04.01. After manner therefore pray ye: Our Father

Chapter I. “After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father which art in heaven.”

FAR better than all instructions and precepts about prayer is this simple model. Using this, we learn both how to pray and what to pray for. And when we have learned this prayer, it will be time to consider how we shall expand the teaching of our Lord. If it is “after this manner” we are to pray, then who can restrain prayer on the ground of lack of time for devotion? This is the “five words with understanding” preferable to ten thousand of formality or repetition. Here is no vain and heathenish babbling, as if the length of our prayer were to measure the value of its answer; nor any explanatory repetition, as if God did not know what things we have need of. But there is here only a straightforward laying before God of one desire after another. Simplicity and brevity are discernible at a glance, and are taught at the first lesson. But if it is “ after this manner “ we are to pray, then who can restrain prayer on the ground of mental inability to pray? For here are desires presented before God with the barest possible clothing of words. Elaborate language, then, is no essential of prayer; nor yet ingenious thought, nor the observant penetration of spirit which discovers the minute or hidden wants of man. Only so much language is required as makes the desire audible. We are backward in prayer, not because it is too difficult, but because it is too simple for us. It is so unlike our other ways of gaining and getting, that we are always trying to make it something more than it is, an asking for what we want. And to every man this model prayer says, “ If you want nothing from God, then do not pray you cannot pray; but whatever you want from Him, ask for, and you pray “. This prayer, however, is a model as much for its matter as its manner. So that we ought not only to imitate, but use it. We are not to be satisfied if our prayers have some general resemblance to it, but we are to use the very words taught us by our Lord. Does some one think that it may do well enough for beginners, or for ordinary occasions, or to eke out some petitions of our own devising, but that an advanced spiritual condition demands something fuller and richer? So apparently thought one of our Lord’s disciples; for we read in the narrative of Luke that, when the disciples saw Christ pray, one of them asked to be taught to pray; hoping, probably, to receive some fuller, more striking, more sublime petitions. But what says our Lord? Not only, as here, “ After this manner pray ye “; but, “ when ye pray, say “. And there is no getting past the evident precept here delivered, that we ought habitually to use these words. And as we use them, we shall find that though we learnt them at our mother’s knee, it takes a lifetime to fill them with their meaning, and eternity to give them all their answer. If these be our leading and guiding desires, it matters less what else we are seeking. But if these be not at all among our desires, then we are not being led in the best direction, and have yet to learn what these petitions include, and how desirable their contents are. To let this prayer lie with all the riches of its promise in our view, and not to use it, is to be cruel to our own souls as Saul was to his men, when he commanded that none should put forth his hand to take of the honey that was dripping from the trees of the wood, which taken would enlighten the eyes and give strength to the faint. Are we anxious to know what future lies before us? Let us pray this prayer and we become prophets of our own future, surely knowing that these are the things which shall be; for by commanding us so to pray, our Lord has given us sure pledge of the fulfilment of these things. Here, then, we have the future of the Church, the future of those on whom God delights to show the wealth of His love. We have it here, as it lies now in the desires of those who are tending towards it through the unlikely and unpromising things of this world. And if with one heart and mind we were desiring these things, would they not be more speedily accomplished, the obstructions of the world sooner conquered, and our own blessedness and triumph in God more rapidly achieved? This prayer, taught by our Lord, and wrought by His Spirit in the desires of His people, is the bond of attraction, drawing earth steadily towards heaven; drawing it with a momentum ever increasing as the distance becomes less, and as these common desires find a hold in a greater number of hearts. Of the arrangement of this prayer many things have been noticed some fanciful, some just. It has been compared to the law of the Decalogue, inasmuch as, like it, this prayer has two tables, the first pertaining to the things of God, the second to the things of man. There has also been noticed (if not with more justice, at least with more meaning) a reference to the Trinity through out; the first petition of either part of the prayer referring to God as Creator and Preserver; the second petition of either part referring to God as Redeemer; and the third to God the Holy Spirit. This has considerable foundation in the form of the prayer, and not a little significance with regard to the completeness of the blessing we should seek. But the obvious division is the useful one to bear in mind. There are two parts. In the first part the object of worship rivets the thought that has been turned towards Him, and those desires which concern His great purposes are first uttered; and only after that follows the second part, in which tn^ attention turns to our own condition and wants. The petitions of the first part are inseparable from one another; each includes the one which follows; the name of God must be recognised and hallowed before His kingdom can be established, and only when His kingdom has come can His will be done. And, indeed, all these petitions are included in the very invocation, when we say, “ Our Father which art in heaven “; for when we say this with our hearts, we already hallow the name, own the authority, and submit to the will of God. And, again, the first part of the prayer paves the way for the second, and introduces it; for the things which we implore in the first part are not to come to pass irrespective of our condition. We are men; if, then, the will of God is to be done by us on earth, we must be maintained in life. We are sinners; if, then, His kingdom is to come to us, our sins must be for given, since nothing that defiles can enter that kingdom. If all the petitions of the first part are to be answered, and if our calling God “ Father “is not to be in word only, then we must depend on God to give us the guidance of His wisdom, and to rescue us from the power of the Evil.

