Matthew 5

Matthew 5:1-7

Subdivision 3. (Matthew 5:1-48; Matthew 6:1-34; Matthew 7:1-29.)The Kingdom in its Inner Spirit and Holiness. We shall be called back to these thronging multitudes again; to learn in detail their various needs and the way in which God had provided for them. But first the inspired history bids us listen to the Lord’s own statement of what His Kingdom is; not in the form it should take, but in its inner spirit. The Old Testament prophets had already announced the form it would, and will yet, assume, when the “promises” still belonging to Paul’s “kindred according to the flesh” (Romans 9:3-4) shall be fulfilled. Introduced by a coming in glory which every eye shall see, the Kingdom of that day will be_ established in power that shall smite down all opposition as with a rod of iron (Psalms 2:9). The law will then go forth from Zion; and the word of the Lord once more from Jerusalem, then to be the place of His special manifestation upon the earth, men coming up from all parts of it to worship Him (Isaiah 2:1-22; Micah 4:1-13; Zechariah 14:5-21). The whole picture is, in many of its features, so unlike that into which Christianity has introduced us, - is, in fact, such apparent retrogression when seen as coming after this, that many find it impossible to understand it except as a figure; but as such no one will find it possible to understand it really. It is not Christianity certainly; it is not the heaven in which our portion is; it is a future - and still not final - state of the earth. It is a last dispensation before the eternal state begins, - a dispensation of sight, rather than of faith and yet in many ways lower in character than that which faith now enjoys. “Blessed” in a higher sense, truly, “are they that have not seen and yet have believed.” Yet, in perfect accordance with this, the glory is then manifest and visible, as now it is not. And once more, and beyond all in the past, Jerusalem will be the candlestick for the light, where all may see it. Granting the apostle’s interpretation to be the true one, and that to “Israel in the flesh” the promises belong, - and the prophets themselves unmistakably show this, - no other reading of Scripture is possible at all than the simple and literal one. When John the Baptist proclaimed the Kingdom as at hand, he had before him no vision of Christianity, but just what the prophets of old had announced. And when the Lord takes up, with more emphasis and fuller demonstration, the Baptist’s message, He is still speaking of the same thing. But Israel rejected Him through whom alone those promises could be fulfilled to them: “He came unto His own, and His own received Him not.” Thus, as Daniel had predicted, “Messiah” was “cut off, and had nothing” (Daniel 9:26, margin). As far as Israel’s blessing was concerned, the fair vision vanished. The world too, and not Israel merely, understood not the day of its visitation: “He was in the world, and the world was made by Him, and the world knew Him not.” Thus the predicted blessing of the earth also is delayed, and only after nineteen centuries are the streaks of dawn beginning to be seen on the horizon. Yet the Kingdom has come: the Baptist was not mistaken; the signs given could not deceive. Yes, it has come, and more than that which it promised has been brought in for faith. Yet it has come in a different way. Grace repelled will still triumph over hindrances; its flood will rise but higher to overtop the barriers which would hem it in. And out of the world which has taken Satan for its prince, and rejected and crucified the Son of God, God has been all this time taking out for Himself a heavenly people - a people to share with Christ rejection upon the earth, yet to share with Him also His reign over it, and to have with Himself a place of nearer, dearer intimacy than even this might imply - “members of His body,” partners soon of His throne, where He is, for eternity to be with Him. These things we shall find the Lord beginning to unfold to His disciples, as soon as it is clearly seen that Israel will have none of Him; and here, where He speaks of “things which have been kept secret from the foundation of the world” (Matthew 13:35), we shall have no difficulty in finding that which is our own - a fullness of blessing that Israel’s portion does indeed figure, but only figure. This - the nation’s as such - is earthly: ours is heavenly. There is to be a “new earth” also “wherein dwelleth righteousness,” and with which Israel’s seed and name are permanently connected (Isaiah 66:22), as on the other hand, a “heavenly city” for God’s pilgrims of today. In the “sermon on the mount” we have, then; the principles of the Kingdom of heaven; with very plain reference to the millennial earth. It is the earth that the meek are to inherit, though there is a “reward in heaven” also, at which we shall have to look in its place (vers. 5, 12). The first statement is from Psalms 37:1-40, the application of which will be perfectly evident to all who consider it. Jerusalem also is spoken of, not in its desolate, disowned condition, but as “the city of the great King” (ver. 35), and we shall see further indications of this nature, as we take up the study of what is before us here. Yet let it not be thought that this takes from us the application to ourselves, which Christians seek in it. The fuller revelation only completes the partial one; the higher blessing but transcends the lower. Through all dispensations God is the same God; and we are “blessed with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ Jesus.” Of many things we can only argue, indeed, a more perfect - or at least a fuller application to ourselves than to them. To take from Israel what is hers is only to diminish her and not enrich ourselves; nay, what has been called in this way the spiritualizing of the promises has led most surely and emphatically to the carnalizing of the Church.

1. The “sermon on the mount” is the manifestation, then, of the Kingdom in its inner spirit and holiness, - still, of course, as a Kingdom to come, and not actually come. There are seven parts (the number of perfection); and the first (vers. 1-16) fittingly consists of “beatitudes,” blessings pronounced by the King Himself upon the heirs thereof: first, in view of their personal character (1-9); then as sufferers in the midst of a world hostile to them (10-12); lastly, in face of that hostility, they are set in it as ministers of a blessing to be fully realized, when the long expected Kingdom at last is come (13-16). The old covenant also had its blessings, but which, conditioned upon legal obedience, proved only the hopelessness of blessing under it so that the very “song” of the lawgiver is a witness against the people, and his blessing of the tribes has to look for its fulfilment in times beyond the law; in fact, in the very times of the Kingdom which the Lord here announces. How suited that the Minister of the new covenant should begin with blessing - blessing still upon obedience (for in the nature of things there can be no other) but now with a positiveness and assurance which imply the grace which that covenant, with its glorious “I wills” so royally expresses. (Hebrews 8:8-12.) For those under it there is no Mount Ebal, no curse or woe at all. The sweet authority of divine love constrains and restrains together. Christ is King of a Kingdom like which there is no other, where the “engrafted word” is law, but a “law of liberty,” and every individual conscience is His throne. (1) There are seven blessings pronounced on character, and (as in most sevens elsewhere throughout the Word) the first four are distinguished from the last three by being connected with what is more negative and external - related here to position in the world while the last three give us more specific divine lineaments which are found in all the children of God, as partakers of the divine nature. The first four show us the heart set upon a blessing which is not yet come, - upon the Kingdom of heaven itself: governed, therefore, by the unseen, and finding itself in the midst of all that is its moral opposite in the world around. It is an empty, barren scene, and the soul is conscious of poverty and distress and moral failure only in the midst of it. The last three give us the positive energy and activity of good amid the unceasing conflict of evil with it.* But we must look at them more particularly in their order and connection with one another, all which has its importance spiritually and for us.
   First, and therefore of first importance here we have “Blessed are the poor in spirit.” This is in contrast with mere external poverty, and yet like it in its own sphere. When the heart is set upon things to come, present things of necessity lose proportionately their value. There is absence of mind," as we call it, - the heart on the unseen. And this is characteristic of faith ever, which is “the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things unseen.” Yet this poverty of spirit is only the negative side of faith, the emptying and not the filling. Still there is power in it, as deliverance from a world in which men are walking in a vain show, and disquiet themselves in vain. The soul’s bonds are cut: it can move, it can make progress.

