Fr. Jacob's January 2015 Newsletter Message

John Newton, slave ship captain, had seen some horrors. He'd surely committed some himself. The men, women and children, chained in the belly of his slave boats, were treated with less mercy than cattle being driven to the slaughter. The most terrible outrages known to man were inflicted upon those shackled Africans. Yet, perhaps, the worst abomination on those floating dungeons was Newton himself - as he presided over a life in flight from the good. Who had he become? What a monster had he made of himself?

The horrific man John Newton became as slave trader was not the end of his story. Master Newton finally stopped refusing the grace of God, and began another lengthy journey. No longer travelling across the Atlantic, he journeyed again deeper and deeper into the Lord's grace. Decade by decade, the Lord transformed him from the monster into which he had made himself back into that which he was created to be, namely a human being.

(As an aside - notice how the Gospel works - Christ was made monstrous before us, in order that we might be made human before Him.)

Of course there was nothing he needed to do or be to earn the Lord's love. There was no mighty task that turned the Lord's gaze his way and no great accomplishment whose payoff was God's love. The Lord already loved John. The Lord had always loved John. The Lord had already forgiven him.

John didn't, and in fact he couldn't, do anything to merit the Lord's love for him. The lesson John had to learn was not how to earn God's love but how to cease rejecting God's love. He had to learn to stop. For one might presume that almost the entirety of John Newton's life had become a rebellion against God, a flight from the Good. As he journeyed across the Atlantic with his enslaved human cargo, he was fleeing, rejecting and rebelling against the love that God ceaselessly had for him.

John Newton turned from his sin and began to live. He was ordained and composed one of the greatest hymns ever written, "Amazing Grace". The Lord had always loved and forgiven John, it was just that one day John stopped rejecting His love.

Wonderfully, through the Lord's love poured our for us upon the Cross, our sins are forgiven - in other words that which separates us from him is undone - we are united to him in love, and that unity is the very goal of our lives. It is for that love that we were created.

Isn't that the best news ever?

But there's something else too. The past remained what it was. It's power to separate from the Holy Trinity undone. Its monstrous effects removed by forgiveness won for us the Cross of Christ. Yet like some terrible tail, the story of John Newton's would always drag around what had once happened. He had been one who committed abominations. Yes forgiven, yes loved, yes triumphed over by Christ, but what had been, had been.

What does the Lord do about this monstrous residue, not for Him, but for John?

And the answer was for John Newton - the man who had made himself a demon - that the Lord slowly, over decades, drew him into the campaign to end slavery. Over thirty years passed between John's participation in the abomination of slave trading and his beginning to campaign against it. By the Lord's grace, the story of John's life was transformed so that the terrible tail of his past was re-embedded in a story of disciplined, devoted, love and service. John was blessed - he lived to see his work bear fruit. In March 1807 Britain outlawed the slave trade. John died in December.

Back in the day the old divines called this sort of distinction - between the justifying and santicfying grace of God. The Lord not only makes us right with him (by the forgiveness won for us on the Cross), he makes us right with ourselves; he makes us whole.

As 2015 begins I long for you to know how much the lord loves you. He has already forgiven you, so be freed to turn from that which separates you from his love. Turn and let the Lord embrace you. His arms are already outstretched. But know there is something more too - he wants to make you whole not just with him, but with yourself. That's a lifetime task of being made holy and loving yourself and your neighbor. But it can start anytime - perhaps even this New Year?

May the Lord bless you and keep you this year,

Fr. Jacob