The Wretch Who Wrote the World's Most Beloved Hymn

In 1748, a violent storm nearly sank a slave ship crossing the Atlantic. The captain, a foul-mouthed, hard-drinking man named John Newton, cried out to God for mercy — perhaps for the first time with any sincerity. He survived. But the real miracle wasn't that the ship stayed afloat. The real miracle was what happened inside a man who had spent years trafficking in human misery.

Newton didn't change overnight. He continued in the slave trade for several more years before the full weight of his sin became unbearable. But the seed of that storm-tossed prayer took root. He left the sea, became an Anglican clergyman, and eventually one of England's most passionate abolitionists, mentoring William Wilberforce in the fight to end slavery.

And somewhere along that journey, he sat down and wrote the words that have been sung more than any other hymn in the English language: Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me.

Newton chose that word — wretch — deliberately. He never forgot what he had been. He never minimized what he had done. But he discovered that the forgiveness of the Almighty was larger than even his enormous guilt.

That is the scandal of grace. God does not wait for us to clean ourselves up. He meets us in the storm, on the slave ship, in the very wreckage of our worst choices — and He calls us His own.

If grace could reach John Newton, it can reach anyone sitting in this room today.