Let us try, then, to learn what is contained in this invocation, and to see how it implies every good disposition for prayer, and includes every encouragement, remembering that as much that we say is determined by the tone, and that as some words in our common speech, such as “ mother,” “ father,” are peculiarly elastic, containing as much meaning as the heart which uses them can pour into them, so we have to learn to give to these words, “ Our Father,” the tone of Christ; and as we learn this, we shall find that we never do fill them to the full, that they rather still extend beyond our actual feelings, and show us that there is more to be striven after. Indeed, if there be any who thinks he has exhausted these words, who has never trembled at the glory and the promise that are in them, who has never hesitated, even on his knees, before he has dared to take them and use them as his words, is not he still using them merely as a form, not believing, perhaps never having even conceived, that there is a reality which they depict? The first thing to be noticed about these words is, that they are new in the Bible and in the world, put now for the first time into the mouth of man. They begin New-Testament prayer.

They evidence that a change is passing; that as men are now expected to be more than formerly, having clearer declarations of the will of God, so they are invited to richer encouragement, having clearer exhibition of the nature of God. “ The true light now shineth.” God has passed through the clouds and darkness that are around His throne, and has dwelt with us, that we might “ acquaint ourselves with God “. What was given long before as a promise, “Thou shalt call Me, My Father,” is now fulfilled. In all the fervent confidence of David we never find him uttering these words, “ My Father “. And wherever we do find God spoken of as the Father of Israel, this title seems to refer to the kindness of God as their guide and defence, or to His creating and preserving power. Thus Malachi explains the cause, “Have we not all one Father?” by “Hath not one God created us? “ And even in this sense we do not find it used in the form of address. The nearest approach to it that we find is that most moving prayer recorded in Isaiah, in which the orphaned and desolate people reassure them selves of God’s favour in these words, “ Doubt less Thou art our Father, our Redeemer “; but by the last part of the same supplication we see that little more is meant even here than to call upon God as a faithful Creator, who has indeed entered into some peculiar connection with them, for it is said, “ Thou, O Lord, art our Father; we are the clay, and Thou our potter, and we are all the work of Thy hand! “ In this there is a dimness which the birth of Immanuel scatters. There is a feeling after the indissoluble bond, but in the humanity of our Lord we see the union formed.

It was for Christ the Son to give us this liberty of calling God “ our Father “. So that there is something more here than the mere acknowledgment of God as our Creator and Keeper. There is a recognition, distinct and necessary, of the Son of God and His work, and through Him we aspire to an intimacy which the Creator has not with any mere creature. By Christ we are lifted to quite a new level and rank before God. We still have God as our faithful Creator, who will supply all our necessities. The Creator is included in the Father; but in the Father we have, over and above, the assurance that our connection with Him is one of love and of lasting relationship; that we shall not be suf fered to go adrift, but shall be brought up into His likeness, and shall live with Him; and that the ground on which this relationship is established is one of unutterable dignity, the Son of God having become our brother, our nature being now worn by the same person as wears the nature of God. If, therefore, we do not acknowledge Christ in saying “ Our Father,” this epithet is either profane, misty, or heathenish. The heathen called God Father, seeing the goodness, but not understanding the majesty, of Him on whom they called. And there is among ourselves a confused idea of the love of God, and of His desire to bless us, which seems to justify our calling God, as by a figure, “Our Father”. But it is no such confused and delusive figure that Christ sets before us, but a reality. It is a fact accomplished, that God has become man; a present reality, that God is man. The Son of God has become Son of Man, and for this very purpose” that we might receive the adoption of sons “; that we might claim the same Father as Christ claims.