To such an one God’s word becomes a necessity, as the one link with the invisible. And such a seeking has its welcome and assurance from the Lord Himself: - “theirs is the Kingdom of heaven.” How much more, not less forceful for us should this be, than for those to whom the Lord is directly speaking, or even for the people who will stand upon the threshold of the Kingdom in days soon to come. True, the earth’s crisis will be upon it, and Israel’s travail-time of intense anguish, out of which, as in a day, a nation will be born to God. But we have the revelation of a brighter inheritance, higher as heaven is above the earth, the meeting-place of the redeemed of the present and the past, the dwelling-place of God and the Lamb. Had we divine affections proportionate to the revelation made to us how little would mere circumstances here have power over the formation of a character like this! Granting that Satan’s tactics for us have changed, and that, instead of funeral pyres for martyrs, there are now only premiums in abundance for unfaithfulness to Christ - a condition of things formed by compromise between the Church and the world, - should this have power to dim the eyes of faith? What would it be to say this, but to own it right and reasonable that Satan should gain his object? Christ in the world at least must be poor in it. It was the place, without any question; of His poverty. If then; He be the example for us, how much does this imply? If He, too, gone out of the world, be the object for our hearts, where will our hearts be? The second blessing is that of those who mourn; and here I do not think that it is a question of personal sin. Christ was “a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief,” and necessarily, as the Son of God in a world astray from Him. “For the zeal of Thy house hath eaten Me up,” He says, “and the reproaches of them that reproached Thee are fallen upon Me” (Psalms 69:9). His tears fell over Jerusalem. The Cross He bore for men was fullest witness to the intensity of His anguish upon their account, while justifying the holiness of God in all He suffered for them. The mourning that He blesses here is, we may be sure, like His own, love’s judgment of the ruin that is everywhere around: little need to dwell upon the causes for mourning in the world, such as we know it. Its open sores are revealed enough day by day, in a time when the most hidden things are revealed as a matter of course before the public gaze, as having unquestioned right to know everything.

And yet, after all, the mass of evil is too great even to be so gauged and realized. What must have been the opposition of it to Him whose eye saw through it all, and whose heart had none of the callousness with which we can throw off, or the weakness which makes us faint under, so great a burden. But “they shall be comforted.” There is a rest of God to come, a rest into which we shall enter; a sabbath-rest, where rest shall not only be allowed but sanctified. How sweet the thought of a rest of God, where He shall rest - rest, as alone He can do, “in His love.” And this shall be. Approached from this direction, the next point is soon reached, the character of the meek. Amid the lusts and strife of earth, if like others you have your portion to seek, you must strive as they do. If you have nothing here to live for but God’s will, you can afford to be quiet. Be sure for yourself of a Father’s love and care always over you, - infinite love and wisdom concerning itself with all your path, and such realization will of necessity subdue all rashness of self-assertion; and make you careful only to give God His way, to cease from the folly of your own. Here too the Lord leads his people, “Learn of Me,” He says, “for I am meek and lowly in heart; and ye shall find rest unto your souls.” There is the present blessing of it, and how great it is! - “rest to your souls:” rest from all restlessness; quiet in the knowledge that God is God; what an inestimable joy is this! When the “meek shall inherit the earth” will be, of course, still the time of the Kingdom to which we are here continually looking forward. It will be a wonderful thing in this world, whose history has been one long strife of ambition; and whose heroes have been so often made such by the hecatombs of the slain; to have the inheritance at last belong to the meek! The promise for an earthly people as it is, we shall still enjoy it, and in a better way. “Heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ,” we shall reign with Him over the earth. We have no need, therefore, to covet Israel’s promises, and should not be enriched by them in the least. Here the Lord is quoting, as has been said, from Psalms 37:1-40, and the reference is obvious. It shows of whom these blessings primarily speak; and “the gifts and calling of God are without repentance.” There is yet one special form of sorrow to be noted, and it is one that men are feeling intensely today; not that there is more of it than in the past ages, or at least not that there is necessarily more. Rather, perhaps, because all these questions press more for solution as the day of settlement nears and the harvest of the earth approaches ripeness. “Judgment shall” yet “return to righteousness,” long divorced as they have been; but it is not yet so. Still the cry because of oppression goes up into the ear of God, and He is quiet, and men think He regards not. And because they think so, they are rising up today to take things into their own hands, and settle them after their own fashion. Yet they can never be so settled: where are the righteous that are fit to rule? Are the few that have shown their unfitness other than fair samples of the many who have not had a chance to try?

And if they could get one perfectly righteous, would they submit rejoicingly to him? What says the Cross as to that? The One they need has come and been rejected. “We have no King but Caesar” was the cry then; and it has been answered by the long reign of Caesar. Would they choose otherwise today? Caesar may not be in the fashion: they enjoy too well the scramble for the spoils of office. Try experiments in politics they may, and dethrone Caesar; but Christ will never get His own until God makes His enemies as a foot-stool for His feet. But “blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness” - righteousness; not merely to get their own necks out of the collar: there is no particular moral character about that. But craving for righteousness shall at last be satisfied. The coming of the Lord alone can accomplish this. There is One who can be safely trusted - only One: He, one who had power in His hand once, on earth, and used it, but never for Himself. Personal interests He had indeed, and wrought for them - a joy on account of which He endured the cross, despising the shame: the cross, even He could not despise. He too, blessed be God, shall be satisfied: “He shall see fruit of the travail of His soul, and shall be satisfied.” Amen. The last three blessings upon character, to which we now come, relate to that in which the children of God manifest most distinctly their divine origin. In mercy, in purity, in peace-making, the character of God Himself is manifested as Light and Love. It is directly said of the peace-makers that they “shall be called the sons of God” - recognized in their relation to Him; and here assuredly is the great office Christ Himself assumed. In the first epistle of John, where the possession of eternal life by the possessors of Christianity is in question, similar things are given as the signs of it. There it is, indeed, that we have the statements, “God is light” and “God is love:” and consequently, “he that doeth not righteousness is not of God, neither he that loveth not his brother.” The two things must be found in the same person; as in God they belong together. Love is not truly love that is not holy; holiness is not that, if separated from love. These seven beatitudes are in like manner one sevenfold blessing. Blessing cannot dwell with cursing; nor the child of light be the child of darkness also. Such cross-checks as to reality are of the greatest possible importance for practical use. In a world of shams there is nothing but needs testing: and with the flesh still in us there is abundant room for self-deception. Saddest of all it is, that even Christians may not be unwilling to be a little blinded; with this additional necessity, of course, that they cannot dictate the limit of this: the enemy to whom they capitulate will be bound by no terms. It will be thought strange, no doubt, to put down “mercy” under the head of “righteousness” rather than of love; yet this is what I believe its numerical place enforces. Of course, it is not to be doubted that love is shown in it; but that results from what we have just been saying, that one moral attribute, just so far as it is that, will be penetrated, as it were, by other elements. You cannot absolutely separate one part of moral character from another: each is dependent and will not stand alone. Granting that, however, it will still be thought that mercy is more the fruit of love than of righteousness, and that it is artificial to characterize it in this way. Let us turn, then; to Scripture itself to see if it has any help for us. Now we shall find such in this very “sermon on the mount,” and only in the third section of it (Matthew 6:1-2). In our common version you find there, “Take heed that ye do not your alms before men to be seen of them;” but the R.V. rightly substitutes there “righteousness” for alms. It will be seen when we come to speak of it, that the character formed by the realization of the presence of God is described for us in three different ways, - manward, Godward, self-ward. In each case His examples are different, possibly, from what we might have expected. Manward, He specifies “alms” as righteousness; prayer, as characteristic Godward-fasting, selfward. The truth and wisdom of this we surely cannot doubt, when we realize who is the Speaker here; but here, then; as I have claimed to be the case in the beatitudes, mercy is given as a form of righteousness: for undoubtedly alms-giving has the character of mercy. The parable of the unmerciful servant in this same gospel will throw light upon all this (Matthew 18:23-34). He demands but his due from his fellow-servant, and so might not seem unrighteous; but there is more than this that must come into account. “O thou wicked servant, I forgave thee all that debt, because thou desiredst me: shouldest not thou also have had mercy on thy fellow-servant, even as I had mercy on thee?” Mercy was with him clearly but righteousness; and so it is with us ever, being what we are, and God being to us what He ever is. Notice distinctly how this is brought out in the recompense. The mercy that the merciful shall find will be, as elsewhere with the enjoyment of these blessings, in the coming Kingdom, and we might expect perhaps something more than this; but all the reward there is mercy, and it is well and needful to be reminded of it. So the apostle, after speaking of the self-forgetting love of Onesiphorus, who had refreshed and ministered to him in his bonds at Rome, prays, “The Lord grant unto him that he may find mercy of the Lord in that day” (2 Timothy 1:18). At our best, as at our worst, it is to grace that we are debtors. Grace crowns, even as grace saves. And now we have clearly the character of God as Light. “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God,” If we remember that the eyes are in the heart (Ephesians 1:18, R.V.), the connection is most obvious. Indeed this must be the qualification for seeing anything that is worth seeing. When Christ, the image of God, was in the world, the world knew not its Maker. And why? Not because there was not abundant evidence. He Himself declared the reason in that pregnant question which admitted but of one answer: “How can ye believe who receive honor one of another, but seek not the honor that cometh from God only?” The reason for lack of faith is always a moral one: the pure in heart alone can see God. The Pharisee may cleanse the outside with most religious care and see nothing, - or see indeed the very opposite of the truth; but the soul brought by its very misery to self-judgment, with its back on the world and self, shall see the glorious Vision which lies over against these, unseen by their votaries. And oh, for the bliss that lies beyond this! for the possibilities of vision beyond all that any one yet has made his own! for such is the unrealized wealth of our possession even here. To us the sanctuary is completely open; the veil is rent from top to bottom; and Christ is entered in, to give us entrance. Yet we imitate so much the unbelief of those who in days past besought God to put distance when He was drawing nigh, and to put a creature of His, though it were a Moses, abidingly between themselves and Him. The last beatitude, “Blessed are the peace-makers,” recognizes the strife and unrest that have come in, while it shows the energy of divine grace which has come to restore and bring back out of it. As the final blessing we see in it the result of what has gone before. There is in it the consciousness of a Voice which has spoken peace with power to still the disorder and reach down to the very root of it. How wonderful to know that that which is the basis of true peace is that in which we see also evil in its worst, but overpowered, made subject, transformed into glorious good. The world’s worst crime, the bitter growth of its many centuries of hostility to God, its awful act of allegiance to the prince that it had chosen; has been the Cross. But just its worst is that which, in the triumph of good over it, gives absolute peace.

