With deepest longing to see an end to the great controversy and that of sin and death, we are indeed constrained to “come,” for the sake of Christ Jesus. For in Jeremiah He says, "I have loved thee with an everlasting love; therefore with loving-kindness have I drawn thee."

I sit in profound amazement at the extent of His love for me, a sinner, utterly unworthy of His notice, yet He loves me with an everlasting love. It knows no end and it has no bounds. The sheer magnitude of His words is beyond comprehending because I know a little of myself. The Bible says He draws us “with loving-kindness” and my heart’s response is an immediate posture of “sackcloth and ashes,” melted and subdued. Oh how in humility I think on these things. When justice required my death, that the Creator of this vast universe, the Son of the living God, would step between the Father and me to say, “I will pay the debt. Let the sinner be spared; I will suffer in her stead,” I am constrained to “come,” incline my ear to hear, that my soul shall live to love Him, honor and reverence Him yet this day that He gives me breath.

The presentation of the love of God has a convincing power above that of argument, controversy, and debate, and drops the seed of gospel truth in the heart. The fact that Jesus, innocent and pure, should suffer, that God should lay all his wrath upon the head of his dear Son, that the guiltless should bear the punishment of the guilty, the just endure the penalty of sin for the unjust, breaks the heart; and as Jesus is lifted up, conviction strikes to the soul, and the love that prompted the bestowal of the infinite gift of Christ, constrains the sinner to surrender all to God. (RH, July 24, 1894 par. 1)

You and I are two of 17,214,683 Seventh-day Adventists fairly educated in truth and doctrine. We were given the great commission and we accepted the call. Our lives were forever changed and we have been about His business since our conversion. Sometimes we remind ourselves of Noah, a hammer in one hand concentrating on building the ark, and the other hand outstretched to those in need of a Savior. We tend to our immediate families all the while giving Bible studies, assisting the poor and sitting on church boards. It is a decidedly busy time for everyone in His vineyard. At the end of the day a question arises: are we “freshly” constrained to come and hear that our souls might live? Did we anew give our hearts wholly to Him this morning? Are we freshly filled with His Spirit? Two chapters in The Desire of Ages will bring to memory the love that constrains us to come and drink anew from the Living Waters: Gethsemane and Calvary.


"Tarry ye here," He said, "and watch with Me."...

As Christ felt His unity with the Father broken up, He feared that in His human nature He would be unable to endure the coming conflict with the powers of darkness. In the wilderness of temptation the destiny of the human race had been at stake. Christ was then conqueror. Now the tempter had come for the last fearful struggle. For this he had been preparing during the three years of Christ's ministry. Everything was at stake with him. If he failed here, his hope of mastery was lost; the kingdoms of the world would finally become Christ's; he himself would be overthrown and cast out. But if Christ could be overcome, the earth would become Satan's kingdom, and the human race would be forever in his power. With the issues of the conflict before Him, Christ's soul was filled with dread of separation from God. Satan told Him that if He became the surety for a sinful world, the separation would be eternal. He would be identified with Satan's kingdom, and would nevermore be one with God...

The sins of men weighed heavily upon Christ, and the sense of God's wrath against sin was crushing out His life...

Behold Him contemplating the price to be paid for the human soul. In His agony He clings to the cold ground, as if to prevent Himself from being drawn farther from God. The chilling dew of night falls upon His prostrate form, but He heeds it not. From His pale lips comes the bitter cry, "O My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from Me." Yet even now He adds, "Nevertheless not as I will, but as Thou wilt."


All His life Christ had been publishing to a fallen world the good news of the Father's mercy and pardoning love. Salvation for the chief of sinners was His theme. But now with the terrible weight of guilt He bears, He cannot see the Father's reconciling face. The withdrawal of the divine countenance from the Saviour in this hour of supreme anguish pierced His heart with a sorrow that can never be fully understood by man. So great was this agony that His physical pain was hardly felt...

The Saviour could not see through the portals of the tomb. Hope did not present to Him His coming forth from the grave a conqueror, or tell Him of the Father's acceptance of the sacrifice. He feared that sin was so offensive to God that Their separation was to be eternal. Christ felt the anguish which the sinner will feel when mercy shall no longer plead for the guilty race. It was the sense of sin, bringing the Father's wrath upon Him as man's substitute, that made the cup He drank so bitter, and broke the heart of the Son of God...

The angry lightnings seemed to be hurled at Him as He hung upon the cross. Then "Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?" "My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?"...

The spotless Son of God hung upon the cross, His flesh lacerated with stripes; those hands so often reached out in blessing, nailed to the wooden bars; those feet so tireless on ministries of love, spiked to the tree; that royal head pierced by the crown of thorns; those quivering lips shaped to the cry of woe. And all that He endured--the blood drops that flowed from His head, His hands, His feet, the agony that racked His frame, and the unutterable anguish that filled His soul at the hiding of His Father's face--speaks to each child of humanity, declaring, It is for thee that the Son of God consents to bear this burden of guilt; for thee He spoils the domain of death, and opens the gates of Paradise. He who stilled the angry waves and walked the foam-capped billows, who made devils tremble and disease flee, who opened blind eyes and called forth the dead to life,--offers Himself upon the cross as a sacrifice, and this from love to thee.

He, the Sin Bearer, endures the wrath of divine justice, and for thy sake becomes sin itself.

He paid a debt we will never be called upon to pay.

"Come."