Awe of God’s Salvation Leads to Humility With Those Who Are Difficult

When a person has felt the reality of their own weakness, depravity, and inadequacy – combined with the sweetness of experiencing God’s forgiveness – part of the impact is a gracious disposition towards others who are difficult to get along with. This is what John Newton, 18th-century pastor and author of the hymn “Amazing Grace,” believed and exhibited in his own life. In this post, I am going to let Newton be my excuse to consider the effect of internalizing the grace of God and letting that have its way in how we interact with difficult personalities around us. Newton once wrote the following to a friend who was in the midst of a dispute:

“As to your opponent, I wish that, before you set pen to paper against him, and during the whole time you are preparing your answer, you may commend him by earnest prayer to the Lord’s teaching and blessing. This practice will have a direct tendency to conciliate your heart to love and pity him; and such a disposition will have a good influence upon every page you write….(If he is a believer), in a little while you will meet in heaven; he will then be dearer to you than the nearest friend you have upon earth is to you now. Anticipate that period in your thoughts….(If he is an unconverted person,) he is a more proper object of your compassion than your anger. Alas! ‘He knows not what he does.’ But you know who has made you to differ.”

Don’t you want to be more like that? I don’t know about you, but I experience an aching in my soul to imitate Newton in this area (and another aching as I realize just how challenging this is to live out in real life). Do you pray for the people who are difficult in your life? If any of these individuals are also believers, have you ever paused to consider that you and they will together one day experience the consummation of Jesus’s death and resurrection in Heaven? Does this reframe at all the instinctual feelings that come to mind when you think of that person?

Think of the first line of Newton’s hymn, “Amazing Grace.” It says, “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me.” That God would save Newton was something that impacted his every interaction with peers and members of his own church and community. He never ceased to be amazed by the mercy and grace of his Lord that turned him from an enemy into a friend of God, and this exhibited itself in tenderness to others. He stated, “[The ‘wretch’ who has been saved by grace] believes and feels his own weakness and unworthiness, and lives upon the grace and pardoning love of his Lord. This gives him an habitual tenderness and gentleness of Spirit. Humble under a sense of much forgiveness to himself, he finds it easy to forgive others.”

I would add a qualification that being forgiven by God may not always make it easy to forgive others. But Newton’s main point still stands. The person who truly understands their natural relationship to God — condemned to eternal separation for being a sinner who sins — cannot taste the goodness of God’s pursuing compassion and be indifferent when it comes to interacting with other individuals who themselves are difficult to love. This doesn’t make it easy. But it does at least mean that we will fight to constantly return to “home base,” which is God’s pardoning love for us. We don’t want to be like the forgiven servant who had his insurmountable debt nullified by the king, only to turn around and callously condemn his fellow servant (Matt. 18:21-35). This first servant proved by his ruthless attitude and actions that he had not really understood or felt the impact of the king’s lavish kindness. In the same way, King Jesus’s extravagant love for you and me (when we were still his enemies) is the motivational impulse behind our efforts to bear with and love people we naturally struggle to love easily (Col. 3:13).

This post is the fourth in a series deriving from the “Staying Friends Through Disagreement” seminar that took place at Rocky Creek in April 2026. If you’d like to receive the PDF note packet and audio version of that seminar, you may email allen@rockycreek.church.