Not a prescription of words. A great merit in prayer is that it most naturally expresses the feeling of him who offers it. A child’s prattle is more acceptable to a parent than stately utterances put into his mouth. In Raphael’s cartoon the adoring disciples surround the risen Lord in various attitudes, one kneeling, one with clasped hands, one with open palms, one with bowed head, and one shows excited reverence by the fact that he is allowing his robe to trail in the dirt; the great artist having seen that the highest expression of religious emotion must be the natural outcome of the soul, and bear the mark of the worshipper’s individuality. Horace Bushnell used to go to sleep, as he said, talking with God. Liturgies are useful to stimulate spirituality; but should be used to suggest, never to limit, religious thought.
2. The manner of the prayer is in general--
(1) Of utmost simplicity. No elaboration.
(2) Calmness. No oh’s! only quiet confidence and consecration.
3. Analyzing more particularly the sentiments of the prayer, we observe that the model prayer gives a portraiture of a model man.
(1) Filial faith. “Our Father.”
(2) Reverence. “Hallowed,” &c.
(3) Loyalty. “Thy kingdom come.”
(4) A conformed spirit. “Thy will be done.”
(5) Recognition of Providence. “Give us … daily bread.”
(6) Dependence upon grace. “Forgive us our debts.”
(7) Sincere charity. “For we forgive.”
(8) Dependence upon the Holy Spirit. “Lead us not,” etc. (J. M. Ludlow, D. D.)
The Lord’s Prayer like the Decalogue
The Lord’s Prayer, like the Decalogue, falls in two: two tables of law, two leaves of petition. The first table of the law concerns our duties to God; the first leaf of the prayer concerns the glory of God. The second table respects our duties to man; the second leaf respects the needs of man. The first table contains the laws that are the hardest to obey sincerely; the first leaf, the petitions that are the hardest to pray sincerely. Obeying the laws of the first table is what qualifies us to obey those of the second. Praying the petitions of the first leaf is what qualifies us to pray those of the second. Yet we never suppose that the prayer was composed with any reference to the Decalogue. All resemblance ceases to be interesting as soon as it is felt to be imitation. Resemblance by imitation betrays the mechanic; resemblance without imitation argues the artist, the creator. The earth did not become spherical to imitate the sun, nor do the leaves on one branch become serrate to imitate each other. Those leaves unfold up into an outward likeness because they unfolded out of an inward likeness. The Decalogue was not made, it unfolded. The prayer was not made, it unfolded; it was not built, it grew. And because Decalogue and prayer both are unfolded from out the one mind of God, leaves upon one branch, blossoms upon one stem, they show the same hues and take the same orderly arrangement. (C. H.Parkhurst, D. D.)
The Lord’s Prayer indicates the right way of looking at things
There is a fearful tendency in us all, which has infused itself most mischievously into our theology, to look first at our necessity or misery, only afterwards at our relation to God, and at His nature. The last are made dependent upon the former. We are conscious of a derangement in our condition; simply in reference to this derangement do we contemplate Him who we hope may reform it. We have just been tracing this process in heathenism. A mischief is felt; if there is a mischief there must be a deliverer. Undoubtedly the conscience bears this witness, and it is a right one. But the qualities of the deliverer are determined by the character or locality of that which is to be redressed, or by the habits of those who are suffering from it. From this heathenish habit of mind the Lord’s Prayer is the great preserver. Say first, “Our Father.” This relation is fixed, established, certain. It existed in Christ before all worlds, it was manifested when He came in the flesh. He is ascended on high, that we may claim it. Let us be certain that we ground all our thoughts upon these opening words; till we know them well by heart, do not let us listen to the rest. Let us go on carefully, step by step, to the Name, the Kingdom, the Will, assuring ourselves of our footing, confident that we are in a region of clear unmixed goodness; of goodness which is to be hallowed by us; which has come and shall come to us, and in us; which Is to be done on earth, not merely in heaven. Then we are in a condition to make these petitions, which we are ordinarily in such haste to utter, and which He, in whom all wisdom dwells, commands us to defer. Last of all comes this “Deliver us from evil.” When we are able to look upon evil, not as the regular normal state of the universe, but as absolutely at variance with the character of its Author, with His constitution of it, with the Spirit which He has given to us, then we can pray, attaching some real significance to the language, deliver us from it. Then we shall understand why men looked with faith to the aid of their fellow-men; to princes, and chieftains, and lawgivers, and sages. They were sent into the world for this end, upon this mission. They were meant to act as deliverers. They were to be witnesses of a real righteous order, and to resist all transgressors of it. We can understand why strong men felt that they had better act for themselves, than depend upon foreign help. For the Father of all put their strength into them, that they might wield it as His servants in His work; it was His Spirit who made them conscious of their strength, and of that purpose for which they were to use it. We can see why these hopes were so continually disappointed though they had so right a foundation; why they were driven to think of higher aid, of invisible champions, because those upon the earth proved feeble, or deserted the cause, and served themselves. It is true that the hosts of heaven are obeying that power which the hosts of earth are commanded to obey; that they are doing His service by succouring those who are toiling below; it is true, because He who rules all is not a destiny, but a loving will; not an abstraction, but a person; not a mere sovereign, but a Father. All creation is ordered upon this law of mutual dependence and charity; but it is only in the knowledge and worship of the Highest, that we can apprehend the places and tasks of the lower; when He is hidden, these are forgotten; society becomes incoherent; nothing understands itself; everything is inverted; the deliverer is one with the tyrant; evil and good run into each other; we invoke Satan to cast out Satan. See, then, what a restorative, regenerative power lies in this prayer! (F. D. Maurice, M. A.)
Introductory remarks
1. The first thing to be noted is the brevity of this prayer. In most religions the efficacy of prayer has been supposed to depend on its length. The notion is that the gods will do nothing for men unless they are teased. This prayer rebukes and corrects that idea.
2. How was this prayer to be used?
(1) Was it to be used exclusively? Clearly not, since in the Acts we have the record of several prayers which did not follow this form, and yet were answered abundantly.
(2) Ought we always, when we pray, to use these words--to include this prayer in all our supplications? No; I do not think our Lord means to require that. We shall often wish to pray in these words; but He means that our desires shall be free to utter themselves in their own way. The prayer is a model, in its simplicity, brevity, directness, but not a prescribed form; a staff, not a fetter, for the praying soul. (Washington, Gladden, D. D.)
