We remember John Newton today largely for his remarkable hymn, “Amazing Grace.” This beautiful anthem of the undeserved kindness God shows us through Jesus Christ has edified generations of believers.

Less well-known is Newton’s career as a slave trader. Even after his conversion, “he served as a mate and then as captain of a number of slave ships, hoping as a Christian to restrain the worst excesses of the slave trade, ‘promoting the life of God in the soul’ of both his crew and his African cargo.”

At the age of 30, Newton left the sea for good. Eventually ordained as an Anglican rector, he wrote, at 62, Thoughts Upon the African Slave Trade “to help William Wilberforce’s campaign to end the practice — ‘a business at which my heart now shudders’, he wrote.”

Faith in Christ transformed Newton’s life. He became a courageous opponent of the slave trade, which he lived to see ended.

This was a great good. It was evidence of the reality of the risen Christ in the life of self-described “infidel and libertine.”

But we err if we think that the highest benefit of Newton’s conversion was his role in ending Britain’s slave trade.

What was the highest benefit of Newton’s radical change? Before answering that, consider how our current society tends to view personal redemption.

The Purpose of Faith

In our day, there is a tendency to celebrate religion for its social benefits. Of course, those benefits are huge. My beloved friend and former colleague, Dr. Pat Fagan of Catholic University of America has listed scores of what he calls “worship’s rewards” — “in education and human capital development, sexual behavior, relational strength, psychological and physical well-being, and in a significant decrease in a variety of social ills.”

The social science data back up the claim that religious practice fosters generosity, strong marriages and families, higher productivity, less crime, better educated children, and other key personal and cultural goods.

All of us want these things. We are citizens of a country where liberty, opportunity and prosperity depend on them. Yet they are benefits of religion broadly, of the moral constraints most religious faiths impose on their faithful adherents.

In other words, the public goods of religion are real but are byproducts of faith. They are not the purpose of faith itself.

That purpose is to bring people into right relationship with God.

The Gift of Everlasting Salvation

All religions assert their ability to achieve that result. Yet Christianity is grounded in a person who said he personally was the only way to God.

To uphold Christian faith as merely a means to a desired social end is to debase its fundamental purpose: to save souls.

Space prevents any close to a full discussion of the truth of the claims of Jesus Christ to be God in the flesh and the Savior of all who place their faith in him. But to paraphrase C.S. Lewis, he was either a liar, a lunatic or Lord. The first two options don’t stand up.

The central benefit of Christian faith is not that it produces personal responsibility. That it dissuades people from lives of crime and sloth. Or that it discourages divorce.

The greatest and the most joyous benefit of Christianity is that it brings us everlasting salvation . As the great theologian J. Gresham Machen wrote in 1913, our fallen world, “by the clear light of the gospel,” must “seek an answer not merely to the questions of the hour but, first of all, to the eternal problems of the spiritual world.”

To uphold Christian faith as just a means to a desired social end is to debase its purpose: to save souls. Those saved souls, as they become more and more conformed to the will of God and the character of Christ, help leaven a bitter and disappointing culture. But Jesus came not so we could have better schools or safer streets but to grant us “redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace” (Ephesians 1:7).

Proclaiming the Gospel: A Mighty Calling

Followers of Jesus have a mighty calling. We are to share the Gospel, make disciples, stand for grace and truth and, therefore, protect the vulnerable and serve the world. We cannot abandon any of these things.

Nor should we substitute any of them with the pottage of cultural comfort and accommodation. A better America is a cherished goal, but it is not the same thing as “proclaiming the Gospel to the whole creation” (Mark 16:15).

John Newton knew this. Grace had taught his heart to fear God’s rightful anger at his sin. But grace his fears relieved through the work of Jesus Christ, through new birth in a living Lord.

Newton prepared the inscription for his tombstone. It reads, in part, “By the rich mercy of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ” Newton was “preserved, restored, pardoned and appointed to preach the faith he had long laboured to destroy.” He had the right perspective on the work of Christ in our personal lives and in the world. Do we?