Why Should I Come?

You are a sinner: come for pardon.

Perhaps you do not feel you are a sinner. At least, you think you are no worse than others, but better than many. You are no drunkard, thief, adulterer, but keep the Sabbath, read the Bible, and attend the house of God. But have you indeed obeyed all the commandments? Never broken any of them? Always been true, chaste, sober, honest, forgiving, kind? Never indulged in pride, malice, anger, deceit, or lust?

God requires purity of heart as well as of outward conduct, and He knows all our thoughts. Have you then never cherished the thought of sin in your heart, though you have feared outwardly to commit it? Besides, the first and chief command is to love the Lord our God with all our mind and strength. Have you always done this; always been thankful for His mercies; always carefully read His word in order to obey it; always tried to please Him, loved to pray to Him, taken delight in His day, His people, His worship; always striven to be “holy as he is holy,” to make known His truth, to induce others to love Him, and endeavored in all things to glorify Him? If you have always done this, you have still only just done your duty, and have nothing to boast of. But you have not done it. Conscience tells you so.

You know you have sinned thousands of times. You know you have sought your own pleasure, and in your best actions you have not been prompted by a desire to please God. You have lived for yourself; you have sought man’s approval, but God has not been in all your thoughts. The Bible tells us, if a man says he has no sin, he deceives himself. “There is none righteous, no not one.” “All have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.” O my fellow-sinner, is it not true of thee, “The God in whose hand thy breath is, and whose are all thy ways, thou hast not glorified?”

You are a sinner. Guilt, enormous guilt hangs upon you. In God’s book all your sins are written down. You cannot get rid of them. Were you to labor for thousands of years, you could not atone for the least. All you could do would only be your duty. Paying today’s debt still leaves yesterday’s where it was. And were you to give all you possess, or suffer torture and death, it would not take away sin. The past cannot be recalled. But there is forgiveness, free, full, eternal, for the guilty. Jesus has pardon for thee, sinner,purchased with His own blood. Come for it. Come to Jesus Christ for it.

Read Exodus 20:1-18; Psalm 51; Matthew 5; Romans 3:10-20, 23; 1 John 1:8-10.