How many song ideas have been born thousands of feet in the air? Chris Tomlin did not get to complete his version of John Newton’s “Amazing Grace” while still airborne in 2006, but it wasn’t long before “My Chains Are Gone” leapt out of his mind and onto a page one night. Reading about Newton’s history and considering the impact of the slave trade’s end in Britain in the early 19th Century, Chris had a rush of feelings and words that came effortlessly. Perhaps it was not unlike what would happen many years later on another continent., when the Emancipation Proclamation emerged to free millions of slaves in the U.S., an event that is still commemorated (including on stamps like the one in this picture.) Isn’t it kind of interesting that today a cross of execution still symbolizes the spiritual freedom that Chris was pondering?
What’s a slave’s ransom worth? Chris says that was the question he asked himself as he mused about slavery’s payoff. John Newton does not use the word in his poetry to describe his own thoughts about slavery’s cost, but the price God paid is nevertheless clear. And so, when Chris was on a plane ride and had a coincidental chat with a friend about a movie that would re-tell the stories of the abolitionist heroes in 19th Century Britain, his brain went into action. The 2007 movie Amazing Grace told the story of William Wilberforce – with the former slave-trader Newton also included – and the decades-long struggle to end slavery’s influence on England’s economy. ‘Ransom’ was the key word in Chris’ refrain, building upon the timelessly classic words that Newton (and an unknown author of one verse) had written over two centuries earlier. Chris says he offered the modified lyrics to the movie-makers, and the rest is history, including its use as one of the movie’s soundtracks. Chris’s friend and minister, Louie Giglio, also apparently may have contributed to the song (he’s listed on some sites as a co-contributor), although exactly what role that was is unclear; perhaps he was a sounding board for Chris’ ideas for the refrain, or helped coax Chris’ thinking about Amazing Grace’s origins. Whatever the case, Chris mentions in one interview that he did not originally intend to add to this enduring hymn, since it was already so great, an attitude that suggests somebody else indeed persuaded his input. That’s not unlike what John Newton must have felt when he created the original hymn’s words, a creation from a ‘wretch’ who was ‘lost’ and ‘blind’, someone who felt unworthy of His grace. A prostrate humility…that seems to be the posture for all who are blessed with the musical talent that helps the rest of us capture the essence of God’s amazing gift.
We’ve been taken hostage. That is implicit in the word ‘ransom’ that Chris Tomlin uses, so something pretty powerful was necessary to break that hold on you and me, in fact extraordinarily so in this case. Usually, one thinks of a ransom that is necessary to free an innocent and implicitly important person who’s been taken hostage. From Newton’s perspective, he was not that innocent nor valuable, however. And yet, God paid the ultimate price, without negotiation. The astonishing part of this divine equation was His love, something no other being in the universe across all time could have added. Could that be where Satan miscalculated, that he thought God would eventually think the freedom for all of us demands too costly a price? And yet, that kind of love is a ‘flood’, Chris reminds us. It envelopes us; somebody might even say we drown in this flood. But in this ocean of God’s love, you and I don’t gasp for air. This love not only frees, it transforms. He’s ‘forever mine’, as John Newton first said. Drink that in.
See the song’s story, as told by the primary contemporary author(Tomlin), here: https://www.umcdiscipleship.org/articles/history-of-hymns-amazing-grace-my-chains-are-gone
See information on one author here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Tomlin
Information on the song is here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/See_the_Morning#Amazing_Grace_(My_Chains_Are_Gone)
See information on the website of one author here: https://www.christomlin.com/
See information on another author here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louie_Giglio
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