The worst that man could do has but disclosed the infinite good in God; nay, He has met the full power of the enemy in all the weakness of a Son of man. Goodness, with no power but what is inherent in it, has defeated evil with all its accumulated strength. “Out of the eater has come forth meat, and out of the strong, sweetness.” Henceforth, to despair of good is to despair of God. He has made peace by the blood of His cross. How blessed now are the feet of those who are but the messengers of the gospel of peace! who go forth with the trumpet of jubilee to proclaim the fruits of the day of atonement for the Israel of God! the feeblest may recount the praises of that weakness which has defeated the strong, and out of weakness brings forth strength everlasting. Blessed, then; are the peacemakers! God is Himself that. They, then; shall be called the sons of God. Henceforth, whatever the roughness of the road, their feet are “shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace:” shoes that, like those of Israel of old, never wear out. Well may they be the publishers of this grace to others. (2) The blessings connected with character are now followed by two which are divine encouragement to those suffering from the consequent opposition of the world. For the world is in opposition to God, as the Cross has once for all proved, and so to those who resemble Him or remind it of Him. This opposition may be indeed disguised in many ways, and so that those who exhibit it may be unconscious of what they are doing - unconscious even (such is the deceitfulness of the heart) that they are of such a spirit. For few indeed will own to themselves a condition so terrible as this. Hence have come in the false gods which have been invented to satisfy the religious principle in man, and yet allow him to follow his lusts and passions without check, or even with the approbation of a misguided conscience. And hence, even under the form of Christianity, people can picture a God after their own heart, and serve him with quite unconscious heathenism. The persecution of which the Lord speaks here is of two kinds - for righteousness and for His sake. In the first case it is for character, but it is to be noticed that it is represented as less violent and radical than the latter is. Correspondingly, the blessing pronounced is in the latter case greater. With righteous conduct there may not be linked the open testimony which brings out opposition; and, if it be without personal claim on the beholder, it may even be admired, or at least approved, by him. It is another thing when it does make this claim; when the honesty of a servant, for example, interferes with his employer’s profit. Then he may have to suffer; and this is so common a case that it calls for little remark. When suffering is for Christ’s sake, it is because suffering for Christ presses His claim upon the conscience, and it is felt, however little admitted, that one has to do with Him. As often said, a man who smiles at a Mohammedan may curse a Christian; and he who will quietly enough, discuss the Koran, grows hot and angry in disputing against Scripture. Truth carries with it its own evidence sufficiently to make this difference; which is, therefore, but unwitting homage paid by those who mean nothing of this. Christ turns from the mere abstract they" in the former case, to speak, as it were, directly into the hearts of these sufferers: “Blessed are ye when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and say all manner of evil against you, falsely, for My sake.” With this comes the fuller recompense: “Rejoice, and be exceeding glad, for great is your reward in heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you.” This “reward in heaven,” addressed (as few realize it to have been) to Jewish saints, whose portion as such would be earthly, (and so the Lord has before applied the language of the 37th psalm,) and in immediate anticipation of the Kingdom being set up on earth, - is really stranger than it looks to those who contemplate it merely from a Christian standpoint. Our portion is rightly recognized as being in heaven; and it is so much the accustomed thing to think of all saints as dying and going there, that we have largely lost sight of the meek inheriting the earth, or else injuriously misapply it. For it is certainly not the rule with the meek now, and in seeking to make it such they would lose their character. But the Lord, with all Israel’s blessings in His hand, and offering Himself to them as Messiah to bring them in for them, naturally speaks according to the Scripture which has in view the time when He will be received and they will be blessed under Him upon earth. According to this view, it is the reward in heaven which becomes more exceptional and difficult to understand. But these blessings - millennial as we call them - being then lost to them through unbelief, belong, in their primary sense, to the future yet; - to a remnant brought to God in a time of trial such as has never yet been known; and who will have to pass through it to enjoy their promises. Of these many will be persecuted even to death, and thus lose what we may call their proper portion. But they will thus receive, in the goodness of God, a higher blessing. Deprived of an earthly, they will enter into a heavenly inheritance, and so are seen in the book of Revelation (Revelation 20:4-6) as a special company of martyrs, added to the saints of the first resurrection (the saints of Christian and previous times) who will be already on their thrones. But besides this, and apart from martyrdom (of which the Lord does not here directly speak), there will be also a preserved remnant, who, passing through the trial of this time, will have a special link with heaven; such as all will not possess (Revelation 14:3-4).*
For us there is, of course, no difficulty in an application; which is as true for us as if there were no others who had concern in it. The prophets, of whom our Lord speaks in this connection; dealt with men by the word of God which was given them to communicate, and themselves suffered, not merely as righteous, but as men of God. Yet as to the professing people of God even it could be said, “Which of the prophets did not your fathers persecute?” The apostle Peter speaks similarly of these two causes of persecution (1 Peter 3:14; 1 Peter 4:14), and with corresponding emphasis of blessing for those “reproached for the name of Christ.” With him it is present, however: “the Spirit of glory and of God resteth upon you;” but who can measure what is implied in this? (3) Such treatment at the world’s hand involves also in itself a place of privilege and responsibility from God, which is two-fold, answering to this two-fold rejection. First, “ye are the salt of the earth.” Salt is that which resists corruption; there being in it also a special diffusibility, which makes it a suited image of active and aggressive power. Mere passivity is, in fact, inconsistent with righteousness itself; even what we call “passive resistance” is more than this. There is the government of moral principle, in obedience to which the whole man braces himself up, if but to endure. Example also becomes precept, and that of the most convincing kind: words may be merely words, and light as the breath that forms them. The willing sufferer is so truly the witness, that the old word for witness has come to belong to him. The “martyr” is preeminently the “witness.” But this leads on to the second thing, which is just a place of testimony: “Ye are the light of the world: a city which is set on a hill cannot be hid. Neither do men light a lamp and put it under the bushel, but on a stand; and it giveth light to all that are in the house. “So let your light shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven.” From it being said, “let men see your good works,” people often imagine that these are the light itself, and thus make the two things we are considering practically one. Indeed they are made for one another: separate them, and there is at once a fatal deficiency in each. What testimony to Christ can there be, if there be not the life giving evidence? But again, what evidence in the life if the lips are silent as to Christ? Nay, this may be construed so as to make the life of no consequence: - “For modes of faith let graceless zealots fight: He can’t be wrong, whose life is in the right.” But it is truth which sanctifies: and the life cannot be right that is not governed by it. And this is still the most serious effort of the enemy where Scripture is sought to be maintained: “For Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light,” says the apostle; “therefore it is no great thing if his ministers also be transformed into the ministers of righteousness: whose end shall be according to their works” (2 Corinthians 11:14-15). Here these ministers of righteousness press the life, to deny the truth; and as no more successful argument can be found than the evil lives of professors of it, so (next to this and in the same line with it) the good deeds of those who are without or who deny the truth, is Satan’s wisest one. Thus it needs the light to shine upon the good works, that they may be seen as such, and glorify your Father who is in heaven. Apart from this, they may glorify humanity, or glorify any lie under the sun. Christ is He with whom in the full reality of it, “light is come into the world,” and if “men love darkness rather than light,” it is, as He Himself says, “because their deeds are evil” (John 3:19). We must not be afraid to say this after Him. There are some, thank God, who are profoundly conscious that in His light alone they have seen light, and that there is no light for the world but only in Him. Thus if any are to be in any sense a light of the world, there is but one way of it - by reflecting Him.

