The Trouble with Amazing Grace
In most traditional churches, the preacher doesn’t rise until the hymn of the church has been sung. We treat it like a warm-up. But maybe it’s more. We examine ourselves before the Lord’s table—let a man examine himself. Maybe the song before the sermon carries the same charge: examine yourself before you hear the Word.
So let’s examine the song.
Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me. The man who wrote it, John Newton, was a slave trader. We’ve been handed a tidy version—a storm in 1748, a cry to God, and he walked away clean. The storm is true. But when it settled, he went back. He captained slave ships after that night and stayed in the trade for years.
So what was 1748? If the man kept trading souls, what got converted? It makes me wonder if the real conversion wasn’t the storm—but the song. Newton didn’t write Amazing Grace until 1772, twenty-five years later. Maybe that was when grace finished its work: when he could look back, call himself a wretch, and mean it.
David was no different. He didn’t cry out the night he took Bathsheba, or the morning after. It took a prophet’s finger before he wrote have mercy upon me, O God. The reckoning came late.
So the next time you sing Amazing Grace, ask yourself: are you trying to live better, do better—just not there yet? If that’s you, the song is making its case. Only grace can get you through that in-between. It carried Newton through the storm so he could one day preach it. And it will carry you too.
And to my musicians—when you lean into Amazing Grace on that Hammond organ, it may not land on the young believers yet. But watch the older saints. They’ve been through storms you can’t see, and they know it was grace that brought them through. That’s why they sing. That’s why they shout. So play on, and usher in the spirit for them—because for those who’ve come through, this song isn’t history. It’s testimony.
By Robert Wright · Minister of Music, New Light Baptist Church