The peculiar worth of the Lord’s Prayer
Not so much in particular expressions, as rather in the tenor and spirit, in the arrangement and climax of the whole, lies its peculiar worth, and those who can assert of the “Pater Noster” that it is only a joining together of Rabbinic expressions, might assure us with the same right that from a suitable number of single arms, legs, and members, one could compose an animated human body. We honour much more the wisdom of the Saviour in this, that He would teach His disciples no chords which would have been entirely strange to their unpractised lips, and in vain do we seek here for the traces of a limited Judaistic spirit. So brief is it, that it does not even weary the simplest spirit, and yet so perfect that nothing is therein wholly forgotten: so simple in words that even a child comprehends it, and yet so rich in matter that the principal truths and promises and duties are here presupposed, confirmed, or impressed, so that Tertullian rightly named it “breviarium totius evangelii.” How often soever it may have been misused, especially where it has been turned into a spiritless formula of prayer, while men have forgotten that it only expresses the lofty fundamental ideas which must prevail in the exercise of prayer, it remains yet continually a gold-mine for Christian faith, a standard for Christian prayer, a prop for Christian hope. (Van Oosterzee.)
The Lord’s Prayer
Edwin Booth, the celebrated tragedian, was a man who threw into his impersonations an amount of heart and soul which his originals could scarcely have equalled. He did Richard III. to the life, and more. He had made human passions, emotions, and experiences his life’s study. He could not only act, but feel rage, love, despair, hate, ambition, fury, hope, and revenge with a depth and force that amazed his auditors. He transmuted himself into the hero of his impersonation, and he could breathe a power into other men’s words which perhaps never was surpassed. And what is rather remarkable, when he was inclined to give illustrations of this faculty to private circles of friends, he nearly always selected some passages from Job, David, or Isaiah, or other holy men of old. When an inquiring young professor of Harvard University went to him by night to ask a little advice or instruction in qualifying himself for an orator, the veteran tragedian opened the Bible and read a few verses from Isaiah in a way that made the Cambridge scholar tremble with awe, as if the prophet had risen from the dead and was uttering his sublime visions in his ears. He was then residing in Baltimore, and a pious, urbane old gentleman of the city, hearing of his wonderful power of elocution, one day invited him to dinner, although strongly deprecating the stage. A large company sat down to the table, and on returning to the drawing-room, they requested Booth, as a special favour to them all, to repeat the Lord’s Prayer. He signified his willingness to gratify them, and all eyes were fixed upon him. He slowly and reverentially arose from his chair, trembling with the burden of two great conceptions. He had to realize the character, attributes, and presence of the Almighty Being he was to address. He was to transform himself into a poor, sinning, stumbling, benighted, needy suppliant, offering homage, asking bread, pardon, light and guidance. Says one of the company present: It was wonderful to watch the play of emotions that convulsed his countenance. He became deathly pale, and his eyes, turned tremblingly upwards, were wet with tears. As yet he had not spoken. The silence could be felt; it had become absolutely painful, until at last the spell was broken as if by an electric shock, as his rich-toned voice, from white lips, syllabled forth, “Our Father, which art in heaven,” etc., with a pathos and fervid solemnity that thrilled all hearts. He finished; the silence continued; not a voice was heard, nor a muscle moved, in his rapt audience, until, from a remote corner of the room, a subdued sob was heard, and the old gentleman (the host) stepped forward, with streaming eyes and tottering frame, and seized Booth by the hand. “Sir,” said he, in broken accents, “you have afforded me a pleasure for which my whole future life will feel grateful. I am an old man, and every day, from boyhood to the present time, I thought I had repeated the Lord’s Prayer; but I never heard it before--never!” “You are right,” replied Boeth; “to read that prayer as it should be read caused me the severest study and labour for thirty years, and I am far from being satisfied with my success.”
The fulness of the Lord’s Prayer
I used to think the Lord’s Prayer was a short prayer; but as I live longer, and see more of life, I begin to believe there is no such thing as getting through it. If a man, in praying that prayer, were to be stopped by every word until he had thoroughly prayed it, it would take him a lifetime. “Our Father”--there would be a wall a hundred feet high in just those two words to most men. If they might say “Our Tyrant,” or “Our Monarch,” or even “Our Creator,” they could get along with it; but Our Father”--why, a man is almost a saint who can pray that. You read, “Thy will be done”; and say to yourself, “Oh! I can pray that;” and all the time your mind goes round and round in immense circuits and far-off distances: but God is continually bringing the circuits nearer to you, till He says, “How is it about your temper and your pride? how is it about your business and your daily life?” This is a revolutionary petition. It would make many a man’s shop and store tumble to the ground to utter it. Who can stand at the end of the avenue along which all his pleasant thoughts and wishes are blossoming like flowers, and send these terrible words, “Thy will be done,” crashing down through it? I think it is the most fearful prayer to pray in the world. (H. W. Beecher.)
The Lord’s Prayer contains the essence of the Old Testament
When at Jerusalem I read this prayer to one of the rabbis, he said, “There is not one single prayer, not one single demand, which is not already contained in the Old Testament.” I said, “Very well, let us see.” “Now,” I said, “can you give me a parallel passage to ‘Hallowed be Thy name?’” He quoted in an instant the forty-third verse of the eighth chapter of First Kings. “Hear Thou in heaven Thy dwelling place … that all people of the earth may know Thy name to fear Thee.” And farther, he said, “‘Blessed be the name of the Lord’; what means this but ‘Hallowed be Thy name’?” “Let us go on--‘Thy kingdom come!’” He immediately gave me the passage from the seventy-second Psalm. “He shall come down like rain upon the mown grass: as showers that water the earth. In His days shall the righteous flourish; and abundance of peace so long as the moon endureth. He shall have dominion also from sea to sea, and from the river unto the ends of the earth.” “Let us go on--‘Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven!’” “Does not the psalmist tell us--‘Teach us to do Thy will, O Lord?’” “Let us proceed--‘Give us this day our daily bread?’” “You find this prayer in the Proverbs--‘Give me neither poverty nor riches, feed me with food convenient for me.’” “Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors!”
