The story behind the song – Amazing Grace

No study of hymnology would be complete without “Amazing Grace.” Amazing Grace is probably one of the best known hymns, widely published and loved by all religions. It has often been called in modern meetings the Baptist Hymn. There is probably no more accurate description of Grace than Amazing and this is truly the case when you consider John Newton’s biographical background.

John Newton was born in London in 1725 but at the age of 6, his mother died. She was a pious and prayerful woman who instilled in him the Word of God demonstrating what the Bible declares in Proverbs: “Instruct a child in his way, and even when he is old she will not turn away from him.” The song Amazing Grace could well be the testimony of John’s conversion and Christian life. In its original form, there were six verses. The first three that are now known and used were written by John Newton. In its original publication in the Olney Hymns in 1779, it bore the title “Review and Expectation of Faith”.

As we explore the Amazing Grace verses, from the very first verse we see Newton’s knowledge of theology.

Amazing Grace how sweet the sound,

Who saved a wretch like me.

Once I was lost, but now I’ve been found,

I was blind, but now I see.

The definition of Grace, according to Emory H. Bancroft, is “undeserved favor to sinners.” The word Grace appears in the New Testament alone more than 170 times. One cannot even read the title, Amazing Grace, without immediately remembering Ephesians 2:8 “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith, and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God:” It is grace that saves us. , Grace that keeps us, Grace that guides us and Grace that one day will take us home. What John Newton was saying about Grace is that it sounds good, I like the way that sounds.

The line “who saved a wretch like me” draws our attention to the depravity of man. Man is born without a spark of divinity; all men are born with the depraved nature of Adam. Scriptures that prove this are Romans 3:10, 3:23, Ecclesiastes 7:20, Galatians 3:22, and I John 1:8. Also introduced in these lines is the fact that John Newton realized that for man to see God there must be a new birth. Acts 4:12 states that there is no other name in which we can be saved.

Salvation, regeneration, is the only way to Christ. Man is born lost. He doesn’t have to do anything to get lost, he’s lost. The only way man can get to Heaven is he must be quickened, quickened. And that’s what he does and it’s regeneration. Regeneration is that spiritual work of the Holy Spirit which imparts the new nature, the nature of Christ, into a man. That is what is meant by the phrase, “I was once lost.”

“I was blind but now I see”, the lost condition of man is typified in scripture as blindness. No doubt John Newton had read the story of Jesus healing the blind man in John 9, where the blind man declared, “While I was blind, now I see.”

The second verse of Amazing Grace,

It was grace that taught my heart to fear

and grace eases my fears.

How precious did that grace seem

The hour when I first believed.

John says clearly, everything is by grace. He says the same grace that he put me under conviction and condemnation, when I turned to Christ, it was that same grace that allayed all my fears, and it came at the same time, at the same time that I believed. No doubt the promise of Romans 10:9 to “believe in your heart” came to John’s mind as he wrote these words. That word believe has a strong meaning, trust or entrust, have faith in. The implication is illustrated by believing that a chair will hold you up, but you haven’t put your faith in the chair until you sit on it. You think it will hold you up and support you, but you haven’t shown your faith until you commit to it by sitting on it. That is what the word believe means, show your faith, entrusting yourself to Christ.

The third verse, if you know anything about the life of John Newton speaks a lot to the heart:

Through many dangers, canvases and traps,

I have already come

It’s the grace that brought me safe until now

And grace will take me home.

At the tender age of 6, after the death of his mother, little John set sail with his father, who was a sea captain. John later joined the British navy, but he was a very unruly sailor. He even left the navy and was later captured, chained, and publicly beaten. He would later become a ship captain himself, the captain of a slave ship. John was on a long journey from Brazil and to pass the time, he was reading a book called Imitation of Christ written three hundred years earlier by Thomas Kempis. Then came a terrible and terrifying storm that almost sent the ship and all the crew into the ocean. After surviving this storm, this made John think about life and death. He knew that he was lost, he knew that he was a sinner. The teachings of his godly mother came back to his mind and John knelt down and repented and received the Lord Jesus. You can only imagine the storms and dangers John had been through when he wrote those words. He knew that only by the Grace of God he was not dead and in Hell.

After being saved, John would trade his position for the pulpit. John, a lover of the sea, took a job on land and studied for sixteen years and was then ordained in the Anglican Church and assigned to pastor in the small English town of Olney. It was there that he wrote the words to Amazing Grace, and he was absolutely right, how sweet the sound!

John Newton wrote the first three verses of Amazing Grace and he wrote these additional verses that we don’t use and you may not know about:

The Lord has promised me well,

His word assures my hope;

He will be my shield and my portion,

As long as life lasts.

Yes, when this flesh and this heart fail,

And mortal life will cease,

I will possess, within the veil,

A life of joy and peace.

The earth will soon dissolve like snow,

The sun stops shining;

But God, who called me down here,

will be forever mine.

The fourth verse in our hymn books, “When we have been there ten thousand years” is anonymous and was added in 1910 by Edwin Othello Excell in Coronation Hymns. The musical tune we now use for Amazing Grace was composed by Edwin Excell in 1910.