move us to tears of gratitude, or to a mere shrug of the shoulders? Do we think grace is amazing, or do we think it’s just our right, like citizenship, voting, and social security?

I’m afraid it’s often the latter, resulting in Christian faith that is weak and indifferent, and I’ll try to address that as this sermon moves forward, but first let me tell you about the life of someone who knew the grace of God to be truly amazing, the man who wrote the hymn we all love, a man named John Newton.

Newton was born in London in 1725, the son of a merchant sea captain. His mother died when he was seven, and he attended a boarding school for several years – the only formal education he ever received – but by age 11 he went to sea with his father. In 1744, when he was 19, he was pressed into service on a British man of war, but when conditions on the ship proved intolerable he tried to desert. He was soon captured, and received a public flogging and demotion from the rank of midshipman to common seaman. Finally at his own request he was transferred to a slave ship bound for the coast of Sierra Leone. He was made the personal servant of the slave trader, a brutal man who treated him with much cruelty, until he was eventually rescued by a sea captain who had known his father.

Newton ultimately was given a share of this other man’s business, and he rose to become commander of his own slave ship. He had long since abandoned the religious convictions he had learned from his mother, and life on a slave ship could hardly have been conducive to spirituality, but in 1748 – age 23 - he had what he later called a “great deliverance.” Returning from Africa to England he was caught up in a terrible storm, so violent that he was convinced that he and his ship were doomed. He heard himself exclaim “Lord, have mercy upon us.” Somehow the ship rode out the storm, and back in his cabin as John Newton reflected on his spontaneous prayer he became convinced that God had answered that prayer and had saved him. For the rest of his life he observed this date, May 10^th, as the anniversary of his conversion.

Now this is where John Newton’s story becomes troubling to me, but also instructive and in an odd way strangely comforting. What do you think this newly committed Christian did, this man who had been engaged in the barbarous activity of transporting Africans to a life of slavery? I’ve heard it said that he turned his ship around and freed the slaves he’d been transporting, and I wish I could say that this was the truth, but the reality is that John Newton continued as a slave trader for about 6 more years. He’d experienced God’s grace, God’s freely given love, but failed to see the implications of this grace. Oh, I’ve read that after his conversion he tried to make conditions on the ship more humane, and that he now held Sunday services for his crew members, but he persisted in what is (to us, at least) a terrible, sinful activity.

How could he do such a thing? It seems that we humans are capable of walling off parts of our lives, isolating places from the converting power of God’s grace, so that the world’s values and the old unconverted ways of living go on. How could a Christian be a slave trader? Well what about us? What about our unthinking materialism in this world of need? What about latent racism and prejudice that lurks beneath the surface of our lives? What about the unthinking, even enthusiastic, support and blessing for war that is offered by many followers of the Prince of Peace? What about the small, dishonest, unkind, and selfish actions that mar our lives just about every day – so common that we are no longer ashamed of them, but simply pass them off as being “human”? Many of us, perhaps all of us, have experienced something of the grace of God. Many here are very sincere about Christian life – so why do so many sins remain, so many actions that are really not worthy of what we say we believe in, so many attitudes that – were we to really face up to them – would make us ashamed? Why doesn’t grace make us into what we ought to be?

John Newton eventually left the sea, in 1754, in part because of a serious illness, and was employed as the surveyor of the tides in Liverpool. He there fell under the influence of a preacher named George Whitfield, and also became acquainted with our Methodist founder, John Wesley. Under their guidance he deepened his Christian life, and after some years felt himself led to pastoral ministry, and though he was largely self-educated he applied for ordination in the Anglican Church. He was rejected in 1758, but he persisted, and finally in 1764 he was ordained and sent to serve as a pastor in a poor village name Olney.

At Olney Newton became a well known preacher, one whose personality and history and earthy illustrations seemed to cut right through to peoples’ hearts, and the story of his storm-tossed conversion, and his eventual departure from slave trading, were frequent staples of his sermons. He also made inroads by doing something that was not so common in Anglican churches at the time, namely singing hymns (as opposed to simply chanting psalms.) When he felt that there was a lack of suitable hymns for the congregation he began writing his own, for a time in collaboration with a noted poet named William Cowper, who lived in Olney. Their goal was to have at least one new hymn a week, and they eventually published a book of these songs, called Olney Hymns. Of all these hymns only two are ever sung by modern congregations. One is “Glorious Things of thee are Spoken,” and the other is “Amazing Grace.”

“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.”

Newton was always conscious of his sinful past, particularly as the years went by and he was able to see more clearly the evil he had perpetuated as a slave trader. After 16 years in the church at Olney he became pastor of a large church in London, where he preached for the remaining 17 years of his life. One of his parishioners there was William Wilberforce, the leading voice in Parliament calling for the abolition of slavery, and Newton became increasingly involved in the abolition movement. In 1788 he helped Wilberforce by publishing his own experience in the slave trade, laying out in detail the sordid and cruel realities of slavery, and to the end of his days he continued to speak publicly against it.

Newton kept preaching until the year of his death, even after becoming blind, and suffering some diminishing of his mental faculties in ways that were painful for his friends to see. When they asked him to retire from preaching he said “I cannot stop. What, shall the old African blasphemer stop while he can still speak?” During one of his last sermons, aware of how his faculties were deteriorating, he said “My memory is nearly gone, but I remember two things: that I am a great sinner, and that Christ is a great savior!”

He died in 1807, ironically the year in which Great Britain outlawed the slave trade. He and his wife are buried in the graveyard near the Olney church, and the epitaph, written by John Newton himself reads, in part, as follows:

John Newton, Clerk

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 labored to destroy.....

“Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me,” John Newton wrote. When I first learned the story of John Newton I was moved by the story of the saving grace that came to this slave trader. I was moved, but couldn’t completely identify with his story, because I’ve never done anything as bad as slave trading, and I’ve never needed grace in such degree, or so I thought. When I later learned that he persisted in slave trading I was disappointed, sorry that the legendary version of the story – “instant sainthood” – wasn’t true.

But the more I think about John Newton’s story I am more and more grateful for its realism, and more and more amazed at the depths of the grace of God. In some ways it doesn’t surprise me that God forgave John Newton for being a slave trader when he was a pagan. What can you expect of a pagan? But God’s grace was deep enough to forgive him for persisting in slave-trading as a Christian, and more than that – God’s grace was powerful enough not only to forgive him, but to lead him, slowly but steadily, on a new path.

The impact of grace is not just a momentary thing. Newton was saved by amazing grace. Grace very quickly saved him from drowning in the ocean...... Grace very quickly forgive him and saved him from what St. Paul calls “the laws of sin and death,”..... And grace very slowly and gradually saved from an old life of evil and ushered into a new life of service to others.

Newton apparently understood that grace is a long term proposition, for he says “’Tis grace hath led me safe thus far, and grace will lead me home......” And here is the point with which I’ll conclude: God is not done with us yet – not done with us who sometimes take grace for granted, not done with us who have blind spots and unacknowledged sins, not done with us who sincerely believe and yet sometimes live as if we were atheists. God’s grace is still at work to forgive and to transform.

God’s grace has led us safe thus far, and if we are willing, like John Newton we will find that grace will lead us home.

-----------

Much of the biographical information on John Newton came from Dictionary of National Biography, cited on WholesomeWords.org, and from Kenneth Osbeck’s 101 Hymn Stories.