“This you find in the one hundred and thirty-second Psalm--‘Lord, remember David, and all his afflictions,’ and in the seventh Psalm, and the fourth verse--‘If I have rewarded evil unto him that was at peace with me.’” “Lead us not into temptation.” He said at once--“O Lord, correct me with judgment; not in Thine anger, lest Thou bring me to nothing.” And then he quoted the Apocrypha, with which he was well acquainted. “Take away the desire of sensuality; to the spirit of licentiousness do not deliver me.” “What is this but ‘Lead us not into temptation’?” “Deliver us from evil.” He quoted--“Deliver me from the workers of iniquity.” I said, “Have you done?” He said, “Yes.” “Then,” I said, “you have just shown that our blessed Lord was in the right, when He told the Jews, that He ‘came not to abolish the Law, but to fulfil it.’ And have you in the whole of the Old Testament a prayer which is not contained in the Lord’s Prayer?” He admitted that there was not one. So you see how this prayer, the Lord’s Prayer, according to the testimony of a Jew opposed to Christianity, is an abridgment, a wonderful abridgment, of the whole of the gospel, and of the whole of what Moses and the prophets have told us. So that the great and holy Stolberg says--“the child prays in it in simplicity, and the learned in vain tries to fathom its depths.” (J. Wolff, D. D.)
The Lord’s prayer
In the prayer our Lord taught His disciples, all the relationships in which we stand to God are taken up. The believer prays as--
I. A CHILD FROM HOME. “Our Father,” &c.
II. A WORSHIPPER. “Hallowed,” &c.
III. A SUBJECT. “Thy kingdom come.”
IV. A SERVANT. “Thy will be done.”
V. A BEGGAR. “Give us,” &c.
VI. A DEBTOR. “And forgive us,” etc.
VII. A SINNER AMID TEMPTATION AND EVIL. “And lead us not,” &c. (Classified Gems of Thought.)
The Lord’s prayer given as a pattern
We have here a ground-plan to fill in, and on whose lines we may build the structure of our petitions every time we pray.
I. Observe, IT IS NOT ONE OF OUR LORD’S OWN PRAYERS THAT IS GIVEN FOR A PATTERN. It is out of the question that we should offer for our daily prayer the very words once used to express the prayers of Christ for Himself. When, therefore, the disciples asked for a pattern of prayer that they might pray just like Christ, the spirit of this the opening sentence in His reply was--“No, your prayers are not to be just like Mine. I pray after that manner. After this manner, pray ye. I pray as the Lord; but when ye pray, say”--and then He gave them these words.
II. You will take notice that this pattern was granted after the petition--Teach us to pray AS JOHN ALSO TAUGHT HIS DISCIPLES. The speaker, and those for whom he was the spokesman, had no doubt, been in the school of John before they had come into that of Jesus. Yet you are ready to wonder how they could have thought of Him just then. They had just overheard that sacred secret, a secret prayer of Jesus. You say each one ought to have felt his whole being tenfold alive and awake in that moment of glory and exaltation, and you think there ought then to have been no room for the memory of anything mortal. Yet that prayer at once reminded them of their old Master, and their first wish was that Jesus would use John’s method of teaching them to pray. He must have been a tremendous man to leave an impression on the minds of his scholars that was keen even in the sharpness of such an excitement. There was much imperfection in this petition. The disciples had no right to speak to their Lord in anything like the tone of dictation. While they asked Him to teach them, they told Him how to do it, and indicated the kind of teaching they preferred. But Jesus passed by the fault, recognized the necessity, and was pleased to formulate a prayer for the help of their weakness, and also of our own; for on us also His eye rested as He gave it, and all who are trying after closer fellowship with God, may now feel their way, think their way, and pray their way, through these great words.
III. Take note of the fact that THIS PATTERN WAS GIVEN TWICE. Christ had already given it in the Sermon on the Mount. These suppliants, as if they had never heard of it, asked Him to give what He had already given. How was this? We suppose that besides the disciples who came from John to Jesus at the commencement of his ministry, and the story of whose call is told in the opening of the Fourth Gospel, there were others whose enrolment came later, and that some of these having been with John during the first delivery of the Lord’s prayer, made the appeal which led to this, the second delivery. Strange that they should have been content to miss so much! Why did they stay with John after he had pointed out Jesus to be the Saviour? and how could they stop looking at the finger-posts instead of travelling in the road? Perhaps they con sidereal themselves, so to speak, to be all the time, scholars in Christ’s school, though in John’s class, and as spiritual infants still needing his elementary lessons. They had come late to school. They had more to learn than their classmates. They had missed the Sermon on the Mount. Their new companions, spiritually dull and slow, had not told them that the Lord had already given a pattern of prayer; they therefore asked for one, and the compassionate Saviour gave them the substance of His former words. This was only like Himself, the Teacher who has infinite patience with our dulness, stoops to us, repeats His lesson, and is for ever saying, “Learn of Me, for I am meek and lowly in heart.”
IV. THIS PATTERN OF PRAYER MUST ALWAYS BE TAKEN IN CONNECTION WITH, AND BE EXPLAINED BY, THE WHOLE OF THE CHRISTIAN REVELATION. It is a mistake to take this, or any other sectional part of revelation, as if it were the whole--a mistake to treat this as Christ’s final disclosure of grace.
V. THE PATTERN IS MEANT FOR THE USE OF ALL THE CHILDREN OF GOD, WHATEVER THEIR DIFFERENCES IN AGE, CAPACITY, OR ATTAINMENT. It fits the child, it fits the man, it fits the father and mother, it fits the youngest saint, and the saint with reverend head.
VI. THIS PATTERN IS INTENDED TO FURNISH CERTAIN RULES AND METHODS OF PRAYER.
1. Petitioners are here taught brevity.
2. They are taught to shun vain repetition. (See Mat_6:7.)
3. They are taught to pray using these very words. The second announcement of the pattern was prefaced by the phrase, “When ye pray, say,” etc. But mark the proviso. The point is that we may only say it when we do pray. Prayer is a distinct thing from the vehicle of prayer. Beautiful as this frame is, it is only a vehicle of praying life, not a substitute for it.