Let us remember, then; the responsibility we have, of bold confession of Him. It is not even righteous to hide from men in need what He has done for them. No: the lamp is not for the bushel, - but for the lampstand: it is not for ourselves that we are made light: the world has right to it, and can produce that right under the broad seal of Christ’s commission. One may perhaps object: “But my good works! Alas, that is just my difficulty. With all my inconsistency, I fear that it would more dishonor Christ than honor Him, for me to confess Him.” One can understand such language; one can even respect the motive, and yet it involves an essential mistake. We are never called to show our good works, or even to be conscious of them. The Lord’s lesson as to alms-giving perfectly illustrates the rule as to all such things, which is “let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth.” He is not here, we may be sure, teaching a contradictory principle. He takes for granted that there will be good works indeed: true faith in Him will surely have its fruit; but faith is the very opposite of self-occupation; and certainly of self-satisfaction. If it be Christ that occupies us, the apprehension of His perfection will give us true self-judgment: it will be as impossible to be careless of evil, as it will to be self-pretentious. We shall “boast in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh” (Philippians 3:3). This will make the confession of Him both sweet and safe. We shall let our light shine before men; and, poor as we shall ever be in our own account, there will be fruit seen in us which shall glorify our Father. This joy in Christ itself will be the best evidence to commend Him to others. 2. We have now a new and very distinct section of the “sermon on the mount,” in which the Lord takes the place of One greater than Moses, confirming, expounding, and bringing out the spirituality of the law, while He at the same time supplements and perfects it; not hesitating to put His own words in a place of higher authority than that of those spoken “to them of old time.” For the law made nothing perfect” (Hebrews 7:19), and what Moses had to concede on account of the hardness of their hearts (Matthew 19:8) could now, in the light which had come with Christ into the world, no longer be permitted. There are fittingly seven subsections here, ending with the enjoining of this very perfection as required of the children of the perfect Father in heaven; who were to manifest as that their Father’s character. The higher the place accorded, the higher the standard necessarily. But there are many questions which the whole subject raises, and which we must take up seriously and consider patiently in the order of their suggestion. (1) First of all, the authority of the law is affirmed, and in the fullest way; but we have to consider in what sense it is affirmed, for it is here that many and grave mistakes are made. “The law and the prophets” was the recognized phrase for the Old Testament as a whole, the Scriptures of a dispensation already past, but which had not passed themselves with the dispensation. Thus in the Gospel of Luke He says again (Luke 16:16): “The law and the prophets were until John; since that time the Kingdom of God is preached.” Thus it could be said that they were passed, and that they were not passed. They were passed as the sole and governing truth: that was now come, or at least was at hand, for which they had been preparing the way; and necessarily this must be now the higher truth, but which must by the very fact bear witness to and establish what has gone before it. No truth can pass away. The more complete that is, to which we have arrived, the more surely must it embrace and set in their place all lower and partial truths which have anticipated and led on to it. Thus then Christ came not to destroy the law and the prophets. He came to fulfil, or rather complete, - fill them out. What would the Old Testament be without the New? Very much like a finger, pointing into vacuity! It is plain that the Lord is not here speaking simply of the ten commandments, though these have their place, and a foremost place, in His thoughts, as is manifest by what follows. But the law, in its use in Scripture, is by no means confined to this, and the addition of the “prophets” shows that it must be taken in its widest significance. The “fulfilment” could not be therefore simply by His obedience to the law, though He was fully obedient, but implies the bringing in something additional, as plainly even the mere fulfilment of the prophets must be by the addition of something to the prophecy. But He goes on now to affirm with His emphatic “verily,” that “not one jot or one tittle, - not the smallest letter, nor the projection of a letter k - “shall pass from the law till all come to pass.” This, though translated in our own version “be fulfilled,” is a different word from that just used; and such coming to pass could not refer to the keeping of commandments. The ten commandments could not be spoken of as something which had to come to pass. But this experience would naturally have to do with the law in its larger significance, which must even, one would say, include the prophets also; and thus the phrase “until heaven and earth pass” would be the real equivalent of all things being fulfilled. For beyond this the Old Testament gives us only the promise of “new heavens and a new earth,” about which it says little or nothing (Isaiah 65:17; Isaiah 66:22).
Every jot and tittle of the Old Testament remains then never to pass away through the ages of time. It is all confirmed as divine, and therefore stable; but which, of course, does not mean that types and shadows were not to give way to the substance when it should come, or that the “new covenant” would not replace the old: for this would be a contradiction of the Old Testament itself which affirms it. No; the law abides in all its details; and therefore in all the limits it imposes on itself, and for all the purposes for which it was given, and for no other. This is simple enough, surely, to understand; and yet it is not understood by those, for instance, who would from words like these impose the yoke of the law upon the necks of Christians. For this it is not enough to tell us that the law abides. It is none the less necessary, as the apostle says, that “a man use it lawfully.” And he adds to this, in illustration, that “the law is not made for a righteous man, but for the lawless and disobedient” (1 Timothy 1:8-10). But the Lord’s next words, for many, show without any doubt the perpetual and universal obligation of the law. For here He speaks plainly about doing or not doing, teaching or not teaching, even one of the least of its commandments, and of the recompense or retribution following for this. But while this is certain; it is no less clear that it is to Jews - to men under law - that He is addressing Himself. Christianity is not come, nor the Kingdom of heaven, nor is the former even announced as yet. The Lord is simply making a special application of the principle He has declared, to the case of those before Him; whether this is to be in fact wider is not to be inferred from this particular case. When we do come to Christianity we find, especially in the epistles to the Romans and Galatians, the relation of the law to the saints of the present dispensation carefully argued out. And here two things are emphasized for us. First, that the “righteousness of the law” is “fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit” (Romans 8:4). There is not, there cannot be, any giving up of what is righteous - of what is according to the character of God Himself. The Christian standard cannot be lower, at is in fact higher than the legal one, in the same proportion as the Christian position is higher than the Jewish, and as the power communicated in Christianity transcends any that was known in Judaism. The Christian position is in Christ before God.

