01.02. Prayer in Christ's Name

Chapter II. Prayer in Christ’s name IN my last paper I pointed out that prayer, in its various forms, appears to be as truly a natural function of human nature as the promotion of civilization or of society; and this itself is a powerful argument for the reality of the Object of prayer. We find the men of science constantly reasoning in this manner. If they see any organ or function in any plant or animal strongly and constantly developed, they infer that there must be something in nature, external to the plant or animal, which renders this organ useful; for nothing, they assure us, can become developed and maintain itself, unless it is in real correspondence with some fact or facts of the external world. To take only one example, the eye is an organ which has developed and become a constant part of animal organisms. It could not have done this unless there was a reality called light external to the animal, such as justified the existence of the eye, and made it useful. We may argue in exactly the same way. It would have been impossible for man to appear constantly and persistently in the attitude of prayer, and for this religious tendency to take shape and become persistent, unless God, the object of prayer, were a reality, and man by praying was brought into real and profitable relation with Him. And the force of this argument is increased when we observe how the prayers of mankind pass through many stages, in which they seem to be f feeling after their object without truly finding Him, till at last, through the teaching of the Son of Man, they appear to attain for the first time to real correspondence with Him.

This, I say, increases the force of the argument, because it is what we observe in the similar case of the investigation of nature; and in this respect we may compare, as has been already suggested, the -place of Jesus Christ in the history of prayer with the place of Francis Bacon in the history of science. There was investigation of nature before Bacon, for nature is inevitably fascinating and alluring to the imagination of man, but through fifteen centuries it had made no progress.

Why? Because it made no serious attempt to be in correspondence with the reality. It was seeking to impose men’s arbitrary whims the whims of the astrologer and the alchemist upon nature. It was seeking short-cuts to universal knowledge the philosopher’s stone, the elixir of life. It was arbitrary, therefore it was unprogressive. Now Bacon made no progress himself in the knowledge of nature; but as a sort of prophet he put into words the principles which ought to guide men in their inquiries. Nature/ he said, can only be controlled by being obeyed. He that will make progress must enter the kingdom of nature a little child/ The reverent investigation of nature as she is, and the power won by submissive correspondence to her actual laws, these were to be the watchwords of scientific progress. These, in fact, have been the watchwords of that gigantic advance, both in the knowledge and use of nature, which has characterized the last three centuries. The reverent investigation of what nature’s laws in fact are, has resulted in the forces of steam and electricity being at the disposal of mankind.

Now, as in many other respects, so also in this our Lord differed from Bacon in that what He taught He practised, and what He professed He realized. Still, we may find in Bacon’s teaching in regard to the know ledge of nature, a suggestive analogy to our Lord’s teaching in regard to the exercise of prayer. Prayer, before Christ, had expressed the indomitable human instinct which drove men to seek relations with God. But it was ignorant asking. Christ, by His teaching and by His atonement, first put the instinct into perfect relation with its object; into perfect relation both of knowledge and of power. He taught men the character of God the Father. He taught them about human nature, its capacity and destiny, the meaning of sin and the remedies for it, the true use of physical pain, the fruitfulness of sacrifice. He assured men of the final victory of the divine kingdom, and pointed to the Church as the society which is to represent that kingdom in this world, and to prepare the way for the kingdom which is to come. By all this body of teaching He did not, indeed, satisfy human curiosity about divine things, for He still left man largely under the discipline of ignorance. Still, we know in part, we see through a glass darkly. But He did put us into a correspondence, which is adequate for practical purposes, with the mind and character of God. Hence forth prayer can rise in real correspondence with known truth, in the face of enemies whose nature and the limitation of whose powers have been disclosed to us.

It can rise in accordance with the laws of the revealed kingdom of God. In a word, prayer has become intelligent correspondence with the manifested God, the correspondence of sons with a Father.

II When you examine the utterances of Christ with regard to prayer, you find that they consist of large general promises, subsequently defined and made more exact. Ask, and ye shall receive. Here is a large general promise. It arrests the attention by its obvious contradiction to facts of experience. It stimulates further inquiry, and further inquiry is met by exacter statements. Therefore I say unto you, all things whatsoever ye pray and ask for, believe that ye have received them, and ye shall have them (Mark 11:24).