4. It is a social prayer.
5. They are taught to pray after this manner.
VII. IT IS RIGHT TO CALL THIS PATTERN PRAYER THE LORD’S PRAYER. Some would prefer to call it the Rabbi’s prayer. Others the Disciples’ prayer. We might as well say of the Remembrance Feast, that it is not the Lord’s Supper but the Disciples’ Supper, for only the disciples are to keep it. As the Lord’s Supper is a remembrance feast, this is a remembrance prayer, always to be in our ears, always before our eyes, to show what we should pray for, and how we should pray; until, “at our Father’s loved abode our souls arrive in peace.” (Dr. Stanford.)
Our Father, which art in heaven
The preface of the Lord’s Prayer
I. WHAT OUR BEING DIRECTED TO CALL GOD “FATHER” IN PRAYER TEACHES US.
1. That the children of God alone can pray acceptably.
2. That it is through Jesus Christ we have access to God in prayer Eph_2:18), because it is through Him alone that God becomes our Father; by Him, for His sake, we are adopted into the family of heaven Joh_1:12).
3. That coming to God in prayer, we must come in the name of His Son, as the alone foundation of all our confidence in and expectation from God Joh_14:13).
4. That the Spirit of adoption, the Spirit of Christ in His people, is the principle of all acceptable praying to God; for by Him it is that we are enabled to call God Father (Gal_4:6), and therefore it is called” inwrought prayer” (Jam_5:16).
5. That we should draw near to God in prayer with child-like dispositions and affections towards Him.
(1) Though He be very kind and admit us into familiarity with Him, yet we must come with a holy reverence (Mal_1:6).
(2) Though we have offended God, and be under the marks of His displeasure, we must come with confidence, whatever we want, whatever we need (Eph_3:12).
(3) That God is ready and willing to help us, and we should come to Him in that confidence (Mat_7:11).
II. WHAT OUR BEING DIRECTED TO CALL GOD “OUR FATHER” TEACHES US. Negatively: not that we may not pray, saying “My Father,” or that we are always to speak plurally, saying, “We pray.” For we have Scripture examples for praying in the singular number (Ezr_9:6; Luk_15:18-19). But--
1. That we are not only to pray secretly by ourselves alone, but with others, joining with them in public and private.
2. That we are to pray, not only for ourselves, but for others also, according to Scripture example and precept (Act_12:5; 1Ti_2:1-2). Praying with and for others is a piece of the communion of saints. And it is one of the privileges of God’s family on earth, that they have the prayers of all the family there.
III. WHAT WE ARE TAUGHT BY OUR BEING DIRECTED TO ADDRESS OURSELVES TO GOD AS “OUR FATHER IN HEAVEN.”
1. That we are to eye His sovereign power and dominion over all, in our addresses to Him, believing that He is able to help us in our greatest straits, that nothing is too hard for Him, but He can do whatsoever He will Psa_115:3). This is a noble ground for faith.
2. That we should be filled with heavenly affections in prayer (Psa_123:1). And that God’s glorious greatness above us should strike an awe upon us in our approaches to Him (Ecc_5:2).
3. God’s glorious and wonderful condescension, who vouchsafes to look from His throne in heaven unto us poor worms on earth (Isa_66:1-2).
4. That we go to God as those who are strangers on this earth, and to whom heaven is home, because it is our Father’s house (1Pe_1:17), looking on this world as the place of our pilgrimage, and the men and manners of it as those we desire to leave, that we may be admitted into the society of angels, and consort with the spirits of just men made perfect.
Inferences:
1. Let us see here the miserable condition of those who have no ground to call God Father.
2. There is no right praying without faith. (T. Boston, D. D.)
The preface of the Lord’s prayer
I. TO WHOM WE ARE TO DIRECT OUR PRAYERS; to God, the omnipresent God, who fills heaven and earth. He can hear a thousand, or ten thousand million petitioners at the same time, if there were so many, and know distinctly what every one asks. And further, we pray to an infinitely wise God, who knows what is fit should be granted us, and what not.
II. UNDER WHAT CHARACTER OR DENOMINATION God (according to our Saviour’s direction here) is to be addressed; as our Father in heaven.
1. God sustains the character of a Father in the Scripture style in a threefold respect; that is, with reference.
(1) To creation.
(2) To external separation.
(3) To adoption and regeneration.
2. We are to call upon Him as our Father in heaven. Lord, art not Thou God in heaven? O Lord God of heaven. But Christ would direct us to make our supplications to God with the deepest humility, in consideration of the infinite distance between God and us, and with admiration of His amazing condescension in permitting us to speak to the great possessor of heaven, and to implore His presence and blessing who is exalted infinitely above us.
III. THE MATTER, AND THE MANNER, of prayer. The Lord’s Prayer may be considered--
1. As a directory.
2. We may take the Lord’s Prayer as a method.
3. We may consider the Lord’s Prayer as a form. (John Whitty.)
Pater, Father
I can conceive of two ways or methods of reaching the notion of a fatherhood in the Deity, or of arriving at the use of this form of address to the Supreme Being, and calling Him Father. The first may be characterized as an ascending, the second as a descending, process; the first having its rise in an earthly and human relation, the second in a relation that is heavenly, and Divine.
I. The earthly and human relation of a child to a parent-a son to a father--is very close and tender.
II. Here we touch the other and higher view which, as I think, Scripture suggests and warrants of the relation now in question; the relation in respect of which we call God Father, and invoke Him as Our Father. It is essential to the very being of the Supreme that He should be a Father, and that of Him there should be a Son. From all eternity, accordingly--in the terms of the Creed of the Council of Nice--the Son is of the Father, “be gotten of His Father before all worlds; God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God.” He is “the everlasting Son of the Father,” “begotten, not made.” The relation therefore of paternity or fatherhood in God precedes creation, as well as redemption; and is indeed from everlasting. For before all worlds the Son is in the bosom of the Father. And the infinite, ineffable complacency subsisting between the Father and the Son, realized in the unity of the Holy Spirit with them both, is the true prototype and original model or pattern of the fatherly relation and the fatherly affection of which all who are in the Son are partakers, and in virtue of which they call God Father, and invoke Him as their Father. (R. S.Candlish, D. D.)
