mand myself. I trust that His will and my true interest are
inseparable. To His Name be glory.
In the year he published his autobiography, John New-
ton was called by God into pastoral ministry. As for his
now public conversion story, he knew some would say that
he was very eager to persuade himself into belief of the
Christian gospel. His response: “I confess I was; and so
would they be, if the Lord should show them, as He was
pleased to show me at that time, the absolute necessity of
some expedient to interpose between a righteous God and
a sinful soul. In the gospel I saw at least a per-adventure
of hope, but on every other side I was surrounded with
black, unfathomable despair."
When facing death’s rigid jaws and God’s righteous
judgment, Newton discovered the only place of hope to be
“the gospel of God’s grace ” (Acts 20:24). It was there he
found that indispensable someone to interpose - the “one
mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus” (I
Tim 2:5). Scripture tells us the Son of God, Jesus Christ,
became a man “that he by the grace of God should taste
death for every man” (Heb 2:9). We all have sinned, and
“the wages of sin is death” (Rom 6:23) – indeed, “the sec-
ond death” (Rev 20:15). “Christ died for our sins” (I Cor
15:3). God’s sinless Son “bare our sins in his own body on
the tree” (I Pet 2:24). In our place, as our substitute, He
“suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might
bring us to God" (I Pet 3:18). He made possible “redemp-
tion through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to
the riches of his grace " (Eph 1:7); now we through faith
may be “justified freely by his grace through the redemp-
tion that is in Christ Jesus” (Rom 3:24). “For by grace are
ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the