“Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me! I once was lost, but now am found, was blind, but now I see.” Thus completes the first stanza of the original six of John Newton’s great hymn. Of course, Newton was expressing the extent of his own depravity and his profound gratitude and deep wonder at the grace of God that had rescued him from his lost condition.

If the song is to convey the intended meaning of its author to us, we, like Newton, must see ourselves as lost and blind sinners: lost sinners who deserve the wrath of God and have no way back to God within our resources, and blind sinners who cannot see God or his truth.

Newton selected two of the figures that the Bible uses to describe our fallen nature, all of which imply total inability to come to God and, therefore, a complete necessity of divine grace if we would ever be saved.

When Jesus taught that he was the light of the world, he clearly indicated that without following him, people would be left to wander in darkness (John 8:12). The Pharisees who prided themselves on their own righteousness would hardly see themselves as blind, no more than self-righteous people do today. But people who think they can see and never face their blindness shall forever remain blind, and only those who understand and admit to their blindness shall see. As Jesus put it, “If you were blind, you would have no guilt, but now that you say, ‘We see,’ your guilt remains” (John 9:41).

Jesus provided the background for the explication of this truth when he healed a man who had been blind from birth. It was an amazing miracle to think that anyone could give sight to someone who had never seen. However, the Pharisees stubbornly refused to believe in Jesus, and thus they interrogated the healed blind man demanding that he deny Christ and label him a sinner.

The man’s response was a simple one, and is almost word-for-word what Newton incorporated into his hymn: “Whether he is a sinner, I do not know. One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see….why, this is an amazing thing! You do not know where he comes from, and yet he opened my eyes….Never since the world began has it been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a man born blind…” (John 9:25, 30, 32). Truly amazing is the grace that opens our blind eyes so we may see the glory of the gospel of Christ!