Pater noster, Our Father
The use of the plural form in this invocation is surely significant. We are taught, not only to call upon God as Father, but to call upon Him as our Father. We are to say, Our Father; and that too even in secret prayer. Plainly, therefore, thou dost not apprehend thyself, even in such secrecy, to be quite alone with thy God as thy Father. Others are associated by thee with thyself in this filial utterance, and in the fellowship of filial relationship which it expresses. One at least, or more than one, must be felt by thee to be embraced along with thyself in the invocation. Otherwise thou couldst not well say, with a full and deep sense of reality and truth, Our Father.
I. One at all events there surely is--the Master Himself who gives thee this gracious form of address. The Lord Jesus joins Himself to thee, and invites thee to join thyself to Him, so that the invocation may be common to both;--a joint invocation; jointly His and thine--“Our Father.”
1. Let us consider here, in the first place, the gracious condescension of the blessed Son of God in His joining Himself to us at the first. Let us behold Him drawing near to us as a brother, in order that we and He together may say, Our Father. For it is as a brother that He draws near to us and stands by us; it is in the character of a brother, “a brother born for adversity.” He takes our nature. He takes our place. He takes as His own the very relation in which we stand to God as apostate rebels, disobedient subjects, guilty and condemned, outcast and estranged. He sounds the lowest depths of its degradation, and tastes the bitterest agony of its curse. He makes common cause with us.
2. And now--thou art at home. The gracious interview is over. The reconciliation is complete. The Father hath met thee, and embraced thee, and welcomed thee as His child. Thou canst scarcely believe for very joy. But thou shalt see greater things than this. For now, secondly, in that Father’s dwelling thou hast constant fellowship with Him as a Father. And in that fellowship thou art permitted and enabled to join thyself still always to Him who in thy distress joins Himself to thee.
II. But when we say, Our Father, we associate with ourselves others in this fellowship of prayer besides the blessed Lord. He indeed is preeminently our fellow, in this act of filial devotion; and others are so, and can be so, only in Him. But there is room in this fellowship for a wide enough brotherhood.
1. All who are within the reach of saving mercy and redeeming love may be comprehended in its embrace. Men--all men--become dear and precious to me now. To every man--to any man--I can now go, and with all tenderness of fraternal pity and brotherly affection, plead--Brother, Brother--weary and wasted in that far country! To thee, as to me, Christ Jesus, the elder brother, cries, Come! Let us go, thou and I together--let us go home with Him, the elder Brother, saying--all three of us together-Our Father.
2. But a narrower line, at least as regards this earth, must hero be drawn. I am called to sympathize with the blessed Jesus, not merely in His going forth among the lost and guilty children of men, that He may win them back to His Father’s dwelling, and get them to unite with Himself in saying to Him, Our Father. But I am to sympathize with the blessed Jesus also in His going in and out among those whom He has actually brought again to that dwelling, and whom He is ever presenting there as His brethren to His Father and theirs. Let them all have a place in our heart when we say with Christ, Our Father. And that we may make room in our hearts for them all, let us see that by the help of that very Spirit of adoption--that Spirit of His Son--which the Father sends forth into our hearts--the Spirit “not of bondage and of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind”--we banish whatever tends to harden, or deaden, or straiten our affections.
3. Is this all the family? Is this the whole brotherhood? Is it merely the comparatively small company of believers among men that we have to associate with us, when in Christ, and with Christ, we say, Our Father? Nay; if there be a narrow limit to the household of faith on earth, there is ample room and verge enough elsewhere. For, not to speak of the multitude of the redeemed already around the throne, have we not the holy angels for our fellows in this filial address to God? For they also, as well as we, have an interest in the Son; “the first-begotten,” whom the Father bringeth into the world, saying, “Let all the angels of God worship Him.” Reverently--believingly--they worship Him--though, alas! too many of the bright host, through pride and unbelief, refuse. The chosen ones kiss the Son, and in the Son receive themselves the adoption of sons. (R. S.Candlish, D. D.)
What sacred associations cluster round the word Father! The very mention of it carries us back to the dawning of our consciousness, when we learned our earliest lessons at a parent’s lips. But to the thoughtful and religious soul the earthly significance does not exhaust the meaning of this holy name; for God at first designed that the human fatherhood should be the miniature of that relationship in which He stood to men, and He wished them to understand that the love of parents to their children on earth is but as a drop to the ocean of fatherly love which is in Himself.
I. When we can truly and intelligently call God “our Father,” NEW LIFE IS GIVEN TO OUR DEVOTIONS. I am persuaded that much of our lack of enjoyment in prayer, and much of the lifelessness and artificialness in our devotions generally, must be traced to the fact that we have not thoroughly received the spirit of adoption, and have lost the idea of God’s Fatherhood. Why should we be in terror of a father? What liberty is that which our own son enjoys! See how he comes bounding into our room, calculating that we will be thoroughly interested in all he has to say, and knowing that when he lays hold of our heart he has taken hold of our strength! But is it different with God?
II. When we can truly and intelligently call God our Father, NEW JOY IS GIVEN TO THE DISCHARGE OF DUTY. Heaven’s own sunshine would illuminate our pathway, if every morning we went forth to do our Father’s business; and the driest and most uninteresting things of daily life would acquire a new importance in our eyes, and would be done by us with gladsomeness, if we but felt we were doing them for a Father. Let us try this heavenly specific and we shall soon find that the glory of love will halo for us all common things with its own celestial radiance, and duty will merge into delight.
III. When we can truly and intelligently call God Father, a NEW SIGNIFICANCE IS GIVEN TO OUR EARTHLY TRIALS. The Lord Himself hath said by the month of Solomon, “He that spareth the rod hateth the child,” and He is too wise a Father to think of training His children without discipline. By trials He keeps them from falling away; He leads them to bethink themselves and return when they have been backsliding, and He prepares them for the discharge of arduous and important duties. Some time ago, while sojourning in the Housatonic valley, I was greatly interested in passing through a paper manufactory and observing how the filthy rags were put through process after process, until at length the pulp pressed between heavy rollers came out upon the other side a seamless web of fairest white, having the mark of the maker woven into it. Let this illustrate God’s purpose with His children. When He subjects them to one species of trial after another, it is only that at the last they may come forth purified and refined, having enstamped upon them His name and character, to be “known and read of all men.”
