The Story Behind the Song
Amazing Grace! How Sweet the Sound is one of the most popular hymns in the English-speaking world. In an article updated in 2016, ShareFaith magazine has it listed as number one in its “Top 10 Most Popular Hymns of All Time and Their History.” It’s also in first place in a 2013 compilation by Unlocking the Bible ministry. As recently as June 2020, Amazing Grace was number one on the list of “13 Old Hymns Every Christian Should Know By Heart” on a church technology website. Author and pastor Tim Challies includes it on his list of “The 10 Greatest Hymns of All-Time.” (Although he doesn’t have it in first place, he does write, “The list wouldn’t be complete with[out] ‘Amazing Grace,’ would it? It is considered by many to be the greatest hymn ever written and has been recorded more than any other song”).
The hymn has appeared in at least 1,319 hymnals since it was first published in 1779 by its author, Pastor John Newton. (Click here to explore the life of John Newton on the website for the Cowper and Newton Museum in Olney, England.) Originally in English, it’s been translated into 50 or more languages, including Cherokee, Cheyenne, Chinese, Choctaw, Cree, Creek, French, German, Hausa, Inuit, Inuktitut, Japanese, Kiowa, Korean, Mohawk, Navajo, Northern Ojibway, Ojibway, Plains Cree, Russian and Spanish. According to The Migration Translators website, Amazing Grace is the most translated hymn of all time.
So what is it about this song that makes it a universal phenomenon? Why does it continue to speak now, almost two and a half centuries after its creation, to the entire world? And why would there be over a thousand recordings of it by such disparate singers and groups as KC and the Sunshine Band and the Montreal Jubilation Gospel Choir; Guy and Raina (from the Lawrence Welk Show) and Elvis Presley; and the Chuck Wagon Gang and Mahalia Jackson?
Could it be that, deep down inside, each of us realizes that we truly do stand in need of grace? That we are lost beyond hope without God’s unmerited favor? In those blazingly authentic moments, when we strip away all our false pretenses and the façade of respectability, we can echo with complete honesty John Newton’s self-description of “wretch.” All of us, if we are candid, can say that we have been lost, that we have been blind to what truly matters. The Apostle Paul wrote, “I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing” (Romans 7:18-19). He concluded, “Wretched man that I am!” (v. 24). Wretched person that we each are!
But there is an answer for our wretched state, and His name is Jesus. Not all of us have come through the exact same “dangers, toils and snares,” but the exact same One has been guiding us safely through them—the One Who said, “I will never leave you nor forsake you” (Hebrews 13:5), the same Shepherd about Whom we can say, “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me” (Psalm 23:4).
This grace pours forth from the Lord Who “has promised good to me” and Whose “word my hope secures.” Millennia ago, God promised Abraham and confirmed to his grandson Jacob that through their descendant the world would be blessed (Genesis 12:3, Genesis 28:14). Paul, writing to the Christians in Rome, said, “The promise to Abraham and his offspring that he would be heir of the world did not come through the law but through the righteousness of faith” (Romans 4:13). Peace with God through a right standing before Him cannot be earned by any amount of good works; rather, “it depends on faith, in order that the promise may rest on grace” (Romans 4:16).
When Abraham received God’s gracious and audacious promise, he held onto it firmly, even “when he considered his own body, which was as good as dead (since he was about a hundred years old), or when he considered the barrenness of Sarah’s womb” (Romans 4:19). Abraham secured his hope to God’s word: “No unbelief made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised” (Romans 4:20-21).
We can still do that today. We can still lash our hopes for our lives, our children, and our futures to the “God of all grace” (1 Peter 5:10) Who “will [our] shield and portion be.” He never changes, He never weakens, His word stands just as secure as it’s ever been, and His grace is still amazing.
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Anastasia Music 