These words, then, which the Son puts into our lips, again and again raise our hearts to the belief, that not only may we expect for His sake many blessings from God, so that it shall be a very apt simile to call Him Father, but that God enters into a relationship with us in Him, and be comes for ever connected with us in a way that secures that all blessings shall be ours. It is not on account of what we receive from God that we are to think of Him with filial gratitude, and count Him a Father; but because He is in very truth our Father, we shall receive all things at His hand. The relationship is to be first in our minds, deeper also in our affections; and, this being so, hope will be easy and humility natural. This is what humbles us and raises us up to believe that God has connected Himself with us.

Supposing that nothing ever came of this relation ship, still it must remain, and remain for ever. Our relationship to God has been established; the Elder Brother of our race calls God Father; and, irrespective of all that may result from it, this relationship is satisfying to man. Our natures are bound to that of God in the person of Christ; and so long as that person remains undestroyed, we remain related to God. There is, of course, no earthly relationship which fully sets forth this our connection with God. It is a separate, singular reality, and it must be conceived of separately in its own reality. Other relation ships may help us to understand it; but while it is only considered under earthly figures, we are in danger of forgetting that underneath there lies the substantial reality of our sonship. And this, instead of being less true than earthly relationships, is the one relationship which when a man enters into he ceases to be homeless and a wan derer, a fugitive and vagabond -upon the face of the earth, and from the face of God ceases to be a mere withered leaf borne helpless on the wind, whose origin none cares to trace, and whose destiny none turns to see. He has found his place in the universe, he has found a hold and a hope; and however in himself unstable, weak, and incapable, he rests enduringly in the unchangeable Father.

He has been outside, thinking the world a strange, cold, barren, friendless, and unsatisfying place; he has wandered about, not seeing “ through the thick cloud,” and still less dreaming that One was seeing and caring for him; and now he finds he has a Father One to love, One to serve, One to glorify, One to worship.* But is it so sacred a ground as this that we are to tread in each day’s ordinary approach to God? No other path is open. The only prayer our Lord will teach begins, “ Our Father “. These words it is easy to use in the figurative sense, * “ I looked on my right hand, and beheld, but there was no man that would know me: refuge failed me; no man cared for my soul. I cried unto Thee, O Lord: I said, Thou art my refuge, and my portion in the land of the living. “Psalms 142:4-5. for we can all readily acknowledge that God has been kind, and acted towards us like a Father. But this sense wins us nothing. It goes round, like a thief or a robber, seeking another entrance to the favour of God than the door that He has Himself opened in Christ, and therefore it brings us no nearer God, but only misleads us. And there is no need that we seek for another entrance, for the door is wide enough. It lets in every one that would pass through it. The one thing that we have to show as our passport by this gate is our humanity. If we say that we are born of woman, as Christ was “born of a woman,” then His Father owns us. This is all.

There is no man who may not use this prayer. And there is no man who is more entitled to use it than another. For the title does not lie in the petitioner, but in Christ. These words do not say, “ If you are of kindred spirit with Christ, if you can depend upon the resolves you have made to live a pure and holy life, if you have often used this prayer already, then come, and with freedom and boldness call God Father”; but they go out to the ends of the earth, they look upon all human conditions, they consider the fair and the foul, the stately, noble, and promising in human character, and also all that is wrecked and lost, and they say, “ If you are human, if you wear the nature worn by the Son, if you are born of woman, then no matter whatever else you are, come, and say, My Father “.

These words may be abused. A man may shrink from this holy relationship, and yet call upon God. Of course, he gains nothing by it; the favour of God has never been stolen into under cover of deceit. He knows who come to Him through Christ, and who only name the name of Christ. But we may deceive ourselves. And therefore we are to listen to conscience, which tells us that a likeness of character is expected between father and child. This likeness is found in all who call God Father in truth.