IV. When we can truly and intelligently call God our Father, a NEW GLORY IS GIVEN TO OUR CONCEPTION OF THE HEAVENLY WORLD. Jesus teaches us to say, “Our Father which art in heaven,” and so leads us to look upon that laud as our home. Home is the centre of the heart, and so, by enabling us to call God our Father and heaven our home, Jesus centres our hearts there, and gives us such an idea of its blessedness that we scarcely think of the outward accessories of its splendour, because of the delightful anticipation that we cherish of being there “at home with the Lord.” O that God, through faith in Jesus Christ, would give to each of us this noble conception of heaven! Then, on true and rational principles we shall desire the better country, and at length have fulfilled to us the beautiful German beatitude, “Blessed are the home-sick, for they shall reach home.” (W. M. Taylor, D. D.)
Christ’s revelation of the Fatherhood of God
I believe that the word “Father” is applied to God seven times in the Old Testament; among the innumerable references to the Supreme Being which crowd almost every chapter of all the books of the Old Testament but one, He is mentioned just seven times as a Father--five times as the Father of the Hebrew people, twice as sustaining that relation to individuals. Of these two intimations that God is the Father of individual men, one is a promise to David that God will be a Father to his son Solomon; the other is a prediction that by and by men will pray to God calling Him Father--a prediction fulfilled in this prayer. For there is not any record of any prayer in the Old Testament in which God is addressed as Father. “In the vocative case, as an address to God in prayer,” says Dean Mansel, the name of Father “does not occur in the Old Testament.” It was, then, practically a new thought about God which our Saviour gave His disciples when He taught them about God. They had always known Him as the Eternal, the Creator, the Self-Existent One, the Supreme Ruler, the Judge, the Lord of Hosts and of Battles, the Captain of the armies of heaven; but this thought of Him as the Father in heaven was one that was very far from all their common thoughts of Him. This word took them into a new world. It was to them as if they had been standing for a long time before the grim outer wall of some old castle which they had been summoned to enter--standing there and looking doubtfully at the forbidding granite battlements, with cannon and sentries on the ramparts with suggestions of gloomy passages and dungeons and chains within--when all at once a little door opened, and they saw within the wall a pleasant garden, with flowers and fountains and cool retreats, and caught a breath of the sweetest odours, and heard a burst of melody from singing birds and happy children playing in the sun. Such an opening into the very heart of God did this word “Father” make for all who had stood for long in the cold shadow of the old monarchical conception of His character. (Washington Gladden, D. D.)
Inferences
1. The truth contained in this new name of God is the true constructive idea in all theological science. Build all your theologies on this foundation. Hold fast to the idea of uniform law, of a nature of things which God has established, under which sin is punished; but when you speak of the personal character and government of God, of His direct interference in the affairs of men, of what He does supernaturally, in the order of history, remember that He is our Father.
2. The word suggests to us also the dignity of human nature. Man is made in the image and likeness of God. He who was before all worlds, He whose will is the source of all laws, He who is the life of all that live, the Omnipotent, the All-Wise, the Eternal God, is our Father.
3. The word not only lifts up and glorifies every humblest human creature, it binds together in one brotherhood, in one family, all that dwell upon the face of the earth. It is the grand leveller of ranks and hierarchies; the charter of fraternity; the prophecy of peace and goodwill among men.
4. Again, what help and inspiration there is for us in the thought of the relationship here pointed out. Take it home to yourself. Try to make out something of what it means when you say that God is your Father.
5. Our Father in heaven! Where it is I know not; what it is no man fully knows. But it is where our Father is. And whoever is with Him is not far from heaven. Something of the melody of its music, something of the fragrance and the beauty of its sweet fields, steal into his heart even while he walks along the dusty ways of this lower world. (Washington Gladden, D. D.)
Our Father
I. The expression implies that God has communicated to us His own QUALITY OF LIFE (see Gen_1:27; Col_3:10). Traces of the Divine in man, though marred by the fall.
1. Our intellectual faculties.
2. Our aesthetic nature.
3. Our power of loving.
4. Our moral Sense.
5. Our native impulses to goodness.
6. Our disposition for Divine communion.
7. Our hopefulness.
8. Our free agency.
II. The expression implies also that God holds us In INTIMATE RELATION TO HIMSELF.
1. He holds us in the intimacy of affection (Joh_17:23).
2. He holds us in the intimacy of communion. A parent desires the society of his children.
(1) Therefore God gives us the command and the spirit of prayer.
(2) He communicates to us His thoughts in the Bible, and His own impressions of truth and virtue through the influence of His Holy Spirit.
(3) He dwells within us, making even our bodies His temples.
3. He visits us with an intimacy of service.
(1) His Providence secures our temporal well-being.
(2) His Grace provides our atonement.
(3) His Spirit serves our spirits in sanctifying them. (J. M. Ludlow, D. D.)
Our Father, in heaven
I. THE RELATION OF GOD TO US AS A FATHER.
1. God is a Father three ways.
(1) God is a Father by eternal generation; having, by an inconceivable and ineffable way, begotten His Son, God co-equal, co-eternal with Himself; and therefore called the “only begotten Son of God” (Joh_3:16).
(2) God is a Father by temporal creation; as He gives a being and existence to His creatures.
(3) God is said to be a Father by spiritual regeneration and adoption. And so all true believers are said to be the sons of God, and to be born of God Joh_1:12-13). Now that God should be pleased to take this into His glorious style, even to be called Our Father, it may teach us--First. To admire His infinite condescension, and our own unspeakable privilege and dignity (1Jn_3:1). Secondly. It should teach us to walk worthy of this high and honourable relation into which we are taken; and to demean ourselves as children ought to do, in all holy obedience to His commands; with fear and reverence to His authority, and an humble submission to His will. Thirdly. Is God thy Father? This, then, may give us abundance of assurance, that we shall receive at His hands what we ask, if it be good for us; and, if it be not, we have no reason to complain that we are not heard, unless He should turn our prayers into curses. Fourthly. Is God thy Father? This, then, may encourage us against despair, under the sense of our manifold sins against God, and departures from Him; for He will certainly receive us upon our repentance and returning to Him.
2. The next thing observable, is the particle Our, Our Father: which notes to us, that God is not only the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, but He is the Father of all men, by creation and providence, and especially the Father of the faithful, by regeneration and adoption.
(1) Let us esteem one another as brethren.
(2) If thou art mean and low in the world, this should teach thee to be well content with thy present state and condition; for God is thy Father, and a Father to thee equally with the greatest.
