Saved a Wretch Like Me

Grace That is Truly Amazing...

A Hospital, Not a Country Club

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the kind of church I want to pastor — and the kind of church I’m absolutely unwilling to lead.

I don’t want a church full of people who have it all together.
Mostly because those people don’t actually exist.
And if they do, they’re hiding something.

What I want is a community of real people — people who have been broken and know it, people who have stumbled and discovered that God’s redeeming, relentless, amazing grace is still bigger than their worst moment.

A church where honesty is normal, repentance is safe, and grace isn’t just a word we sing about — it’s something we practice.

When Even the Teachers Fall

Recently, one of the most widely read Christian authors —Phillip Yancy, the man behind What’s So Amazing About Grace? — publicly confessed that he engaged in an extramarital affair for eight years. He said his conduct “defied everything that I believe about marriage,” brought deep pain to others, and was “totally inconsistent with my faith and my writings.”

As a result, he is stepping away from writing, speaking, and public ministry to focus on repentance, counseling, and rebuilding trust in his marriage of 55 years. Christianity Today

This confession is painful to many Christians — not because we lack compassion, but because it reminds us that grace is always needed, even by those who have written about it for decades.

When Failure Walks Through the Door

Last week, I welcomed someone into Heritage whose story has been weighing on me.

He didn’t come because life was great. He came because it wasn’t.

He came after moral failure.

And instead of his church saying, “Let’s walk through this together with love and truth,” they kicked him to the curb.

No process.
No patience.
No grace.

And that should disturb us.

Because if failure disqualifies someone from belonging in the church, then grace isn’t grace — it’s a performance review.

And if that’s the standard, then I need to kick myself out too.
Because you don’t know my heart.
And honestly — sometimes neither do I.

Jeremiah 17:9 says,
“The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately sick; who can understand it?”

That includes mine.
Especially mine.

The Failure Before the Failure

Every public failure begins as a private failure — and every private failure begins in the heart.

No one wakes up one morning and accidentally ruins their life.

Moral collapse doesn’t start with headlines — it starts with quiet compromises, unchecked thoughts, and rationalizations that look innocent until they explode into devastation.

Jesus said it plainly:
“Out of the heart come evil thoughts, adultery, sexual immorality…” (Matthew 15:19)

It doesn’t start with stress.
It doesn’t start with circumstance.
It starts in the heart.

Which means the difference between “us” and “them” isn’t righteousness — it’s exposure.

The Lie That I’m Immune

Scripture humbles every one of us:

• The wisest man in the Bible — Solomon — fell into sexual sin.

• The strongest man — Samson — fell into sexual sin.

• The godliest man, a man after God’s own heart — David — fell into sexual sin.

So for me to think, “That could never be me,” is to believe I am wiser than Solomon, stronger than Samson, and godlier than David.

Ha!

That’s not faith.
That’s arrogance.

Paul warned:
“So if you think you are standing firm, be careful that you don’t fall.” (1 Corinthians 10:12)

The church doesn’t fall when people sin.
The church falls when it pretends sin isn’t possible — and makes confession unsafe.

Where Do We Stop?

If we start kicking people out for moral failure, where does it end?

Do we remove the sexually broken but keep the prideful?
Kick out the adulterer but overlook gossip?
Disqualify the addict but ignore greed, bitterness, and self-righteousness?

Eventually the church becomes empty.
And if it doesn’t, it’s only because we’ve decided some sins are acceptable — as long as they quiet, you know sins, like worry and gossip (dressed up as prayer concerns)

That’s not holiness.
That’s hypocrisy.

Jesus didn’t build a perfect club.
He built a hospital for sinners.

“It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick.” (Luke 5:31)

Would John Newton Be Welcome Today?

I doubt it.

John Newton Was Not “Rough Around the Edges”

When we sing Amazing Grace, we tend to imagine John Newton as a slightly misguided man who made a few poor choices and then found Jesus.

That version is comforting.
It’s also false.

John Newton was not just flawed — he was deeply broken.

Before his conversion, Newton was a womanizing, whiskey-drinking, profanity-laced slave trader. He was known for his immorality, his cruelty, and his complete disregard for human dignity.

He didn’t just tolerate evil — he participated in it, profited from it, and normalized it.

He chased women.
He abused alcohol.
He mocked faith.
He trafficked human beings.

At one point, his behavior was so reckless that even other sailors considered him dangerous to be around.

Other Sailors. Not Girl Scouts.

He was eventually abandoned, humiliated, and enslaved himself for a time on the coast of West Africa — a bitter irony that still didn’t immediately soften his heart.

Grace didn’t show up because Newton was searching for God.
Grace showed up because Newton was wrecking his life.

It was only after a violent storm at sea — when death felt unavoidable — that he cried out for mercy.

And even then, his transformation was slow.

Newton continued working in the slave trade for years after his initial conversion before finally coming to full repentance and becoming an outspoken abolitionist.

Which tells us something important:

God didn’t wait for John Newton to clean up his life before meeting him.
And God didn’t instantly turn him into a saint either.

Grace was patient.
Grace was persistent.
Grace was costly.

And when Newton later wrote:

“Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me…”

He wasn’t being dramatic.
He wasn’t exaggerating.
He wasn’t playing church language games.

He was telling the truth.

Now here’s the question we don’t want to answer:

Would a man like that be welcome in our churches today?

A known womanizer?
An alcoholic?
Someone who built his wealth on horrific injustice?
Someone whose past wasn’t just embarrassing — but evil?

Would we welcome him into community?
Or would we keep him at arm’s length “until he proved himself”?

Would we believe God could redeem him — or would we quietly assume his past permanently disqualified him from being used by God?

Because here’s the uncomfortable reality:

We celebrate Amazing Grace now because Newton’s story is safely in the past.
But grace is much harder to celebrate when it’s happening in real time, attached to someone whose sins are still fresh, visible, and offensive.

We love redemption stories after redemption is complete.
We struggle with them while they’re still messy.

But if John Newton walked into many of our churches today — smelling like whiskey, carrying a past soaked in injustice, dragging a reputation he couldn’t outrun — I’m not convinced we’d let him anywhere near a pulpit.

We might let him sit quietly.
We might tell him God forgives him.
But we’d probably never trust him enough to let grace write a song through his life.

And that should trouble us.

Because grace that only works for people with respectable sins isn’t grace at all.

Grace saves wretches.
Not people who look the part.

And if that makes us uncomfortable, it might be because grace is doing what it has always done — exposing our hearts and asking whether we actually believe the words we sing.

Who We Will Be

We will not be a church that throws people away when their sin becomes visible.
We will not confuse accountability with abandonment.
We will not trade restoration for reputation.

We will be a community of love, acceptance, and grace — not hate and judgment.
A church where truth is spoken and grace is extended.
A place where repentance leads to healing, not exile.

We will be known more for who we include than who we exclude.

And who do we include?

Sinners.

Which is great news — because that’s all of us.

Grace isn’t fragile.
The gospel isn’t threatened by broken people.
Jesus isn’t embarrassed by messy stories.

So come as you are.
Stop pretending.
Bring your heart — because that’s where the real work begins.

We are not a country club for the righteous.
We are a hospital for the hurting.

And anything less isn’t the gospel.

Grace is for me.
Grace is for you.
And yes—especially if you know you’re a wretch.

The Best Is Yet to Come, Grace…

Rev. John Roberts