Lay Them Down

What does Jesus offer with this invitation to the burdened? He offers to ease their yoke, lift their burden, give them rest and set them free. Marvelous! Nobody else can do that but Christ, for he is portrayed in the New Testament as the supreme burden-bearer. He bore our burden when he died on the cross. Listen again to some of these verses from the New Testament: "The Lord has laid on [Jesus] the iniquity of us all." "Behold the Lamb of God who lifts up and bears away the sin of the world." "He was once offered to bear the sins of many." "He bore our sins in his own body on the tree."

Jesus is the sin bearer, the burden bearer. If we come to him, he will lift our burden from us. This is the very essence of the Christian good news: Almighty God loves us. In spite of our sin and guilt and rebellion, he loves us and came after us in Jesus Christ. He took our nature upon him, becoming a human being. He lived the perfect life of love; he had no sin of his own for which atonement was necessary. Then on the cross, he identified himself with our sin and guilt. In fact, he was made sin with our sins, and he was made a curse instead of us. In that Godforsaken darkness of the cross, Jesus endured the condemnation we deserve. Now—on the grounds of his sin-bearing death—if we come to him, he will lift the burden and give us rest: full and free forgiveness together with a new birth and a new beginning.

John Bunyan eloquently expresses this truth in his allegory Pilgrim's Progress:

He ran thus until he came to a place somewhat ascending, and upon that place stood a cross, and a little below, in the bottom, a sepulcher. So I saw in my dream that just as Christian came up with the cross, his burden loosed from off his back, and began to tumble, and so continued to do, till it came to the mouth of the sepulcher, where it fell in, and I saw it no more.

Then was Christian glad and lightsome, and said, with a merry heart, "He has given me rest by his sorrow and life by his death." Then he stood still awhile to look and to wonder, for it was very surprising to him that the sight of the cross should thus ease his burden. So he looked and looked again, even until the springs that were in his head sent the waters down his cheeks.

Jesus invites us to come to him if we're burdened; but what do we have to do? Nothing, except come to him. Salvation is a gift—absolutely free and utterly undeserved—and there is no substitute for a personal commitment to Jesus Christ.

Some people try to make it complicated, becoming engrossed in the externals of religion. They come to church to be baptized; they come to the bishop to be confirmed; they come to a pastor to seek his counsel. They come to everything and everybody except the One who invites them to come—Jesus Christ. It's possible to come to all those other things and never come to Christ himself. Don't stumble over the simplicity of his invitation.

Illustration: Some years ago there was a famous professor of Hebrew in Edinburgh University. His name was Dr. John Duncan; he was known affectionately by his students as Rabbi Duncan, because of his excellence in Hebrew. Such were his attainments in the Semitic languages that his students were persuaded he said his prayers in Hebrew. One night two of his students crept quietly along the corridor outside his bedroom and put their ear to the keyhole, where they expected to hear great flights of Hebrew rhetoric and mysticism. This is what they heard instead: "Gentle Jesus, meek and mild, look upon a little child. Pity my simplicity. Suffer me to come to thee." If a Hebrew professor can do it, I see no reason why you and I shouldn't do it. "Come to me," he says simply, "and I will give you rest."