Did the witers of the New Testament get their picture of Jesus right?

EXPLORING CHRISTIANITY - EYEWITNESS

THE BIBLE
Can we trust a book written 2000 years ago?

EYEWITNESS
Did the writers of the New Testament get their picture of Jesus right?

GOD - MAN
Is Jesus really God?

RESURRECTION
Did Jesus really rise from the dead?

RELIGIONS
With so many religions, why Christianity?

SUFFERING
If there is a God, why is there so much suffering?

TRINITY
Understanding the Trinity.

SCIENCE
The complementary nature of Science & Christianity.

FORGIVENESS
What it is and why it matters?

GUIDANCE
How does God guide?

REPENTANCE
What it is and why you can't get to heaven without it.

BORN AGAIN
What does it mean to be converted and born again?

SAVING FAITH
The kind of faith that will get you to heaven

ASSURANCE
Can I know for sure that I am going to heaven?

TRUTH
What is truth and does it matter?

MORALITY
Does it matter how we live? A Christian view of morality.

THE CHURCH
God's vision for his family, the Church. A call to the churches of the new millennium.

PURPOSE
How can I find a great purpose for living?

IDENTITY
Who am I; Finding my true identity as a human being and as a child of God.

SELF-ESTEEM
How can I feel good about my self? The Christian basis for proper sel-esteem.

LIFE AFTER DEATHChristianity's Hope & Challenge.

THE CROSS
Why did Jesus Die? What the Bible says about the Cross.

Grace
The importance of grace in the New Testament.

The story of a hymn

In his book Amazing Grace[1] Steve Turner tells the story of John Newton’s hymn of the same title, which he calls “the world’s most enduring song.” Newton’s story is a remarkable example of the grace of which he later wrote. Joining the navy at an early age, at one time he entered the services of an English slave trader in Sierra Leone. He was so badly treated that even slaves in chains felt pity for him and brought him a little of their own scanty meals. Morally, Newton had sunk about as low as one could get. Eventually rescued by the captain of an English trading vessel, he later wrote of the journey home, “My life, when awake, was a course of most horrid impiety and profaneness. I know not that I have ever since met so daring a blasphemer: not content with common oaths and impressions, I daily invented new ones.”

[1] Lion Hudson, 2002, ©. As declared on the back cover, “Never before has the tale of one song been told so extensively and so enthrallingly.”

It was on this journey home, when they were off the coast of Newfoundland, that on 10 March, 1748, they experienced a storm so powerful the crew felt there was little hope of survival. During the struggle to keep the ship afloat, passages of the Bible came flooding back into Newton’s mind. “I thought there never was, nor could be, such as sinner as myself, and that my sins were too great to be forgiven.” However, that evening the ship was still afloat and Newton began to have hope and began to pray. He thought of Jesus whom he had so often derided—his life, his death—a death for sins not his own but, “for the sake of those who in their distress should put their trust in him.” Ever since the day of that storm, Newton never failed to remember the grace of God towards him, for “On that day the Lord sent from on high and delivered me out of deep waters.”

It took some years for Newton’s faith to mature. He spent the next few years as the captain of a slave trader ship. He was deeply ashamed of this, writing later, “I hope it will always be a subject of humiliating reflection to me, that I was once an active instrument in a business at which my heart now shudders.” In 1764 he was ordained an Anglican clergyman and licensed as curate-in-charge at Olney, Buckinghamshire. He was to become a mentor and supporter of William Wilberforce in his battle to abolish the slave trade. It was in his attic study at Olney in 1772 that John Newton penned the words of the hymn, now known as ‘Amazing Grace’:

Amazing grace! (how sweet the sound)

That saved a wretch like me!

I once was lost, but now am found,

Was blind, but now I see.

‘Twas grace that taught my heart to fear,

And grace my fears relieved;

How precious did that grace appear,

The hour I first believed!

Through many dangers, toils and snares,

I have already come;

‘Tis grace has brought me safe thus far,

And grace will lead me home.

The Lord has promised good to me,

His word my hope secures;

He will my shield and portion be,

As long as life endures.

Yes, when this flesh and heart shall fail,

And mortal life shall cease;

I shall possess, within the vail,

A life of joy and peace.

The earth shall soon dissolve like snow,

The sun forbear to shine;

But GOD, who called me here below,

Will be forever mine.

The modern version is usually shortened with some change of wording. Today’s popular tune was associated with the words in 1835 in the United States. In the early 1970s, the song became absorbed into secular culture. It has undergone several incarnations over the years as hymn, spiritual, gospel classic, folk song, civil rights anthem, pop hit, heavy metal number and bagpipe tune. It is popular at funerals. Judy Collins would cover four verses and a repeat first verse in four minutes and four seconds. Soul singer Aretha took two stanzas and wrung every meaning out of them over a period of fourteen minutes. Two New York art collectors have collected 3049 unique versions, in twenty-one different genres of music, that were donated to the Library of Congress in Washington DC. The bagpipe version has been the best-selling instrument single of all time in Britain. It has been used in commercial advertising, cartoons and political speeches.

No doubt the tune has much to do with the song’s popularity, but it is the truth expressed in the words that strikes a cord in human hearts all over the world, whether or not those who sing it, and those who hear it, fully understand the amazing grace of God which inspired it.

Turner tells the story of Sherman Whitfield, who had a good degree and a well-paying job working for a chemical company. He said, “I felt pretty good about Sherman Whitfield. I felt that I had pulled myself up by my own bootstraps, that I was the captain of my soul, that I was the Man.”

However, things started to go wrong. His wife sought the counsel of a local preacher and one afternoon Whitfield returned home to find this preacher intimate with his wife. He ran out of the house with Sherman in hot pursuit. “I had heard about the preacher’s one-to-one sessions,” he said, “but I hadn’t realised just how personal they were.” His marriage broke up, he began drinking heavily all day, every day, and his work performance deteriorated. He said, “I was devastated, I was hurt, I was broken…I told my running buddies that I was thinking of going to church and they said, “No, Sherman, it couldn’t have got that bad.”

He did go to church one evening. He heard the word of God preached and at the end of the sermon the choir got up and started singing:

Amazing grace! (how sweet the sound)

That saved a wretch like me!

I once was lost, but now am found;

Was blind, but now I see.

In Whitfield’s words:

When he got to the “wretch” part of it, I said, Wait a minute! He’s in the wretch saving business? I said, I qualify. I qualify! I was not used to going to church and so I didn’t understand all the protocol of how you get saved, yet when they got through singing the song I was sitting right at the back and I stood up and raised my hand. The preacher looked at me. I don’t know if he thought the church was on fire or what but he said, sir, can I help you? I said, I want that Jesus that you’re talking about. I want the one that can save a wretch. So he asked me to come on down. I gave my hand to the preacher and I gave my heart to God.

Since that time “all things have become new.” God has sent me a new wife, sent me a new life and a couple of years after that I ran into this preacher, the one that I had run after when he was with my wife, and all the hate, all the anger, all the things I imagined I was going to do to him, just melted away. I went up to him and I shook this hands. I hugged him. I loved him. Only a Jesus can make that kind of difference.

Turner says:

It’s impossible to know [Newton’s] story and not to wonder how he would feel if he were to be transported into the twenty-first century and hear the lines he wrote in his attic at Olney being sung on the street corners of London, in the folk clubs of New York, at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, on the mountainsides of Kenya, and in the secret churches of China; to hear the phrases he put together coming from the mouths of rock singers, mourners, antiglobalisation protesters, and Christian worshippers of every denomination in every country in the world.