Newton’s story is a beautiful scandal. Like Paul, he increasingly woke to the nightmare of his sin personified by the beautiful black faces of his victims. But God’s grace had introduced a new reality: undeserved pardon. The man who should have died a thousand deaths for his sin died at peace in the hope of new life because of the single death of the Savior Jesus.

There is a lot to like about the story of John Newton. And Simonetta Carr and Amal tell and illustrate it beautifully (Reformation Heritage Books, 2018). Newton first told the story himself in an 18th century best-seller. A young man with a dead mother and hard-to-please father pursues riches and adventure at sea. After several brushes with death Newton–who married the love of his life–left the sea to pursue poetry and preaching. Along the way he adopted needy relatives, and hosted struggling writers; he even befriended a few domesticated hares. Just months before his death he received news that warmed his soul: the British slave trade, against which he had fought for decades, had been abolished.

But another fact about Newton nearly ruins the story. He himself had been a slave trader. As both captain of a slave ship and later as an investor in the same, Newton profited from the sale of human beings. He willingly participated in the inexcusable degradation of precious lives of people created in the image of God. He is responsible for the misery and death of unknown scores of beautiful people.

Newton, the slave-trader who died as a well-respected minister in the Church of England, is the perfect picture of the kind of person we naturally hate.

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