Such an assimilation Christ supposes, saying, in this same Sermon on the Mount, “ Love your enemies, do good to them that hate you, that ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven”. But to recognise, own, and call upon our Father is the first and most grateful promise of likeness to Him. And as the earthly parent feels a new bond to his child, when the child, in its first efforts at language, calls upon him and claims him as his father, so the first movement of the Spirit of holiness within the child of God teaches him to cry, “Abba, Father,” and, imperfectly though it be spoken, God hails it as the sign of holiness begun, and as the earnest of likeness to Himself. This same idea is carried out by the epithet attached; for we say not merely, “Our Father,” but distinctively, “Our Father which art in heaven”. And as the ideas of holiness and power are those which all men naturally associate with “heaven,” we are to bear in mind mainly these ], two things about Him to whom we pray that He is holy, and that He is powerful. No doubt, there are other ideas which are also suggested to our thoughts as these words pass our lips. No doubt, by praying to Heaven, we acknowledge that earth is not sufficient for us; that the things of earth are gifts, not here of themselves, but sent by God, and that “ a man can receive nothing, except it be given him of Heaven “. We look to Heaven as the source of all power; when the heavens hear the earth, then the earth yields her fruit. This expression helps us further in prayer, by giving to God a distinct habitation. Our prayer would be much more difficult were we permitted to say nothing more than “ Our Father”. Our minds are by far too weak to grasp the idea of an omnipresent spirit. It is true, as it has been said, “ Where God is, there is heaven and where is God not? “ But ought we not rather to say, “ Whither Christ has ascended, and now lives with His human body, there is heaven, and the presence of the Father for us”? Unless so, unless we concentrate heaven in the person of Christ, and believe in His bodily appearing before God for us, then are we set to a harder task in our worship than were ever the ancient people of God. We need such an aid as is here given to keep the distinct personality of God before us. We are not to mingle Him with His creation, but are to pray to one who is separate from all He has made. So the Bible tells us of heaven, where His throne is set. Of the reality and position of this dwelling-place of God it is enough for us to know that Christ is there. Knowing this, God cannot be lost to us.

Wherever man is, there is a heaven above him; and from the spot he stands on, he may appeal to God through Him that is the Way. It is not to an idea of our own we appeal, but to a separate, definite person, who hears when we say, “ Thou “. We do not make His presence by falling on our knees; He was before we prayed, and was present before we realised His presence. But the leading idea put into our minds by our Lord is, that as God will help us as our Father, so can He as being in heaven. As David says, “ Our God is in the heavens, He hath done whatsoever He hath pleased”. From the darkness of earth we pray to Him who is in the light of heaven; from the confusion of earth and its perplexity, we pray to Him who sits above, seeing to the end, and ordering all things; from the trouble and weakness of earth we cry up to the “ blessed and only Potentate, God over all, blessed for evermore”. It is good for us to remember that there even is a heaven as well as an earth; a place where God’s rule is seen, and where all is harmonious, well-ordered, steady, peaceful, as the blue vault that symbolises it. But how much better to direct our prayer into that kingdom, to its centre and throne, and thus to fasten and secure our hopes in the world above, where there is no more curse, and where they dwell who even now have overcome! This is our comfort, that while we are involved in this world we can appeal to One who is above it, and uncontrolled by it. Or this might be our comfort, did we not bring God also down to earth, and either lose sight of Him amid its confusion, or bind Him helpless with His own laws. Our prayer will not proceed in faith until we raise God high above us and all that we know, to the very supreme of power. When the utmost skill and strength of the child have failed, he runs to his father, never doubting that with him is more skill and sufficient strength. And we must learn to cease from measuring the power of God by our own, and reasoning from the one to the other. We must learn to set God above His own laws; not that He will reverse them, but use them as we know not how. We are not to think that, where we see no possibility, God sees none; that, when all human skill has been fruitlessly spent, there is no more that God can do; that, when everything goes wrong with us, and we are ready to sit down and wait for ruin, there is no help for us in God. Too often we pray to a God whom we do not set in the heavens, to whom we do not in fact ascribe as much wisdom and power as we do to men, whose help we do not as fully trust in as we should in the combined help of some on earth we know of, whom we scarcely trust in much more than in ourselves, else we should not be found despairing when we see no remedy for our ills, and when our own strength is exhausted.

Again, this invocation sets before us a God of heavenly holiness as well as of heavenly power. In the God to whom we pray centres all influence for good, and from Him proceeds no evil.

Every exercise of His power has been, and continues to be, on the side of good. “ He cannot be tempted.” No circumstances can combine to make Him favour evil-doing or neglect well-doing. It is of His nature to help, to give, to bless to the utmost. Free from all suspicion, because He knows what is in us, He appreciates the feeblest beginnings of good, cherishes and fosters into life what man would count dead and lost, knows nothing of the grudging, of the malice, of the captiousness of man; but watches how He may encourage us in the slightest efforts towards the right, watches how He may insinuate His help, and in proportion to His own freedom from all taint or shadow of evil, deals delicately with the sinner in all His way, until our eyes begin to open to the perfect rectitude, simplicity, and loveliness of His character; and we see that in Him there is help for us in all good, and deliverance from all evil. And when we see something of the holiness of God, we shall be careful to restrain such desires as are inconsistent with His purposes, but shall very boldly expect that He will “ hear the right “.

