21/02/2026
Perhaps the best-known hymn ever written celebrates the lost being found. (‘I once was lost but now am found’ from the hymn, ‘Amazing Grace’, written by John Newton in 1772.)
So much used in Scripture to identify mankind’s condition is set against the reality of loss. Famously, Jesus spoke of a sheep, a coin and two sons, all lost to their ‘owners’. As loss is mankind’s condition, by contrast, so much of God’s heart is revealed in his mission to seek and save what is lost.
Yet, while this is true, it is only part of the truth.
The greater truth is that God does not seek to restore only what was lost. He seeks to replace what was lost with something beyond what was known or experienced before.
In ‘finding’ John Newton, the slave-trader turned hymn-writer, God did not just restore to him what was lost, perhaps a little better polished and shinier than before. He made him a new creature. Newton, to the observer, may have looked much as he did before but in reality he was a brand new man with a new way of living, born again to a living hope and with a new destiny. Paul says it this way, ‘If any person is in Christ, he/she is a new creature. The old has gone; a new life has begun!’, (2 Cor. 5.17).
The Gospel does not demand our effort nor does it require our contribution. We are not required to be baptised to be saved, speak in tongues, tithe, share our faith, or sing and shout, to be saved. Our efforts cannot save us. Paul makes it abundantly clear that salvation is ‘not of works lest any man should boast’ (Ephesians 2.8). The good news is that Jesus did for us what we could not do for ourselves. We receive by faith what he offers in love. (As disciples, we will almost certainly pass through each of the steps like baptism, in water, baptism in the Holy Spirit, etc., that are mentioned above, but these are not preconditions to salvation.)
God has given to every person a ‘measure of faith’, sufficient to receive the Gospel. Our task, as obedient to the Great Commission, is to make disciples. We make the obedience of faith so much more difficult when our expectation is that people will contribute to their own salvation. The ‘good news’ is that salvation is the result of receiving by faith what Christ has done for us through love. Faith sufficient for salvation will grow to maturity when nourished and is the foundation of faithful service and answered prayer.
Newton’s hymn ends with words that anticipate the world to come (‘When we’ve been there ten thousand years.’). The new creation is designed to live victoriously in this world and the world to come.
While we were once lost, Christ-followers are found in the sense that we have been born again into God’s family. This new birth means that we live as ‘new creation’ people, choosing to honour the Lord Jesus Christ in all we do.
