SHALL WE EXTEND THE LORD’S INVITATION?

Gary McDade

The gentle Savior plead with the human family, “Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you, and learn of Me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For My yoke is easy, and my burden is light” (Matthew 11:28-30). “Shall we extend the Lord’s invitation?” Surely, the One with all power in heaven and earth who commanded, “Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost” (Matthew 28:19), authorized and anticipated His faithful to always extend His invitation to a lost and dying world.

Churches of Christ have long been known for this. For example, in 1922 in the first of five Hardeman Tabernacle Sermons held in the Ryman Hall Auditorium in Nashville, N.B. Hardeman extended the invitation.

His sermon was titled, “What Church to Join.” He urged, I claim to be a member of Christ’s family. I claim to be a member of the household of faith, of the church of the first-born. I didn’t join it. “How came you in it?” I was born into it. I was born of water and of the Spirit, as the Savior said; and the very ten-thousandth part of a second that I opened my eyes, having been born again—born from above, born of water and of the Spirit—that minute I was a member of the church of Christ, the pillar and ground of the truth. And with that, God would have me rest my case. No joining about it. It is a man’s duty to hear the gospel and believe the gospel, to repent of all sins and publicly confess his faith in the Christ, to be buried with the Lord in baptism, in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit; and that will make any man on earth that does it with an open, honest, earnest heart—it will make him a child of God and a member of the New Testament church at the very same time (vol. 1, p. 232).

Our prayer and plea is for the Lord’s invitation to continue to be offered. We must never assume it to be common knowledge for it is not. The seemingly engrained doctrine of “faith only” that has infected our community and society must be met with the pure and simple gospel plan of salvation for people to be saved today.