“Come, Ye Sinners, Poor and Needy”
Sovereign Grace Music, Bob Kauflin
Matthew 9:12-13
Sing it. It quotes nothing and never says it is scripture, and its reasoning is the passage's own: the sick are who the doctor came for. Just know the refrain is not Hart's.✓ The hymn's central argument is the passage's. Matthew 9:12 says the sick are the ones who need a doctor, and the third verse says that waiting to be better first means never coming
⚠ The refrain is not Hart's and not from this passage. It came out of Caleb Jarvis Taylor's 1804 collection, where the lines belonged to another hymn's first stanza, and became a chorus in 1806. Its opening echoes Luke 15:18
