The Slow Grace of John Newton

You know the song. Most of us could sing the first verse in our sleep.

And you probably know the short version of the story behind it. John Newton was a slave trader. He got caught in a terrible storm at sea. He cried out to God. He got saved. He wrote "Amazing Grace."

That's all true. But it leaves out the part I think we need most.

The storm didn't fix everything

The storm hit in March 1748. Newton was 22. The ship was falling apart, and he started praying for the first time in years. He later called that day the start of his turn toward God.

But here's what the short version skips. After that storm, Newton kept working in the slave trade. For about six more years. He even captained slave ships. He read his Bible and prayed on deck while people were chained below him.

He didn't quit because his conscience finally caught up. He quit in 1754 because he got sick and couldn't sail anymore.

I don't know what to do with that, honestly. And I don't think we're supposed to feel comfortable with it.

It took decades

Newton became a pastor in a small English town called Olney. He wrote "Amazing Grace" there for a New Year's sermon in 1773. That's 25 years after the storm.

And he still hadn't spoken out against slavery.

That didn't happen until 1788. Forty years after the storm, Newton wrote a pamphlet telling the public what he had seen on those ships. He said he was ashamed. He said it should "always be a subject of humiliating reflection" that he had been part of it.

About that same time, a young politician named William Wilberforce came to see him. Wilberforce had just come to faith and thought he might need to quit politics to serve God. Newton told him to stay. God could use him right where he was.

Wilberforce stayed. He spent the next 20 years fighting to end the British slave trade.

Britain banned it in March 1807. Newton died that December.

Two things he remembered

Near the end, Newton's mind was going. A friend recorded something 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."

I think he had it about right.

Why this matters

We like our testimonies clean. A before and an after. Lost, then found.

But most of us don't change like that. God gets hold of us, and then there are years of blind spots. Things we should have seen sooner. Habits we kept too long. Stuff we defended that we're embarrassed about now.

Newton's life doesn't excuse any of that. He paid for his silence with shame, and people in chains paid far more. But his life does show that God doesn't quit on a slow learner.

Paul said it this way: "He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus" (Philippians 1:6).

God doesn't start something in us and walk away from it halfway through.

So here's the question for this weekend. Is there something God has been showing you for a long time that you keep putting off? Don't wait forty years. And if you've already waited too long, it's still not too late to say so.

"I once was lost, but now am found. Was blind, but now I see."

Newton saw. It just took a while. For most of us, it does.

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