The Christian standard is therefore to walk as Christ walked. The Christian power is that of the indwelling Spirit of Christ. As the greater includes the less, so the righteousness of the law is fulfilled in Christian righteousness. But, secondly, this does not mean that we are under the law. We are dead to it, that we might be married to Christ, says the apostle, that we might bring forth fruit unto God (Romans 7:4). It is not that the law is dead,* but we are; and thus it is carefully guarded from the least possible conflict with what the Lord has here said.
It is not the place here to discuss this doctrine, but the simple statement of it should be enough. It is not the possible meaning of a few texts but the whole doctrine of the apostle, fully argued out, that denies that the Christian is under the law; and to say that it is merely the ceremonial part that is in question; is simply impossible for any one who will read his argument with any care. Is it the ceremonial law that says, “Thou shalt not covet” (Romans 7:7)? Is “the good that I would I do not” (ver. 19) ceremonial? It is impossible to say this. The Lord, here in Matthew, is speaking to Jews, to those confessedly under the law, and in view of the coming Kingdom, which (because of their rejection of the King) has yet not come for them, and which, when it does come, will bring in a different condition of things from. Christianity, as indeed the sermon on the mount itself assures us. This we shall have to look at in a little while. (2) But now the Lord proceeds to develop the righteousness that He requires, in contrast with that of scribes and Pharisees, those zealots for the external. The second table of the law is here pressed, rather than the first: evidently because on this side man is most accessible, - his conscience is most easily roused. Men can invent all sorts of coverings to hide from themselves their state Godward; but if this be tested by their conduct toward men, made in His image, it is not so possible to conceal from oneself the truth. Corruption and violence were of old the characteristics of a world which had reached the limit of divine long-suffering (Genesis 6:11-13). The Lord takes therefore the sixth and seventh commandments of the law - the second and third of the second table - to illustrate the righteousness which He proclaims, expanding and spiritualizing what was said to them of old time, so as to make it a new moral revelation to those that hear Him. Moses, commandments become thus, as it were, His own, who is shown as One greater than Moses, - the Prophet of the new dispensation. The “judgment,” the “council” (or Sanhedrin), and the “hell (Gehenna) of fire” are three grades of penalty, as is evident; but in the Kingdom of heaven all under one authority. “Thou shalt not kill” stood as the sixth commandment of the law. God had long before declared that “whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed.” The executive law in Israel could go no further than this. It could not deal with the state of the heart but with the outward act only. But the law as expressed on the tables of stone applied not merely to the outward act, and their appending in the way they did the executive to the moral law, inferred that the two were equal in what they covered; as they were not. The state of the heart was thus left out of view in the estimate of accountability toward God, and the practical bearing of the law was nullified for the many. But now, the kingdom of heaven was drawing nigh, in which another estimate of things would be made and acted on. Anger in the heart, where causeless, and the railing charges which men so lightly bring against one another, would be all crimes against an authority which had at its command not mere physical penalties, limited by the temporal life, but the awful Gehenna of fire - hell itself. It is not meant that under this divine government no mercy would be shown: that is not the point, nor what the words express. But such things would be within the range of jurisdiction; and man would be made to realize that there a God who judgeth the hearts, and by whom actions are weighed. But this cuts deep: it is meant to do so, and to rouse the conscience of the hearers to the impossibility of any mere human righteousness in the presence of God. That of scribes and Pharisees would never do for Him who is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity, and who cannot look upon sin. Their whole method was a false one. They valued apparently God’s altar, loading it, Cain-like, with gifts defiled by the hands that offered them. The Lord warns them that they must be reconciled to their justly offended brethren; before presuming to bring such offerings: and while the application here is evidently to Israel, the principle as manifestly applies to every one of us today. A sinner coming as such to God is not at all in question: for he can only come as what he is, and has the explicit assurance that he will be received.

The Pharisees said truly of the Lord, though they meant it as a reproach, “This man receiveth sinners and eateth with them;” and the Lord answered, justifying His ways as the Physician of sin-sick souls. Abel, too, bringing his sacrifice to God, obtained witness that he was righteous, God testifying.” - not of his works nor of his character, but - “of his gifts” (Hebrews 11:4). How impossible otherwise to have any assurance at all! for as to how much could we never set ourselves right with brethren! Blessed be God, it was for our sins that Jesus died; and our sins are the best of titles to a Saviour of sinners. But while God would never turn away a sinner thus seeking Him, or delay-even for a moment the reception of such an one, this is not to hinder any possible restitution to those we may have injured, but the very contrary. For now we come under the rule before us, and as saints are to lift up holy hands; but for a saint this is absolutely necessary for communion. And how many suffer sadly in their souls because of an unjudged condition in this respect! For such the Lord’s words here have the gravest importance. Those to whom they were addressed, however, were Jews, in no wise taking the place of sinners, nor yet truly saints, but legalists: going on with the law, in which they boasted, and not realizing that Moses, in whom they trusted, was necessarily their greatest adversary (John 5:45). Judgment must be the end, if they did not in the meanwhile reconcile themselves to him by the offering of which already the law had spoken; and which the glorious speaker Himself was to provide. This He does not, however, go on to in this place. He is convicting them of a need without the consciousness of which all revelation of God’s way of grace would be impossible to be understood. The judgment reached, they would in no wise come out from it until they had paid the uttermost farthing. Hopeless then was their confidence in the law. But the Lord had not done with it for the purpose of conviction; and of clearing it from the mistakes and perversions of the scribes. He goes over, therefore, from the sixth to the seventh commandment, to show once more that out of the heart the positive transgression comes, and that what was in the heart to do was in fact done as to the guilt of it. Opportunity might be lacking, which altered nothing: the sin was in the heart. And He urges that if the right eye or hand cause men to stumble, it were better to cut them off and go on maimed through life, than to preserve these and go with a whole body into hell. Better sacrifice what might seem most necessary than give oneself up to the sure penalty of sin. Clearly no asceticism or self mutilation is intended by such an injunction; but men excuse on the plea of necessity what they find to be a constant provocative of sin. God’s law admits no pretext of the kind. (3) In connection with this commandment, the Lord takes up also the law of marriage, to refuse the laxity which even Moses had had to bear with, and still more the license of the rabbins. Moses on account of the hardness of their hearts had only been able to modify somewhat the existing custom of divorce. The “writing” which he had “commanded” was in the interests of social order, not of license, which the prevailing school of Hillel favored in the most shameless manner. The Lord, peremptorily and on His own authority, restricts the allowance of it to that one ground which plainly destroys the very idea of marriage; and declares the putting away of one’s wife for any other cause, to be making her commit adultery by another marriage. Also he who marries one so divorced is committing adultery. The Lord’s words cannot surely be less binding upon Christians of the present day; Christianity cannot be content with a lower morality than He enforces here, not as a national or ecclesiastical regulation; but just as morality. What was adultery then to Him must ever be adultery; and no human law can alter this in the slightest degree. Let the Lord’s people look to it, in a day when men are doing their own wills with continually more audacity. (4) He proceeds now to another matter, in which again what was tolerated under the law is now forbidden in the new morality which He is enforcing. “Thou shalt not forswear thyself, but shalt perform unto the Lord thine oaths,” plainly speaks of vowing. There had been great abuse of it, as Israel’s history makes manifest: men not hesitating to vow recklessly to God at the dictate of their pride and passion and self-will, to find themselves then entangled by what seemed now their duty. Careless profanity had come in at the heels of this, and God’s name been profaned by light appeals to it on every occasion; modified by conscience or the lack of it, by every kind of circumlocution and indirect expression of what they dared not openly give utterance to. The Lord sweeps into His prohibition all these evasions of the third commandment, putting them into the same category, with that which was once permitted. Man’s utter weakness, so fully and simply demonstrated by his inability even to change the color of a hair, is made (at least in part) the basis of the prohibition. God might swear, for He could accomplish, and knew, too, all the consequences of that to which He pledged Himself. Beautifully we find Him doing it when seeking to assure the soul of His creature, so ready to doubt the perfect faithfulness even of his God. “Wherefore God, willing to show unto the heirs of promise the immutability of His counsel, confirmed it by an oath; that by two immutable things” -His word being really as certain as His oath, but not so to man - “wherein it was impossible for God to lie, we might have strong consolation, who have fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hope set before us” (Hebrews 6:13-18). We then on our part should be far from what is so suited to His strength, so ill-suited to His feeble creatures. The legal covenant had, however, in its essential features the character of an oath; and the last chapter of Leviticus contemplates typically their failure under it, in contrast with the One who did not fail (see notes). The law, therefore, until man was fully proved by it, could not forbid the vow, while it is anachronism, and worse, that it should be imported into Christianity, and that we should hear of covenant-vows, the baptismal vow, etc., so contrary to the simplicity of Christ’s institutions for us, and to the grace which we know to be alone our strength. The vow is wholly passed, away, but to make room for Christ’s strength to rest upon us, our very infirmities to be gloried in on this account (2 Corinthians 12:9-10). God’s oath is sworn to us, that His abundant grace shall be our sufficiency. (5) The Lord now takes up the necessary principle of law, to contrast it with that non-resistance of evil which He enjoins upon His disciples. The righteousness of the law of course remains righteousness, but it does not require of any that they should exact for personal wrongs. There is no supposition of the abrogation of law or of its penalties. The government of the world is not in question, but the path of disciples in it. Where they are bound by the law, they are bound, and have no privileges. They are bound, too, to sustain it in its general working, as ordained of God for good.

