The Storm That Taught John Newton to Say No

John Newton had spent years commanding slave ships across the Atlantic, trafficking human beings for profit. By 1748, he had hardened himself against every pang of conscience. Then, on March 21st, a violent storm off the coast of Newfoundland tore his ship apart. Clinging to the wreckage, Newton cried out to God — and something broke open inside him that no ocean could wash shut again.

He described what happened next not merely as rescue, but as education. Grace, he said, appeared to him like light in a room he had been stumbling through in darkness. And once the light came on, he could no longer pretend not to see.

That seeing changed everything. Newton eventually resigned from the slave trade, took holy orders, and became the pastor of a small parish in Olney, England. Later, in 1788, he stood before Parliament as an old man and delivered a devastating testimony against the trade he once served — because grace had spent forty years teaching him that his former life was incompatible with the God who had saved him.

He wrote in his diary: "I am not what I ought to be. I am not what I wish to be. But I am not what I once was."

That is precisely what Paul describes in Titus 2. Grace does not simply pardon us — it instructs us. It appears, it illuminates, and then it patiently trains us to say no to the old life and yes to the one worth living. Grace is both rescue and teacher.