Come and Welcome to Jesus Christ

The Puritans knew how to take a verse or a phrase and meditate long and hard on it. Most of the Puritan books are simply meditations on one verse of Scripture.

One such book is Bunyan's Come and Welcome to Jesus Christ. It is a meditation on John 6:37.

Since I'll be preaching from John 6:30-40 on Sunday and I'm reading through the works of Bunyan, I decided to go ahead and read Come and Welcome to Jesus Christ.

This is a great little book. Banner of Truth has published it in the Puritan Paperback series and you can find it in volume 1 of Bunyan's works.

Basically, Bunyan takes this verse a word at a time and draws out implications and observations.

He meditates on:
-the extent of the gift ("all").
-the Person giving the gift ("the Father").
-the importance of the word "giveth" (implies election).
-the Father's intent in giving (in order to save).
-the Son's reception of the gift ("shall come").
-what it means to "come to Christ."
-the importance of the words "to me," "him," "cometh," "in no wise," and "to cast out."

Then, the second half of the book is devoted to pondering 3 of his 8 observations about this verse. He devotes some effort to application.

Bunyan concludes the book like a good Puritan, pleading with sinners to see in Christ beauty worth coming to.

I would highly recommend slowing reading through Come and Welcome to Jesus Christ (only $5.40).