John Newton, former slave trader turned minister and hymnwriter, lay dying. Barely audible, he uttered, “My memory is nearly gone, but I remember two things: that I am a great sinner and that Christ is a great Savior.” He made no mention of extraordinary hymns he wrote, or sermons he preached, or men he mentored.
A great sinner. A greater Savior. That’s what lingered in John Newton’s mind when he faced eternity.
That keen focus on eternity didn’t start as he lay dying. Newton had long labored to keep his eyes on Christ and eternity, rather than fame and adulation. He didn’t see himself, or pastors in general, as indispensable. We can hear this in his letter to John Ryland Jr. about Andrew Fuller’s serious illness:
I hope that he and you and I shall all so live, as to be missed a little when we are gone. But the Lord standeth not in need of sinful man. And he sometimes takes away his most faithful and honored ministers in the midst of their usefulness perhaps [for this reason] among other reasons, that he may show us he can do without them.[1]
The Lord can do without us.
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