Articles
Come, Sinner, Come
While thru His word He calls you, While we are praying for you, Now is the time to own Him, Now is the time to know Him, come, sinner, come!
Are you too heavy laden? Jesus will bear your burden! Jesus will not deceive you, Jesus can now redeem you, come, sinner, come!
O hear His tender pleading, Come and receive the blessing! While Jesus now invites you, While we are praying for you, come sinner, come!
Mr. W.E. Witter said of his song “Come, Sinner, Come,” “One Saturday afternoon, while bunching the hay which had been mown along the roadside, the words of this little hymn seemed to sing themselves into my soul, and with music almost identical with that to which they were later set by the sweet singer, Palmer. I hastened to the house and, running upstairs, knelt beside the bed of a brother, for whose salvation my mother was in constant prayer. There, upon my knees, I transcribed the words to paper” (Sankey, 144). This lovely little song has been used since 1877.
It is customary for preachers to offer an invitation at the end of their sermons. It gives an opportunity to any people in the assembly who have been pricked by the words of the Gospel to come forward and confess their sins, calling on the name of God, and accepting baptism as the one and only way to have sins washed away. It is also a time for unrepentant Christians to come before their brethren and make a public promise to transform their lives into the image of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Invitations are not new, though. Consider this; God has, since the beginning of time, invited all people into His grace. In one form or another, He has never ceased to ask us and even implore us to repent. Much preaching took place in Genesis 6, during the construction of the ark which took one hundred years. Surely, in that great span of time, the invitation to repent was always there. And in Deuteronomy 11:26-28, there is set before the people a grand invitation. And it is made clear in Joel 2:12-13 that the Lord is slow to anger and abounding in lovingkindness. And in Acts 2:40-41, the apostle Peter exhorted the people with many words, saying, “Be saved from this perverse generation.” To this day, the invitation to salvation is still available.