(3) Since when we pray we must say, Our Father, this teacheth us, to interest one another in our prayers.
II. The next expression SETS FORTH HIS GLORY AND GREATNESS--“which art in heaven.” “But is not God everywhere present? Doth He not fill heaven and earth, and all things?” True. But this expression is used--
1. Because heaven is the most glorious place of God’s residence, where He hath more especially established His throne of grace, and there sits upon it.
2. Our prayers are directed to our Father in heaven, because, though He hears them wheresoever they are uttered, yet He nowhere hears them with acceptance but only in heaven. And the reason is, because our prayers are acceptable only as they are presented before God through the intercession of Christ. Now Christ performs His mediatory office only in heaven; for He performs it in both natures, as He is God and Man; and so He is only in heaven. And, therefore, we are still concerned to pray to our Father in heaven.
(1) Since we are directed to pray to our Father in heaven, we may be sure that there is no circumstance of time or place, than can hinder us from praying. For heaven is over thee, and open to thee, wherever thou art.
(2) Is thy Father in heaven? Thy prayers then should be made so as to pierce the heavens where God is. (Bishop Hopkins.)
The opening Invocation
This Invocation lifts upwards the child’s brow, and claims in heaven and in the King of that country a filial interest.
I. The FILIAL; he sees in the Most High a Father.
II. The FRATERNAL; he comes not with his private needs and vows alone, but with those of his race and brotherhood, “Our Father.” And--
III. The CELESTIAL; though we are now of the earth, and attached to it by these mortal and terrene bodies, we are not originally from it, nor were we made to be eternally upon it. We are of heaven, and for heaven; for there and not here our Father is, and where He is our true home is.
Conclusion. Let the Churches ponder these great truths. In the filial principle of our text they will find life and earth made glorious, by the thought that a Father made and rules them; and, above all worldly distinctions, they will prize and exult in their bonds through Christ to Him--rejoicing, mainly as Christ commanded His apostles to rejoice, in thisthat their names are written in heaven. In the fraternal principle we shall aright learn to love the Church and to compassionate the world; and in the principle celestial, we shall be taught to cultivate that heavenly-mindedness which shall make the Christian, though feeble, suffering, and forlorn in his worldly relations, already lustrous and blest, as Burke described in her worldly pomp, and in the bloom of her youth, the hapless Queen of France: “A brilliant orb, that seemed scarce to touch the horizon.” More justly might the saint of God be thus described; having already, as the apostle enjoins, his conversation in heaven, and shedding around the earth the splendours of that world with which he holds close and blest communion, and towards which he seems habitually ready to mount, longing to depart that be may be with Christ, which is far better. (W. R. Williams, D. D.)
The Divine Father
Rev. Dr. Jonas King once went to visit the children in an orphan asylum. The children were seated in a schoolroom and Dr. King stood on a platform before them. “So this is an orphan asylum,” said he. “I suppose that many of you children would tell me that you have no father or mother, were I to ask you.” “Yes, sir; yes, sir,” said some little voices. “How many of you say you have no father? Hold up your hands.” A forest of hands were put up. “So you say, you have no father?” “Yes, sir; yes, sir.” “Now,” said Dr. King, “do you ever say the Lord’s prayer? Let me hear you.” The children began: “Our Father who art in heaven Stop, children,” said Dr. King; “did you begin right?” The children began again: “Our Father who art in heaven” “Stop again, children,” said Dr. King. “What did you say? Our Father? Then you have a Father; a good, rich Father. I want to tell you about Him. He owns all the gold in California; He owns all the world; He can give you as much of anything as He sees is best for you. Now, children, never forget that you have a Father. Go to Him for all you want, as if you could see Him. He is able and willing to do all that is for your good.”
God’s headquarters
“Why do we say in the Lord’s prayer, ‘Who art in heaven,’ since God is everywhere?” asked a clergyman of some children. For a while no one answered; at last, seeing a little drummer-boy who looked as if he could give an answer, the clergyman said: “Well, little soldier, what say you?” “Because it’s head-quarters,” replied the drummer.
The address
The first part of the Lord’s prayer I have called the address, or the invocation because in it we invoke or call upon God by name, and tell Him, as it were, that we are going to speak to Him, and beg Him to listen to what we are about to say.
1. The name of “Father,” by which we are commanded to call upon God, is one of the most remarkable things in the whole prayer. To us, indeed, who have been accustomed to it from infancy, it may seem almost a matter of course to call God, Father. But to do it, and that too with a certainty that He approves of it, is so far from being a matter of course that, if God had not expressly authorized and commanded us, we should never have dared to address Him by that name; we should have felt it too great a presumption to claim relation with the Lord of the universe. Any one may see what a step Christ gave us toward heaven by com-rounding us to address our Maker, not as our God and King, but as our Father. Any one may see and feel what a pledge the name contains that God will listen to our prayers.
2. Every privilege has its corresponding duty. Let us consider what duties the privilege, which Christ has bought for us, of calling God our Father, brings with it.
(1) The first and chief duty is the behaving to Him as children should behave to their father.
(2) The knowledge that God is our Father, and can do whatsoever He pleases, should fill us with faith and a courageous trust in Him. (A. W. Hare.)
Our Father
We are commanded to say “Our Father,” and not my Father, to teach us not to pray for ourselves alone, but for the whole family of God and Christ on earth. When we say “Our Father,” we ought to bear in mind that God has other children beside us, children who have equal claims on His mercy and love, children whom He loves as well as us. We should remember, too, that, if we are all the sons of one common Father, we must all be brothers and sisters. Here is a fruitful subject for self-examination. Do we love as brothers? Do we live together as brothers ought to live, in peace and concord? Do we help each other to the utmost of our power? Do we rejoice in our brother’s prosperity, though the like may not befall ourselves? Do we feel that concern for their welfare, not in body only, but in soul, which ought to live in the hearts of all such as declare themselves before God to be members of one great family, but in the same breath for our brethren also? (A. W. Hare.)
Which art in heaven
Remember where that Father dwells. It is a Father which is in heaven that you are to pray to. Therefore He must be--
1. Most gracious; or He would never have allowed you to call Him by such a name.
2. He must be most powerful; for He is high above all things.
3. He must be most wise; for He made the world.
4. He is everlasting, and will endure without a change, when the heavens and the earth have passed away. Having then a Father, who is so powerful and so wise, and who is also unchangeable and everlasting, what an anchor of hope must this thought be to us! (A. W. Hare.)
