This devotion is a monthly ministry of the Pee Dee Baptist Association, comprised of 31 Southern Baptist churches in Dillon and Marlboro Counties. For more information call 774-8062.
Featured this month is Rev. Austin Wynn, the pastor of Piney Grove Baptist Church, Lake View.
Amazing grace! How sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me! These words from Amazing Grace are familiar to many of us. We’ve sung them at funerals, weddings, church services, and patriotic holidays. But when things become too familiar to us, we often become numb to the message behind them.
When John Newton first wrote Amazing Grace, the words were more real to him than anything else. Newton had been a sailor for years before the event that changed his life forever. He was heavily involved in the slave trade, shipping hundreds of tightly packed slaves in the filthy confines of his ship. He would sail for weeks across oceans, caring little about the precious souls that were his cargo. To him, the slaves he carried were nothing more than a means to his own wealth and comfort.
Newton’s foul language and wild living earned him the nickname “The Great Blasphemer.” He even said of himself, “I was a ringleader in blasphemy and wickedness … I wanted to rank in wickedness among the foremost of the human race.”
So how did this ungodly man end up writing the words to the most well-known hymn in Christianity? God’s grace intervened in John Newton’s life in the form of a typhoon that nearly sunk his ship. The 22-year-old wretch turned from his sins to Jesus that night, experiencing new birth. John Newton then helped put an end to the slave trade in England. The man who once cared little about anyone but himself became a pastor who served others for over forty years.
When John Newton finally realized that his sins were against the Holy God of heaven, his Creator, he was then able to experience amazing grace. Grace refers to God’s unmerited favor to those who deserve His wrath. Grace means you are getting the opposite of what you deserve. But as amazing as God’s grace is, it is only for those who feel themselves to be a “wretch” and “lost” and “blind.”
What about you, reader? You may not be as bad as John Newton, but we are not to compare ourselves with other worse sinners. We are to compare ourselves with God’s standard, the Ten Commandments.
All of us fall short of God’s standard. We lie, we lust, we hate, we gossip, we cheat, we steal, and we haven’t lived with a perfect love for God every day of our lives. We have a serious problem called sin. Someone once said, “We aren’t sinners because we sin. We sin because we are sinners.”
We have all been sinning from the moment we were born, and we cannot change our nature. Also, no amount of good living can cover up our sin problem. You can put lipstick on a corpse, but it won’t make that person alive on the inside. We need this Holy God to somehow give us grace.
This is what God did for us when He sent His sinless Son into this world. Jesus perfectly loved and followed His Father every day of His life, then He died in the place of sinners on the cross. He was punished so that we wouldn’t have to be and rose again so you can have eternal life.
If you understand that you cannot save yourself from God’s judgment and trust in Jesus alone, you can be forever changed by this amazing grace. God will come live inside you and make you a new person.
If you feel that you’re too far lost for God to save, listen to the words of Paul in 1 Timothy 1:15. The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost.” John Newton was bad, but Paul was worse before his conversion.
Since God can save the chief of sinners, He can save you too. If you will turn in faith to Jesus to save you, then you’ll be able to sing Amazing Grace from the heart because you will be living it, too.