It need scarcely be said, that the word “our,” by which we are here taught to address God, can by no means prohibit or discountenance the indi vidual and private use of this prayer. But our Lord, viewing the need of the whole body of His people, gives one prayer for all; and it is when we pray together and for the things we need in common with all men who have lived through this world, that we feel the certainty of our being heard grow to its height. We then but swell the common voice which has gone up to God in all times and from all corners of the world, which has passed to Him from the unhardened lips of the child, and which He has caught up from the broken utterances of the dying; which has been sighed as a forlorn hope by the despondent and oppressed, when all other hope seemed vain, and which is gradually risen to, through other prayers, as the highest and most hopeful utterance of Christian faith an utterance which, like the highest flight of angels on Jacob’s ladder of prayer, carries the soul out of sight of earth, and, giving it the vision of the things of God, teaches it what is worthy to be desired. Round this prayer the desires of all the faithful cluster, and here we enjoy the communion of saints. Praying in remembrance of that great company of our fellow-men in whom we see more legibly and variously written all the sorrows and anxieties, all the pains and sins, that are incident to our common humanity, we learn what are indeed our deep and urgent needs. No more blinded by our own peculiar and immediately present circumstances, we learn to see through them to the wants which lie at the ground of our nature, and always exist. And thus we are taught what to pray for, both by the company in which we pray, and by the nature of Him to whom we pray. Praying with our fellow-men, and excluding no most distant character, nor saddest condition, nor deepest necessity, our hearts expand to desire those larger blessings which embrace our whole beings, and do not limit prayer to those particular benefits which touch only what is peculiar in our present case. And praying to the holy and loving God, our hearts renounce evil and earthly desires, and rise to things that are worthy to be given by the Father of glory. The propriety and breadth of this invocation are thus readily appreciated. To use it rightly, with the understanding and the spirit, is to begin prayer as we ought; confidently and lovingly, because we pray to “Our Father”; humbly, \ because we call God “ Father “ only through the humiliation of the Son; hopefully, because all power is with Him; carefully, because He is holy. When we are drawing near to God, as if we were hardly used, as if our misery were giving us a claim, as it gives God occasion of mercy, then this “ Our Father” reduces our spirits to a lowly and suitable thankfulness. I cannot be hardly dealt with if I can say to God, “ My Father “. When we are drawing near recklessly, more because the time of prayer has come round than because the heart is hungering after the things of God, does not this “Our Father” bring before our thoughts all the toil of Christ on our behalf, His incarnation and His passion, His ascension and His ceaseless appearing before God for us, and forbid us to use lightly what is so earnest a matter to Him? When we would gladly have the blessings of God’s bounty and the security of His favour, but would rather have these at a distance from Himself, than come into any connection with Him which would oblige us to lead a holy life, does not this “ Our Father” profitably remind us, that relationship, close, enduring, and assimilating, must be the beginning of all hope and blessing? When we are entering on an act of devotion, as if it were a mere exercise of the spirit, in which none is concerned but itself, this invocation reminds us that prayer is something more than “ a posture of the soul,” a beneficial state of mind, an under going of certain trains of thought and emotion, that it is address to another, transaction with a personal, present, living God. In short, this introduction suits itself to every praying spirit, attracting and encouraging and filling with all suitable thoughts and feelings.

Let us, then, use this common prayer with intelligence, striving always to fill it more fully with meaning and desire. Let us wait for no other introduction than that which is given us here; and, seeing that it is no stranger who asks for our worship, let us believe that thus He would have us get over that great difficulty of drawing near to Him suitably, and let us ask from Him, than whom none is nearer, none more intelligent of our condition, none more consider ate, none more painstaking about us. And as we have the faculty of love to attach us one to another, which makes solitude wearisome and friendlessness terrible, so we have this faculty of worship which is relieved and finds its object, when we return from our distance and banishment, and fall down before God, and say, “ Our Father which art in heaven “. This is love, and admiration, and trust, the most absolute. This is the ultimate repose of the spirit, beyond which nothing is desired, nor can be conceived. This is the feeling which at last says, “It is good for us to be here; here let us dwell, even in Thee, O Lord, who art our dwelling-place in all generations “.