Quote
Dietrich Bonhoeffer named the disease of a comfortable church: “Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring…
Grace · Discipleship · The Cross
Bonhoeffer · Luke 9 · Romans 6
History
The slaver who wrote the hymn
John Newton, 1725–1807; Olney Hymns (1779)
John Newton captained slave ships. A storm at sea in 1748 began his conversion, but he did not leave the trade immediately — a fact worth telling honestly. Years later he was ordained in the Church of England, became an abolitionist ally of Wilberforce, and wrote “Amazing Grace.” The hymn is not a tidy before-and-after. It is a man looking back on a life he could not unsail and calling the mercy that found him what it was: amazing, and undeserved.
How you’d preach it
Resist the cleaned-up conversion story. Newton’s delay makes grace larger, not smaller. Pair with people who think they have gone too far, or with churches that want a past without repentance.
- Grace
- Conversion
- The Cross
Newton · Wilberforce
1 Timothy 1:15–16