The story of John Newton and the hymn Amazing Grace.
Newton’s hymn has grown so familiar to us that we sometimes forget the depth of the testimony behind it.
Those lines were not crafted by a saint who lived an unblemished life. They were written by a man who walked through the same spiritual wilderness Manasseh walked through—a man swallowed by sin, driven by rebellion, and nearly destroyed by arrogance.
He was a brilliant child. By ten, he had memorized vast portions of Scripture. His mother planted in his heart the seeds of faith, faith she never lived long enough to see sprout. When she died, everything inside him collapsed. His grief curdled into anger. His anger hardened into bitterness. And bitterness turned him against God, against authority, and eventually against himself.
His father, a wealthy ship owner and slave trader, tried to correct him. Newton only mocked him. He wrote vile songs slandering his father and taught those songs to the sailors aboard their ships. His father pulled him from the vessel, not knowing what to do with a son whose heart had become a clenched fist of resentment.
Then one day, walking along the harbor, Newton was ambushed. Struck unconscious. Kidnapped. Pressed into service aboard a foreign ship. When he awakened, he found himself in the brutal world of maritime slavery.
The captain despised him. Newton responded with stubborn rebellion. He became such a problem that the captain, enraged, decided to be rid of him. He sold Newton to an African queen—an arrangement that placed the young man among the very people his own family had exploited.
Newton lived like an animal. He was beaten. Starved. Covered in filth. Mocked. Treated below the servants. He was fed rotten scraps and pelted with waste. He sank lower than he ever imagined possible.
One day, at the brink of death, he fled into the jungle. But the jungle offered no refuge. Blind with fever, stumbling, starving, he wandered through the dark. The verses of Scripture his mother taught him echoed through his mind like distant thunder, but he resisted them still.
Eventually—miraculously—his father sent a ship that found him. He returned to England alive, but not whole. He inherited his father’s slave-trading operation and became one of the most feared and brutal captains on the sea. He chained people. He beat them. He transported them like cargo.
He did to others what had been done to him, doubling the cruelty in his soul. His life became a storm, and everywhere he sailed, darkness followed.
Yet even then, God was not finished with him.
On one voyage, a massive storm hit. Newton, at the wheel, fought for survival. Waves crashed over the ship. The vessel groaned under the force of the sea.
Then Newton collapsed. A stroke. A moment of utter powerlessness. Carried back to England, he survived, but never fully recovered. His right foot dragged behind him for the rest of his life. The storms outside had calmed, but the storm in his soul raged on.
One day he picked up a book—The Imitation of Christ by Thomas à Kempis. As he read, something inside him broke open. The words pierced through the layers of rebellion. The Scriptures stirred. The voice of his mother echoed. The stories he had once memorized returned. His heart softened. The iron bars around his soul began to bend.
Newton surrendered to Christ. He sold his share in the slave business. He pursued the ministry. He preached the gospel he had once despised. He became a shepherd to the broken, a friend to the poor, a voice for the silent.
He placed a brass plaque on his pulpit with the words:
“Remember that you were slaves in Egypt, and the Lord your God redeemed you.”