“Come and see.” Jesus gave this response to two disciples who inquired as to where Jesus was staying. Philip gave this same response to Nathanael, who listened to Philip’s testimony about the discovery of the One “of whom Moses...wrote,” and asked, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?”

“Come and see.” Most people in our community have heard the message of John the Baptist: “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” What a message to proclaim to a sin-ridden, broken world. The problem is that the majority of the people in most cities have never accepted this message or received Christ in repentance and faith.

While there are various reasons for this – pride, self-sufficiency, blindness to true values – we need to consider the possibility that there may be something wrong with or lacking in the methods the church uses to broadcast this message to the world-at-large. Perhaps the key lies in the interpersonal, eyeball-to-eyeball approach of those first followers of Christ, as exemplified by Philip, who invited Nathanael to “come and see.” 

We are all ministers of the Gospel. We all have our little parishes or arenas of service. We can’t coerce people to faith in Christ. We certainly can’t convert people, that is the task of the Holy Spirit. We can, all of us, in one way or another, invite people to “come and see.” 

They ought to be able to see something of God’s love and saving power in our lives, in the things we say and do, and if we are authentically loving and concerned about them, we may be able, as was Philip, to lead such people to the Lamb of God “who takes away the sin of the world. May our Lord help us be witnesses to others on His behalf by our words, our goals, and our activities.