Within these limits there is still abundant room for such practice as is here enjoined. We may still turn the left cheek to him that smites the right, or let the man that sues us have the cloak as well as the coat which he has fraudulently gained: for that is clearly within our rights. If the cause were that of another, we should have no right of this kind, nor to aid men generally in escape from justice or in slighting it. The Lord could never lay down a general rule that His people should allow lawlessness, or identify themselves with indifference to the rights of others. He speaks only of what is personal to oneself, - “smite thee,” “sue thee,” “compel thee:” and here the law itself would recognize one’s liberty. His disciples are not only to yield, but to show readiness, at least, to do more. They are not to be overcome of evil, but to overcome it with good. They are under a higher than any earthly government, which will take abundant care of them, and are freed from the need of advocating their own cause, or taking arms in their own defense. And they are partakers of such royal bounty that they are to be themselves bountiful. “Give to him that asketh of thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away.” All this needs wisdom in following out, that it may answer its end: - that God may be honored in it, and men be blessed. It must not be allowed to degenerate into a moral laxity which may counterfeit it, but will then be its opposite. True love alone will find its way here, but will certainly find it, - clear-sighted, as all true love is. To this, therefore, the Lord now goes on. (6) Men understand, at least, that they ought to love their neighbor: but their qualifications narrow even their idea of such a duty, while they have invented a duty of hate, which no law-giver perhaps would dare inscribe upon his tables, but to which there is given nevertheless a too ready and practical obedience. “Thou shalt love thy neighbor and hate thine enemy” is what he would justify to his conscience, as he approves it in his heart. But the law has no other word than “neighbor” here, as it has no other duty than to love him; and the Lord specifically puts even our enemies into this class. “But I say unto you, Love your enemies;” not even do them good merely, though that might seem much, but “love them.” Hard work, indeed, and impossible, save in the light of a greater love: for every day that the sun shines or the rain falls upon this evil world which has turned away from God, such love is demonstrated, leading men to repentance. God blesses those who curse Him, does good to those that hate Him, - sets us the sweetest and most wonderful example of infinite compassion; which He who was Speaker here has filled out to the full, by taking His place among those despitefully used and persecuted, and pouring out not only His heart, but His heart’s blood for His persecutors. Thus that which might seem impossible even with God, is in God become Man made actual. When the Lord spoke, this last word had not yet been uttered; but He was there who was to utter it, the Son of the Father, and opening to men the way into divine relationship, which He encourages His disciples to apprehend and realize in a way unknown till now. “That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven” implies acceptance of this wondrous place in such a way as to let it be manifest in the character displayed. And how responsible are they to whom such grace is given! To live in it is to acquire power to fill it out. (7) They must not, then; with this high place accept the moral code that would suit even those typical sinners, the publicans or tax-gatherers - those instruments of Roman greed and oppression. For these even were capable of returning love for love. For those whose Father is in heaven; nothing can be permitted as the standard but perfection - His own moral perfection. “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect” is supreme, flawless perfection. And nothing else would do as a standard. The moment we admit evil into this, the evil has become part of the standard, and God is made to go with what He hates. We must, however, distinguish between having perfection before us, - condemning ourselves for whatever is not that, and honestly pressing after it - and the self-flattery that can assert “we have attained it.” It is in fact because perfection is before us that we cannot say so. Will any one indeed venture to assert that he is morally perfect as God is? The highest pretension must surely shrink a little from making such a claim. Yet here is the pattern: we are to be “imitators of God as dear children” (Ephesians 5:1, Gk), aspiring after that which will always be beyond us, and which as being so, will always work in us self-abasement and humiliation, instead of self-complacency. This, then, is to be the aim: and while it is owned that we fall short, let us remember that the very falling short implies an aim: if we do not aim, we cannot fall short. If we aim at something lower, the standard is given up: we are then doing our own will, and not God’s. Let us remember also that there are two kinds of perfection; which it is important to distinguish from one another: perfection in degree, something that cannot be exceeded, and perfection as wholeness, entireness. We say of a wheel, it is perfect, because it has all its parts; while, as to its workmanship, it may be very imperfect. Now, the child of God may be feeble, and is; but as a “partaker of the divine nature” he should not be maimed. In God, love and light belong together: no one of these, apart from the other, could represent His nature. Love without righteousness could not be divine love. Righteousness without love, would not be divine righteousness.

So love, too, just to those who love us, may be, as the Lord tells us, only a publican’s love, but not God’s: it is not a feeble likeness, but a distortion. Where the new nature is, there the moral character of God is found, - infantile, perhaps, as to development, and yet in it the Father’s image shines. “Love,” then, “your enemies,” says the Lord, “that ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven.” This closes the second part of the sermon on the mount with the seal of divine perfection. In it the greater Prophet than Moses speaks, with a brighter glory in His face than Moses, face could show. 3. The third section occupies the first eighteen verses of the sixth chapter. It has upon it plainly the seal of a third section; as bringing us into the sanctuary, and teaching us to realize the Father’s presence and act as before Him. The first verse furnishes the principle, which is then illustrated, amplified and enforced, in three different applications. The text is: “Take heed that ye do not your righteousness before men, to be seen of them: otherwise ye have no reward of your Father who is in heaven.” The word is allowed to be “righteousness” here, as in the Revised Version, and not “alms,” as in the common one. In the following verses “alms” is right. This is then illustrated in three different applications, manward, Godward and selfward, - alms-giving, prayer and fasting. Each of these is, of course, but an illustration of the principle; but the illustration is in each case chosen in divine wisdom, and must therefore have special suitability. (1) Alms-giving is chosen to express what is “righteousness” toward men. So it is distinctly called, and indeed was by the Rabbins also. Thus we can see how the Lord, in reproving a righteousness done before men, naturally takes this up as a most showy form of it, and which indeed was lauded in the most extravagant terms by the senseless formalists of the day.* He speaks of men sounding a trumpet before them, in the synagogues and in the streets, when they gave them: language which is perhaps only symbolical of the way in which they blazoned abroad their acts of charity, but for which also they might assign the most plausible reasons. In fact, among all people, at all times, alms-giving is a charity which readily enough has been accepted at its fullest value. While it can be practised with so little personal sacrifice, it yet ministers to need so various and so palpable, - it has so much the form of benevolence, that it seems like cynicism to question if the spirit be there; it is in itself so right, and puts one so plainly in the company, at least, of those who do right: all this makes it of priceless value, therefore, to those who seek the praise of men. They can in no way, perhaps, so readily attain their object: but then, alas, “they have their reward:” it is all they will possess for ever.
But, on the other side, alms-giving, as here classed by the Lord Himself as a form of righteousness, is a significant witness to us that mercy is not something supererogatory, but the ministry of love is itself a debt - a due. A man who withholds from another what he can give him for his need is not even righteous; and this removes also the thought of merit from the mercy shown. Only in a world of habitual unrighteousness could the thought of the fulfilment of duty associate with it any thought of merit. “To him that knoweth to do good and doeth it not, to him it is sin,” says the apostle (James 4:17). And the Lord bids us on the other hand, “When ye shall have done all things that are commanded you, say, We are unprofitable servants: we have done” - not we have not done - “that which was our duty to do” (Luke 17:10). And with the comparative righteousness which is all that is ours at best, - a righteousness that still leaves us inners, - how impossible should be the claim of merit! But to love, with all that this implies, is mere commanded duty; yea, to love one’s neighbor as oneself is the injunction of the law.

