John Newton: Amazing Grace and the Slave Trader Who Wrote It

The Atlantic had turned black. Wind tore through the rigging, waves crashed clean over the deck, and a sailor who had spent years mocking the very idea of God was clinging to a rope and certain he would not live to see morning. His name was John Newton. He was the captain of a slave ship, and by his own confession one of the most brutal men sailing those waters. The vessel was breaking apart beneath his feet. And in that moment, with the cold sea pouring in around him, the hardest man on the ocean opened his mouth and cried out to a God he did not believe in. Here is the part most people get wrong: Newton did not change overnight. For years after that storm he kept right on in the slave trade. Grace worked on him slowly, the way water works on stone. Eventually he left the sea. He was ordained a minister in Olney, England. And there, the same man who had once cursed God on a sinking deck sat down and wrote the words the whole world now knows. "Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me." He knew exactly which wretch he had in mind. But the song is not the reveal. As an old man, frail and going blind, Newton wrote a public confession of everything he had done in the slave trade. Then he poured himself into a young politician named William Wilberforce. Newton told him to stay and fight. In 1807, the year before Newton died, England outlawed the slave trade. The old captain lived just long enough to hear that the chains were coming off. A five-minute reminder that there is no one too far gone for grace. Scripture echo: 2 Corinthians 5:17, Psalm 40:2 Key figure: John Newton (1725-1807), English minister, former slave ship captain, author of "Amazing Grace" Read or listen on the blog: https://rodneycoe.com/john-newton-amazing-grace/ Five minutes. Pull up a chair.

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The Atlantic could turn black. Wind tore through the rigging, waves crashed clean over the deck, and a sailor who had spent years mocking the very idea of God was clinging to a rope and certain he would not live to see morning. His name was John Newton. He was the captain of a slave ship, and by his own confession, one of the most brutal men sailing those waters. The vessel was breaking apart beneath his feet, and in that moment, with the cold sea pouring in around him, the hardest man on the ocean opened his mouth and cried out to a god he did not believe in. Stay with me. You're gonna want to hear the rest of the story. Welcome to Lift Up Your Day, a daily five-minute devotional, short stories with a biblical heartbeat. I'm Rodney Coe, and today how the cruelest man on the Atlantic became the voice that helped end slavery. It was March of 1748. The storm nearly set the Greyhound to the bottom, and somehow the old ship held together long enough to limp back into port. Newton survived, but something in him had cracked open that night. He marked that date for the rest of his life as the day the Lord first came looking for his soul. Every year on the anniversary, he set the whole day apart to fast and remember the night a storm did what no sermon ever had. Now here is the part most people get wrong. Newton did not change overnight. For years after that storm he kept right on the slave trade. He even captained slave ships as a man who now called himself a believer, still blind to the evil he was steeped in. Grace was working on him slowly, the way water works on stone. Eventually he left the sea for good. He studied, he was ordained a minister in a little English town called Olni, he pastored plain folk there, and on Friday nights he gathered them in an old great house of prayer. He wrote a fresh hymn most weeks to teach them, simple lines they could sing without a book. And there, the same man who had once cursed God on a sinking deck sat down and wrote words the whole world now knows. Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. He knew exactly which wretch he was writing about. But the song is not the reveal. Here is the reveal. As an old man, frail and going blind, Newton picked up his pen one last time and wrote out a public confession of everything he had done in the slave trade. He named his own sins in the open, and he poured himself into a young politician who was wrestling with whether to give his life to the fight for abolition. That young man was William Wilberforce. Newton told him to stay and fight, and Wilberforce stayed. For twenty long years he fought it out in Parliament. In 1807, the year before John Newton died, England outlawed the slave trade. The old captain lived just long enough to hear that the chains were coming off. A man who once served sin and traded in human beings, he said, was spared by the mercy of the Savior. He had spent half his life trying to outrun. He wanted the last word over his grave to be grace. Maybe you carry a part of your past, your sure puts you out of reach. A version of yourself you hope nobody ever finds out about. Hear what God said through Paul in Second Corinthians 5 17 If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. Old things have passed away, behold all things have become new. Not patched up, not cleaned off, new. Newton believed that with his whole heart, because he had lived the proof of it. And David, a man who knew his own pit, wrote this in Psalm forty, verse two. He brought me up out of a horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and set my feet upon a rock. The same God who reached into a sinking ship for a slave trader is reaching out for you right now. There is no one too far gone for grace. That was the whole point of the psalm. And that, friend, is how God lives up your day.