Again, If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatsoever ye will, and it shall be done unto you (John 15:7). Once more, Verily, verily, I say unto you, if ye shall ask anything of the Father, he will give it you in my name. Hitherto have ye asked nothing in my name. Ask, and ye shall receive, that your joy may be fulfilled (John 16:23-24). When we come to consider them, these further definitions of the conditions of prayer are found to be in close agreement. Thus it is morally impossible to have a real confidence that the things we are asking for shall be certainly received, unless our petitions are grounded on some real knowledge of the mind and method of God; otherwise asking would be a mere crying for the moon. Thus the first of these passages is in correspondence with the second. The prayer which secures its own answer is the prayer which is determined by the mind of Christ, the prayer which expresses not our own lawless and short-sighted wants, but the will and purposes of Christ, who is the image of God; the will and purposes of Him whose victory was the victory of complete self-surrender, and whose triumph was the fruit of what in the eyes of men was completest failure. And this is what our Lord means by prayer in His name. It is a childish fancy that we pray in Christ’s name by adding the words through Jesus Christ our Lord at the end of any petition we like to offer. The name of God, the name of Christ, in the New Testament expresses something much more than certain syllables uttered by the voice. They express the being of God as He has revealed Himself in Christ. The ambassador who speaks in the name of his country or his king, does so because he represents not his own views, but the views of the power which sent him. Thus, to pray in the name of Christ, is to pray as one who represents Christ, whose mind is Christ’s mind, his point of view Christ’s point of view, his wishes Christ’s wishes. With what force will now come home to us those words of Christ, Hitherto, have ye asked nothing in my name. So many things we have asked, but in our own name. Perhaps we have not prayed for many years with any reality, and then some calamity seems ready to fall on us. We fling ourselves on our knees, and pray, Oh, my Father, avert from me this blow which I so sorely dread, or Give me this boon which I so greatly desire. There is value in all serious approach to God; but this sort of prayer, which is selfish, and is strictly from our own point of view, is not prayer in Christ’s name, though it may end up with the accustomed formula, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Nor, if our friend or child is sick unto death, and we pray with tears for the sparing of his life, is such prayer, prayer in Christ’s name, unless we have really risen to take His view of sickness and suffering and death. Now we see that prayer in the name of Christ is something which can only arise out of a will and heart redeemed by Christ, and brought by Him into union with God. It is the prayer of moral correspondence; it is the prayer of sons.

Ill But here a number of questions arise. We may fairly ask, what are the subjects of prayer in Christ’s name? what can we pray for, and what can we not, in accordance with His will? For instance, may we pray for health, for fine weather, for physical as well as spiritual blessings? To these questions in detail I propose to attempt an answer in the next paper; but meanwhile I will point out, that our Lord did not leave this matter in the region of abstract speculation.

He taught us by example. After this manner, there fore, pray ye. The Lord’s Prayer is not so much one prayer among many, as the type and pattern of all Christian praying, and if we want to know whether any prayer can be truly described as a prayer in Christ’s name, we had better ask ourselves whether it can fall within the scope, and be expressed in the language, of the Lord’s Prayer. Indeed, the lessons of prayer find in the words of that great example their deepest expression. There is both the full realization of the broad human instinct of approach to God, while at the same time there is the sternest rebuke of the selfishness and the narrowness which ordinarily mix with it. The prayer of untaught human nature is, My Father, give me to-day what I so sorely want, avert from me what I so utterly shrink from. The very order of the Lord’s Prayer, apart from the meaning in detail of its particular clauses, strikes the broader, the diviner note. Our Father, the very first words are the rebuke of selfishness. They force us to place ourselves before the impartial God with whom is no respect of persons, whose thoughts are higher and purer and wider than our thoughts, as the heaven is higher and purer and wider than the earth; but who yet is near to us with all the individualizing love and care which belongs to His fatherhood. Hallowed be thy name; that is, let God’s revelation of Himself, His truth, His character, be held in honour. That is the first petition. Probably there is no man, however spiritual, who in the present age would have put this petition first. The honour of God’s truth is so continually, in the modern mind, subordinate to human needs. But in the Lord’s Prayer we are first forced to exalt into the place of supreme importance the unchangeable honour of God Himself. Thy kingdom come. We are interested in our narrow schemes and wants, but here we are forced to merge our littleness in that great and divine purpose, which through all the ages is slowly realizing itself. No self centred will or desire can hold its own here. Thy will be done. We are forced to bend our stubborn wills and inclinations until they are brought into conformity to that great will of God, to which all the hierarchies of heaven find it their joy and glory to minister. Only then, when we have exalted God’s glory above man’s need, and merged our littleness into God’s greatness, and bent our wills to minister to God’s will, only then are we allowed to express our own wants for ourselves.

Give us this day our daily bread, and here again it is us, not me; and daily bread, that is, just that provision which enables me to be fitted for my place and work in the kingdom of God, not anything that I should like. And then, because we cannot do God’s work unless we are in His favour, therefore, Forgive us our trespasses, and that not anyhow, but according to that law by which God deals with us as we deal with our fellow-men, Forgive us our trespasses, as we for give them that trespass against us. And then, because we are frail, and Satan is powerful, * Bring us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.

We shall go on to consider somewhat of the rich meaning which lies in these clauses in detail. For the present let us only realize the depth of teaching which lies in the very order of the clauses. Truly, a child may pray that prayer, and the heart of childhood under stands it; but it takes the wisest saint to realize anything of the fulness of its meaning. In this great prayer, then, as much in its general outline as in the particular meaning of the separate clauses, lies the secret of the mind of Christ. In the praying of it consists prayer in His name; and the principle inherent in it is the principle of correspondence.