While the Christian standard rises higher still in its law of self-sacrifice, and all the marvelous enforcement of this in the example of Him who has given us life through His death. For those who have known this, there is no possible margin of devotedness outside of that duty which His love has endeared. Alms-giving shrinks in this way into a small thing indeed; while this diminution of it cannot make it less imperative. All this, then; that our Lord addresses to a Jewish audience, our Christianity only emphasizes for us in every particular. We are of all men - to all men - the witnesses of grace. Debtors to it, absolutely, ourselves, we are debtors to show it to others. And as to the secrecy of alms-giving, alas, how have Christians forgotten such words in their displayed charities, justifying the display as letting their light shine! The contrast is too manifest here to need enlargement. (2) The second illustration of the need of being before God is furnished by what is itself a duty Godward. Prayer is the expression of creature-need and dependence. It is utterly inconsistent with any thought of pride and self-satisfaction. Yet, alas, we can unite these incompatible things together: think of the utter and awful contradiction in terms, of praying to God, in order to be seen of men! “As the hypocrites do,” says the Lord; and yet, is it not a hypocrisy which creeps often into public prayers, where those who pray cannot, after all, be so characterised? Are not those who lead the prayers of others especially liable to act, in some measure, in this way? the consciousness of being before others influencing them often in the matter and style of their petitions! How much shorter, how much simpler, how different in various ways, might many of our prayers be, if we were alone before God, instead of in the prayer-meeting! What records would not our chambers - our secret hours - afford, of our true state in respect of conscious dependence on and seeking after God, if we were perfectly faithful to ourselves in these respects! In secret prayer it is that our souls above all lay hold of God, and faith roots itself in His omnipotence. That prayer with us is to be characteristically in secret is here quite unmistakable. And this will of itself very much exclude the vain repetitions against which our Lord warns His hearers, and which Christianity has by no means banished from our midst. If there be little need to explain or apply, the warning still needs serious attention on the part of Christians. Our Lord follows this with that divine model for prayer, which for fullness combined with perfect directness and simplicity, so manifestly fulfils the conditions indicated. More than this, the order and proportion of the petitions are (with all else) perfect, and claim our earnest attention. They betoken a condition of heart which, where it is found, must ensure answer, - the state of one over whom God’s will is supreme; for whom He is first and last, beginning and end. To realize such a condition would make us realize the meaning of those words of the Lord, “Ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done to you.” Clearness of apprehension would go with it, and confidence of success: “the effectual fervent prayer of the righteous man availeth much” (James 5:16). A perfect model of prayer this is and must be: whether designed for a form, and especially whether intended for Christians, is another matter. The differences in Luke (11: 2-4), now recognized in the Revised Version; would of course be the simplest argument against the first. Apart from this, the gift of the Spirit to Christians, for those who realize what is the characteristic feature of the present dispensation (John 16:7; Romans 8:26-27), and who is distinctly named as the Intercessor within us according to God, would still more hinder such from interpreting it as a form to be used by Christians now. That it is not in the Lord’s Name is evident upon the face of it, and confirmed (if it need confirmation) by His words to His disciples afterward: “Hitherto have ye asked nothing in My Name” (John 16:24); and this is a difference which cannot be remedied by supplying an omission where there is none, and making that really imperfect which is perfect. This very perfection, if we consider the state of the disciples at the time it was given them, would suggest once more its not being intended for Christians in the Christian state. One is more concerned, however, to point out the actual perfection of the prayer, than to dwell upon such distinctions, - even though they have to do with differences vital to Christianity; but here is not the place for their examination. Let us consider now briefly the petitions in it, and what they imply. The whole prayer is an address to God as Father: “Our Father who art in heaven.” What underlies this title given to God is in fact a relationship never before made known in its true character, between Him and the true disciples of this blessed Teacher. “I have declared unto them Thy Name,” He says elsewhere, “and will declare it, that the love wherewith Thou hast loved Me may be in them, and I in them” (John 17:26). This name of “Father” is something wholly different from those Old Testament titles, which have declared as the “Almighty” His power, or as “the Most High” His supremacy, or as “Jehovah” His enduring immutability. “Father” declares what His heart is toward us, while it gives us title to enjoy the love implied. The character of the tie is such as gives claim and confidence, - a claim He cannot deny. How great an encouragement to the prayer of faith! No doubt, there had been long before anticipations of what is here conveyed. At the very birth of the nation God had announced, “Israel is my son; even my first-born” (Exodus 4:22). And this, which had been repeated in the law, and made the foundation of preceptive argument - “Ye are the children of Jehovah your God” (Deuteronomy 14:1), - might seem in itself to justify Israelites such as were these disciples who had gathered round the Lord, in taking the place He gives them here. But in fact this, in the national ruin that had intervened, had passed away. Israel was now Lo-ammi, “not my people,” though with a promise for the future, of a restoration not yet fulfilled, whereby they should be called “the sons of the living God” (Hosea 1:9-10). They could not comfort themselves with assurances thus forbidden to them, nor with a legal covenant to which God’s faithfulness on His part could but make them partakers of a curse, rather than a blessing. God is, however, the God of grace and of resurrection. He does not, indeed, patch an old garment with new cloth. He does not even merely restore what has failed and gone. But He can replace it with that which is better; and so much better, that the old and removed blessing shall be but the shadow of that which replaces it. Both together thus witness, if on the one hand to the failure of man, on the other to the changeless goodness and grace in God. The old relationship to the Unchangeable had after all changed. The “children of Jehovah” were now as a nation outcast from Him. That tie, stable as it might look, had not the elements of endurance in it. As we look back upon it from the standpoint of the new revelation, it is simple to understand that Israel’s sonship was not the result of new birth, as now it is for those in Christian relation. An Israelite was not necessarily, because that, a true believer in that God who had drawn nigh to him. A Jew was, as the apostle says (Galatians 2:15), a “Jew by nature;” but that nature was not a new nature.