Our Father
Does this familiar conception of the Fatherhood of God impair our reverence for Him? Let the children of the most loving parents answer the question.
1. This view of the Divine nature has its momentous bearings on the type of piety which we should cherish in ourselves and promote in others. The child of kind human parents shows his piety to them, not by despising their gifts and spurning the tokens of their love, but by enjoying all of them to the full, with his loving parents constantly in his thoughts, using their gifts as they would have them used, and deeming himself most happy when he can pursue his pleasure in their presence, and with their participation. By parity of reason, the true child of God manifests his piety, not by dashing from him the cup of joy put full to his lips, but by making his joy gratitude, his gladness thanksgiving, by using the world as not abusing it, by close adherence to the laws which always accompany the gifts and make them immeasurably the more precious, and by never losing thought of the benignant presence of Him who has all a Father’s gladness in seeing His children happy.
2. Were these views made prominent in religious teaching, and especially in the religious culture of the young, religion would not be the unwelcome theme it now is to so many, nor would the offices of Christian worship be regarded with the indifference now so sadly prevalent.
3. Fatherhood implies distinctive love for the individual child, and thus, of necessity, a personal interest in the child’s well or ill-doing, right or wrong conduct, good or bad character.
4. Whether the child finds privilege and happiness, or restraint and irksomeness, in the human father’s well-ordered household, depends on his own choice, his own character. God’s child, too, can be happy in His universal house, only through love of the father, and conformity to the ways of the house. The child of God who has not a child’s heart must go to his own place, and that cannot be a place of privilege or joy. But he is self banished, self-punished. He has forsaken his own mercies. It is not God’s love that is withdrawn from him; but he has taken himself from the shelter and joy of that love. (Prof. Peabody, D. D. , LL. D.)
Carlyle and the Lord’s prayer
“‘Our Father which art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name, Thy will be done’--what else can we say? The other night, in my sleepless tossings about, which were growing more and more miserable, these words, that brief and grand prayer, came strangely into my mind, with an altogether new emphasis, as if written and shining for me in mild pure splendour on the black bosom of the night there; then I, as it were, read them word by word, with a sudden check to my imperfect wanderings, with a sudden softness of composure which was much unexpected. Not for perhaps thirty or forty years had I once formally repeated that prayer; nay, I never felt before how intensely the voice of man’s soul it is--the inmost aspiration of all that is high and pious in poor human nature, right worthy to be recommended with an ‘After this manner pray ye.’” (Thomas Carlyle.)
God realized as a Father
I have been told of a good man, among whose experiences, which he kept a record of, this, among other things, was found after his death, that at such a time in secret prayer, his heart at the beginning of the duty was much enlarged, in giving to God those titles which are awful and tremendous, in calling Him the great, the mighty, and the terrible God; but going on thus, he checked himself with this thought, “And why not my Father?” (Matthew Henry.)
The Fatherhood of God
A Jew entered a Persian temple, and saw there the sacred fire. He said to the priest, “How do you worship fire?” “Not the fire: it is to us an emblem of the sun and of his animating light,” said the priest. Then asked the Jew, “Do you adore the sun as a deity? Do you know that he also is a creature of the Almighty?” The priest answered that the sun was to them only an emblem of the invisible light which preserves all things. The Israelite continued, “Does your nation distinguish the image from the original? They call the sun their god, and kneel before the earthly flame. You dazzle the eye of the body, but darken that of the mind; in presenting to them the terrestrial light, you take from them the celestial.” The Persian asked, “How do you name the Supreme Being?” “We call Him Jehovah Adonai; that is, the Lord who was, who is, and shall be.” “Your word is great and glorious, but it is terrible,” said the Persian. A Christian approaching said, “We call Him Abba, Father.” Then the Gentile and the Jew regarded each other with surprise. Said one, “Your word is the nearest and the highest; but who gives you courage to call the Eternal thus?” “The Father Himself,” said the Christian, who then expounded to them the plan of redemption. Then they believed and lifted up their eyes to heaven, saying, “Father, dear Father,” and joined hands and called each other brethren. (Krummacher.)
Of the preface to the Lord’s prayer
I. The INTRODUCTION to the Lord’s prayer--“After this manner, therefore, pray ye.” Our Lord Jesus, in these words prescribed to His disciples and us a directory for prayer. The ten commandments are the rule of our life; the creed is the sum of our faith; and the Lord’s prayer is the pattern of our prayer. As God did prescribe Moses a pattern of the tabernacle, so Christ hath here prescribed us a pattern of prayer--“After this manner, therefore pray ye,” &c. Not that we are tied to the words of the Lord’s prayer; Christ saith not, “after these words, pray ye”; but “after this manner”; that is, let all your petitions agree and symbolize with the things contained in the Lord’s prayer; and indeed, well may we make all our prayers consonant and agreeable to this prayer, it being a most exact prayer. Tertullian calls it, a breviary and compendium of the gospel; it is like a heap of massy gold. The exactness of this prayer appears--
1. In the dignity of the Author; a piece of work hath commendation from the artificer, and this prayer hath commendation from the Author; it is the Lord’s prayer. As the moral law was written with the finger of God, so this prayer was dropt from the lips of the Son of God.
2. The exactness of this prayer appears in the excellency of the matter. I may say of this prayer, it “is as silver tried in the furnace, purified seven times.” Never was there prayer so admirably and curiously composed as this. As Solomon’s Song, for its excellency, is called “the song of songs,” so may this well be called “the prayer of prayers.”
The matter of it is admirable.
1. For its succinctness; it is short and pithy, multum in parvo, a great deal said in a few words. It requires most art to draw the two globes curiously in a little map. This short prayer is a system or body of divinity.
2. Its clearness. This prayer is plain and intelligible to every capacity. Clearness is the grace of speech.
3. Its completeness. This prayer contains in it the chief things that we have to ask, or God hath to bestow. There is a double benefit ariseth from framing our petitions suitably to the Lord’s prayer.
1. Hereby error in prayer is prevented. It is not easy to write wrong after this copy; we cannot easily err, having our pattern before us.
