Beauty and Christ
The Story Behind Amazing Grace
Amazing Grace was written by John Newton, an Englishman who had been the captain of slave ships before a dramatic conversion turned him into an Anglican clergyman and, later, an abolitionist. He wrote the hymn around 1772, and it was first used on New Year’s Day 1773. Its famous line, ‘that saved a wretch like me,’ is Newton’s honest verdict on his own life.
The true story
John Newton (1725 to 1807) went to sea young and grew hard and profane. He spent years in the Atlantic slave trade, eventually as a ship’s captain, a trade whose cruelty he only later came to see and condemn. In 1748, caught in a violent storm that nearly sank his ship, he cried out to God, and marked that day for the rest of his life as the beginning of his turning. He left the sea, studied for ministry, and became a pastor at Olney in England.
There he wrote hymns for his congregation. Amazing Grace was composed around 1772 and first used on 1 January 1773, published in 1779 in the collection Olney Hymns. The now-familiar tune, called New Britain, is an American melody paired with Newton’s words in the nineteenth century. Late in life Newton, by then blind, became an outspoken abolitionist and lived to see the slave trade abolished in Britain in 1807.
What it points to
The whole hymn is one man’s astonishment that God would forgive him. That is why it has never stopped being sung: everyone, in the end, needs the grace Newton needed. He did not earn it, clean himself up first, or deserve it. It found him in a storm and would not let him go. That is exactly what the Gospel means by grace.
Newton had his own epitaph written. It called him a servant of slaves who was, by the mercy of God, preserved, restored, pardoned. If grace could reach him, it can reach anyone.
Come and see
Beauty is a door, never a trick. The cathedrals, the hymns, and the long roads of pilgrimage were all made by people who had first found something, or Someone, worth the labour of a lifetime. If the beauty draws you, follow it to its source. The living Christ it points toward is not an argument to win but a Person to meet, and he still draws near to everyone who comes to him with an open heart. The Gospel of John is a gentle place to begin.
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Frequently asked questions
- Who wrote Amazing Grace?
- Amazing Grace was written by John Newton (1725 to 1807), an Englishman who had been a slave-ship captain before his conversion led him to become an Anglican clergyman and, later, an abolitionist. He wrote it around 1772.
- What is the story behind Amazing Grace?
- Newton wrote the hymn out of his own life. After years in the slave trade, he cried out to God in a storm in 1748 and slowly turned to faith, became a pastor, and wrote Amazing Grace as his astonished testimony that God had forgiven a wretch like him.
- What does 'that saved a wretch like me' mean?
- It is John Newton's honest verdict on his own past in the slave trade. The line expresses the heart of grace: that God's forgiveness is an undeserved gift, received by faith, not something earned or merited (Ephesians 2:8-9).