Words of Comfort for Weary Souls

How elements from a Reformation worship service speak to restless hearts today

Where can I find rest for my soul?

Does God really want to be with me?

How could God possibly love me?

How could I ever approach God?

Is there any way for my guilt to be removed?

Is God our judge or our advocate? Is He for us or against us?

These are questions that gnaw beneath the surface. If we silence our smartphones and turn off our screens for long enough to let our mind wander, we may find these questions beginning to emerge. If a person were to walk into a church or to consider uttering a prayer, these questions might take center stage.

These are not uniquely modern dilemmas. Nor are they relics of the past. Even if these questions present in other ways, they persist nonetheless. But we are not the first to grapple with the longing for comfort, the search to belong to a God of love.

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Four lines from the New Testament were crafted together during the Reformation to compose what is known as “The Comfortable Words” in Anglican worship.

In medieval church services prior to the Reformation, there was no public moment when people confessed their sins together and received absolution together. One had to go individually to the priest to do that. And only after doing that could you receive communion. Since the Reformers wanted people to be able to receive communion weekly—just as early Christians had done for centuries when the church began—they needed a weekly corporate opportunity to confess their sins and to hear that God had forgiven them.

But how could they trust this was true? What if this was all too good to be true? These people did not have Bibles in their homes. They could not search the Scriptures for themselves. They needed something built into that moment in the service to comfort them. Thomas Cranmer, the English Reformer, inserted these “Comfortable Words” there, right after they had confessed their sins and heard forgiveness announced again. He wanted them to know God in Christ was already calling to them, had already loved them in their unlovely state, and had made provision for their forgiveness.

The First Word:

“Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28, NRSV).

This speaks to our weariness; it shows us that God is not so high above us that He does not have compassion on our state. The sequence opens with an invitation—“Come to me!” Don’t go to cracked and dry cisterns (see Jeremiah 2:13). Don’t run after false gods. Don’t go to shepherds who are not true shepherds. Don’t look for provision, protection, healing, and guidance from people or things that cannot give what you are looking for. Don’t ask of someone or something that which it cannot give. Do not, as Isaiah said, spend your money on “that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy” (Isaiah 55:2).

The Second Word:

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life” (John 3:16, NRSV).

The focus pivots now from human weariness to divine longing. It is not just we who need God; it is God who loves us. The God who has no need is in His very being love—God the Triune has His being in communion. And this love overflows. The same God whose glory and love erupted into the creation of the cosmos made a way to redeem this world that He loves. The truest thing about the world is that it is loved by God. The truest thing about you is that you are loved by God. How do we know? Because as Jesus invites us to come to Him, we see that God Himself sent His Son to us.

The Third Word:

“The saying is sure and worthy of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners” (1 Timothy 1:15, NRSV).

This is the first mention of sin. Only after naming our human weariness and the divine longing, only after grounding us in God’s love, do the Comfortable Words speak to us about sin. Yes, there is a great barrier between us and God; there is an impediment to our coming to Him. It is our sin. So God came to us to do for us what we could never do for ourselves.

The Fourth Word:

“But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous; and he is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world” (1 John 2:1–2, NRSV).

Here is the word of hope: Jesus is our advocate. This is courtroom language. But we might have expected a verse that reminds us of God as a judge. But the reformers didn’t want people coming to worship with an image of judgment before them; they wanted Christians to see Jesus as their advocate.

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Take the whole sequence of The Comfortable Words together and you begin to see a Gospel movement in a kind of spiral:

Human weariness —> Divine longing —> Human guilt —> Divine provision

Even more, take the whole sequence of The Comfortable Words together and you begin to see a marvelous picture of God:

Jesus calls us to Himself.

Jesus was sent because God loves us.

Jesus came to save us.

Jesus is for us.

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This post is an adapted excerpt from “Blessed Broken Given”. In the book, I acknowledge my indebtedness to Ashely Null for introducing me to The Comfortable Words and their pastoral significance.