“Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”
Matthew 11:28
Even when our hearts are as cold and dead as winter, Jesus’ words blow in like an early spring breeze, warm and welcomed through the window, awakening us to himself.
“Come to me,” he says.
It’s the most simple invitation. And the most important. His words, like breath, revive us again. They bring us from death to life.
“Come to me.”
“To me…”
“…and I will give you rest.”
How our souls should leap at such an invitation! How we should run like the virgins of Matthew 25 towards the call of our Bridegroom, lamps lit and trimmed and full of oil, charging through the darkness with flickering light and joy, sprinting towards the voice of our Beloved! But often, day by day, hour by hour, we don’t come to him. We tend to speed past his words as if they were on a highway billboardy, barely glancing up at them as we hurtle past. And how we suffer for it. For it is Christ alone who gives us rest and life and satisfies our very souls.
Through the Scriptures, he specifically invites us:
“Come to me…”
“You search the Scriptures … yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life.” (John 5:39–40)
“If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink.” (John 7:37)
“Incline your ear, and come to me;
hear, that your soul may live.” (Isa. 55:3)
Before we explore these invitations more deeply, let’s first look at the God who invites us.
The God who says, “Come.”
When we look at him, we see the God who came to us. On the cross.
Though we were dead in our sins, separated from Christ, having no hope and without God in the world (see Eph. 2:1–12), Jesus went to the cross so that “whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16).
“He was pierced for our transgressions;
he was crushed for our iniquities.” (Isa. 53:5)
“See, from his head, his hands, his feet,
sorrow and love flow mingled down.”[2]
Jesus came to us so that we could come to him. So that we who were once “far off [could be] brought near by the blood of Christ” (Eph. 2:13). Through his work on the cross, Christ broke down every barrier to bring us into fellowship with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
So when Jesus says, “Come to me,” he is not asking us to do anything he has not already done. He came to us on the cross so that we could come to him and be united with him forever.
“We love because he first loved us.” (1 John 4:19)
And we come to him because he first came to us.
On the cross.
He is the God who says, “Come.”
“Come to me … and I will give you rest.”
[1] Isaac Watts, “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross” (1707).
