Answered by people who lived it
Can God forgive me?
The people best placed to answer are those who asked it with the most against them — and their unanimous testimony is yes. John Newton captained slave ships and called himself an infidel and libertine; Jerry McAuley was a river thief asking from a prison cell. Both wrote down what happened next, and both accounts are free to read.
A river thief serving fifteen years in Sing Sing, McAuley knelt on the stone floor of his cell resolved to stay there until he found forgiveness:
“My son, thy sins which are many are forgiven.” I do not know if I heard a voice, yet the words were distinctly spoken. Oh, the precious Christ! How plainly I saw him, lifted on the cross for my sins! What a thrill went through me. I jumped from my knees; I paced up and down my cell. … “I've found Christ,” I answered; “my sins are all forgiven. Glory to God!”
The slave-ship captain who wrote “Amazing Grace” composed his own epitaph — a one-sentence answer to this exact question:
“John Newton, Clerk, once an infidel and libertine, a servant of slaves in Africa, was, by the rich mercy of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, preserved, restored, pardoned, and appointed to preach the faith he had long laboured to destroy.”
The most famous hymn in English is Newton's same answer, set to be sung:
“Amazing grace! (how sweet the sound) That saved a wretch like me! I once was lost, but now am found, Was blind, but now I see.”
And for anyone who fears they have come too late — Augustine, looking back over a wasted youth, answers in one of the most famous passages ever written:
“Belatedly I loved thee, O Beauty so ancient and so new, belatedly I loved thee. … Thou didst call and cry aloud, and didst force open my deafness. Thou didst gleam and shine, and didst chase away my blindness. … Thou didst touch me, and I burned for thy peace.”
Keep reading
T.S. Baker — testimonies in their own words, free sources linked.