The child of law, as he afterwards shows by the type of Hagar and Ishmael (Galatians 4:22-31), was but “born after the flesh,” and showed the nature of the “wild man,” as Ishmael did (Genesis 16:12). Thus there was no real nearness to God or fellowship with Him necessarily implied in sonship of this kind. Adoption there was in it, but not regeneration. Consequently it never secured from eternal judgment, nor even from day to day, except as obedience lasted or God’s pity spared. But the Father of whom Christ now spoke to His own; was not the Father of the nation in such a manner. Only the pure in heart should see Him; only the peacemakers be called His children. Even before this, though we do not find it in this Gospel, He had taught Nicodemus the absolute necessity of new birth, and that, while that which was born of the flesh was only “flesh,” that which was born of the Spirit - a divine Person - was “spirit,” - divine in nature (John 3:6). Here, it is plain, is the foundation of relationship to God, a real new yet divine life communicated, which is therefore “eternal life.” For eternal life is not that simply which, when it begins, abides and has no ending. It is that which, though in us it begins, in itself never did. Receiving this, we are not merely adopted sons; we are that, truly; but none the less are we born into the family of God, and partakers of the divine nature (2 Peter 1:4), children of God indeed. How far all this had been entered into by the disciples as yet, is another question. That it was what was in the Lord’s mind we know, and what He was leading them into, - what therefore underlies the teaching of the prayer. This Father in heaven; known for what He is, becomes thus rooted in the affections, supreme in the heart that has learned the cry of children. Of this, at least, the prayer is the expression. The first petition is one that shows how jealous for this Name revealed to it is the soul that has truly entered into the revelation: “Father, hallowed be Thy Name.” May no thought come in to profane this wondrous intimacy now existing; may grace not be abused to license; may all thy people worship with unshod feet in this place of nearness. Such surely will be the first cry of the heart that has felt - and in proportion as it has felt - the ecstatic joy of God so made known to us. But the world knows not this joy, and the abounding evil in it is but the shadow upon hearts and lives that have turned away from the light of God. Hence the next cry necessarily is, “Thy Kingdom come! Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven!” This, if true prayer, must be the outcome of a heart that is itself obedient. And what an absorbing desire this should be to us! The misery and moral ruin and dishonor to God on every side may well force from us such a prayer as this. Where is there another like it for the magnitude of that which is embodied in it? God, as it were, everywhere set in His place, every thing finding its relation to Him as the planets to their central sun; here is universal blessedness beyond which we can conceive no greater: all peace, happiness, goodness, are implied in it. And this is the practical power and glory of faith that it sets us where, from a full heart, such a prayer can well; that it enthrones God of its own free choice upon that absolute throne which alone His throne can be; that it realizes His will to be only the expression of His glorious nature, - in which every divine attribute blends and harmonizes. For this Kingdom of the Father we must look beyond all dispensations to the sabbath of God’s own rest. To confound it with the millennium would be an entire mistake, and necessarily lower its character terribly. The millennium, with all its blessedness, is but a step toward this glorious consummation. It is earth’s “regeneration” (Matthew 19:28); but after which, as in our own case, (not in it,) must come the eradication of evil and the change to eternal conditions. The millennium ends in an outbreak of evil, the most defiant that the world has ever seen (Revelation 20:7-10). The judgment that follows reaches to the very frame-work of material things, and the earth and its heavens - the “firmament” of the second day (Genesis 1:1-31) - pass away in fire, to make way for that new heaven and earth in which righteousness shall dwell. Then; with all evil subdued and all things made anew, the Son of God, having brought about the very condition for which He teaches His disciples here to pray, will give up His separate human Kingdom to the Father (1 Corinthians 15:24-28) and the Kingdom of the Father here contemplated will at last have come. Important it is not to confound the temporary with the eternal, the divine outcome with any intermediate step. Such confusion is no less mischievous for the heart than for the mind; for only where God rests should our hearts find rest. But for us it is true that the Kingdom of the Father will have come even before the millennium, when; caught up at the coming of the Lord to be ever with Him, the Father’s house receives us into its “many mansions.” And thus it is that in the parables of the Kingdom, (in the Gospel we are now considering,) when the present form of it is closed by the appearing of the King, it is said, “Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun, in the Kingdom of their Father” (Matthew 13:43). To this even then we shall have come. With this petition for the coming of the Father’s Kingdom, the first half of the prayer ends: the petitions following are of a different character. But what happiness would it not be for us, if the glory of God were thus, and as taught of the Spirit, the first desire of the heart, the first thing to utter itself, therefore, in our prayers! But the remainder of the petitions are, as just said, personal; and here all is characterized by the most perfect moderation. A sense of dependence, of failure, and of frailty, manifests itself conspicuously in them; while the needs felt are realized as those of others of the same family of faith, who are associated, therefore, in all the petitions. The prayer is, indeed, a family prayer throughout; the expression of a common interest from which no one withdraws himself to walk alone. How well we should be cared for, indeed, if all were thus remembered by all, and the family tie united all the family. It is not straining the request for daily bread, to make it comprehend also a spiritual application. With the Lord it would be simply impossible, while remembering the need of the body, to forget the immensely greater need of the soul. In both ways also the supply must be continual. The manna must be fresh every morning, and freshly gathered as the morning comes: hoarded, it breeds worms and stinks. There is no release from a dependence, which makes us sensible only of the love which constantly ministers, and keeps us near to the gracious Hand of Omnipotence. It is only treating us as children who are at home with the Father, not to provide for independence or absence from Him. We are not to renew the prodigal’s experience, after being brought back from the far-off country; and it is not stint but love that deals thus with us. The petition following needs more care to apprehend it, and Christians have lost much here by not realizing the fuller grace that has now come in for us, so far beyond what these disciples, though so near the Lord, could know. The great sacrifice was not yet offered, and the precious fruits of it could not yet be understood. The place of acceptance in the Beloved - identification with Him who has represented us before God in His atoning death, and now represents us in unending life - was yet among the things which could not be communicated. But with this, as quickened together with Him, is necessarily joined the forgiveness of all trespasses (Colossians 2:13). “By one offering He hath perfected for ever those that are sanctified” (Hebrews 10:14). Now it is certainly true that with this the prayer before us is in no wise in contradiction. The Lord could not mean to teach His disciples here that sins were only remitted from time to time, in answer to prayer about them. Yet those ignorant of the settled acceptance which the gospel teaches have used it, and continually use it, in this very way. On the other hand some would press, on account of such implication, the impossibility of the intelligent use, by the Christian; of such a petition. Both views are wrong, the prayer itself being perfectly in keeping - how could it be otherwise? - with the fullest revelation of divine grace. The simple fact that it is to the Father removes every difficulty.

It is thus a Father’s forgiveness that is besought by those who distinctly take the place of relationship. As between God and His creatures, the precious blood of Christ perfects forever those who, in faith, have taken shelter under it; but that only brings such under a Father’s government who," without respect of persons, judgeth according to every man’s work" (1 Peter 1:17), and who cannot but take notice of the conduct of His children, just because they are that, and of His love to them as that. Loss of communion; with chastening for restoration, are consequences of these trespasses; and the conditions implied in the petition itself, and emphasized by the Lord just afterward, show the holy character of this government. We must forgive, if we are to be forgiven. With an unforgiving spirit toward others we cannot enjoy communion with Him whose nature is love, and who must have His image reproduced in us. This seen, there is no contradiction to the grace of Christianity. And yet it is true that in it we have nowhere any exhortation to prayer to the Father for what is here besought. It is Christ Himself rather who is declared to be our “Advocate with the Father” (1 John 2:1); and the same blessed Person offers Himself for the cleansing of our feet from the defilements of the way, that we may have part with Him (John 13:8). But all this awaited expression necessarily till the crowning work was done; and as to the last the Lord’s own words are: “What I do thou knowest not now, but thou shalt know afterwards” (ver. 7). That we are not exhorted to prayer of this kind may well be due to the danger of such confusion of different things as we know to have been made here; while it could not be urged that such prayer intelligently used is in any wise inconsistent with Christian position. Again; the sense of frailty comes out in the closing petition not to be led into temptation; but delivered from the evil. It is not in opposition to this that James bids us “count it all joy when we fall into divers temptations” (James 1:2). The first is the expression of that self-distrust which is the fruit of self-knowledge. Who that knows himself but must realize this? and fear, therefore, what the hour of trial may manifest as to his weakness? But then this is just the spirit in which, if it be the will of God to bring him into circumstances of this kind, he will cleave to the only Source of strength and find it. In the trial he needs the consoling assurance of God’s hand over it and working through it; and if he has come into it, not in self-confidence but in the path with Him, every element of it will work for good to him: it may well be a time of truest joy. Patience will be that which will work experience, and experience hope; and, patience having its perfect work, he will be “perfect and entire, needing nothing.” It would seem to be rightly here “deliver us from the evil,” rather than “from the evil one,” though either rendering is possible; but the larger view includes the narrower, and is therefore more suitable. The evil one is a most real and powerful enemy; but the evil in ourselves is still more to be dreaded, as only through this can he gain advantage over us. In this most concise prayer, the fullest meaning is the best. It is characteristic of the law that, with all its forms, no form of prayer was ever prescribed to the people. When the disciples ask for one, as we are told they did (Luke 11:1), they refer to John the Baptist as having taught his disciples, and not to Moses. The people of God, as conscious of their need, had always expressed it, and of course the Old Testament is full of examples of this: but all the more striking is it that the law did not prescribe anything of the kind. It was God’s schoolmaster to teach man his weakness, but then it did this by claiming from him strength. (3) In fasting the Lord touches that inward mortification which expresses the realization of what man is in the sight of God: in one’s own sight, therefore, in proportion as we have attained to oneness of mind with Him. In the mount with God neither Moses nor Elijah ate or drank. “If then ye be risen with Christ,” says the apostle, - “mortify your members which are upon the earth” (Colossians 3:1; Colossians 3:5). Fasting is treating them as if they did not exist, - not ministering to self: an unnatural condition which implies fallen nature; you can do nothing with it, but leave it out. The apostle speaks of this as the true characteristic of the children of God (Romans 8:13-14): “if ye through the Spirit mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live; for as many as are led of the Spirit of God they are sons of God.” It is as self-realization before God, that fasting comes here in its numerical place. In fact, in Israel, with the Pharisaic externalism which characterized the nation; fasting was abused to its very opposite. It was made to accredit self, instead of discrediting it. It brought it into prominence, instead of setting it aside. And it has always been a feature, not merely in asceticism (which the Lord is plainly not rebuking here), but in formalism also. He extinguishes this by making it a thing to be before the Father and not before men: before the eyes of Him who sees in secret. As to the practice of it, He does not really decide anything; and as to its place in Christianity, we must inquire about that elsewhere. That the true life is one that is to be lived before God is the main point upon which He is here insisting.