After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father who art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, as in heaven, so on earth. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors. And bring us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. (Matt. 6:9-13.)

      Already it was pointed out that this is not the "Lord's prayer" in the sense that the Lord Himself ever did so pray or could have. He never prayed on a common level with His disciples, saying "Our Father" along with them. There is evermore a distinction between the Son of God, the Only Begotten of the Father, and those who have become sons of God through Him. It is not "Our Father," but "My Father" and "Your Father." "Go unto my brethren and say to them, I ascend unto my Father and your Father, and my God and your God." (John 20:17) For the same reason He is never seen praying together with His disciples. He prayed sometimes in their hearing, and again by Himself apart, but never with them. The word His disciples were taught to use for asking is aiteo; but when He prayed, He (and He alone) used the word erotao, which denotes petition of a different kind. Nevertheless, He has not separated Himself from us, but we are "in Him," and it is through Him that we draw nigh to God.

      But, some have thought that the Lord's Prayer is unsuitable for Christians today because it contains the petition "Thy kingdom come." The Kingdom (they say) has come already, and it is no longer in order to pray for its coming. That a great dispensational change has come since the Lord Jesus taught this prayer to His disciples is evident. The Lord Jesus went to the cross, and rose from the dead, ascended to heaven, and sat down on the right hand of God, having received all power and authority; and the Holy Spirit was sent down from Him on the day of Pentecost. The full gospel--the gospel of the grace of God--began to be preached. Jesus was openly proclaimed as Lord and Christ, and inquiring sinners were bidden to repent and be baptized in His name, for the remission of their sins, and they should receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. When the Lord Jesus taught His disciples the Lord's Prayer, none of this had come to pass. In those days indeed the promised Kingdom had not as yet come. The law was still in force. The Old Covenant had not yet come to an end, and the New Covenant had not yet gone into effect. The Church had not yet come into existence. The Holy Spirit had not yet been given (John 7:39). Christ's disciples today do stand on a higher plane of [8] redemption, and in a nearer relationship to God than those did who followed Jesus during His personal ministry on earth. Is the form of the prayer which He gave them still suitable and proper? Should we in this new day pray after the manner He taught His disciples to pray before Pentecost? The question deserves consideration.

      Let us weigh the objection fairly. Though fully accepting the truth that the Lord Jesus is King now, and that His redeemed ones have been delivered "out of the power of darkness, and translated into the kingdom of the Son of His love" (Col. 1:13)--we need also to ask whether the Kingdom is in any sense yet future. True, Christ's people are in the Kingdom now. Their citizenship is in heaven. (Phil. 3:20) Here below they share their Lord's rejection, they are bearing His reproach. Will it ever be otherwise? Certainly not before Christ comes, for until then there is only "the way of the cross" for those who follow Him, not the hour of reign and triumph. But will the time ever come when the "kingdom of the world" shall have "become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ," as announced in Rev. 11:15; or when "the kingdom and the dominion and the greatness of the kingdoms under the whole heaven shall be given to the people of the saints of the Most High"? (Dan. 7:27) Also, had not the Lord Jesus foretold that when the great signs of the end-time are seen men may know that the Kingdom of God is nigh? (Luke 21:31) Certainly, then, in that aspect, the Kingdom is yet future. And if the Kingdom is yet to have a future manifestation in the earth, is it not still in order to pray "Thy kingdom come"?

      Others have objected to the Lord's Prayer because of the petition, "Forgive us our debts even as we also have forgiven our debtors." With this goes the Lord's appended comment, "For if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses." Now some have thought that this was law-teaching, for under grace, forgiveness is freely given to us and not conditioned on our forgiving others. The doctrine of the gospel expressed by Paul (they say) is, "Even as the Lord forgave you, so also do ye."

      Now it is quite true that this prayer was given while the covenant of the Law was yet in force. But we cannot fail to see that the Lord Jesus in His teaching also anticipated the day of grace, and that most especially when He spoke of His disciples' relationship to God. Over and over He calls God their Father--an unheard of thing, for in the Old Testament such a title is used only in a figurative sense or collectively, of the nation of Israel as a whole. But the Lord Jesus taught His disciples to say, "Our Father," and to call Him so personally and individually. He regarded them as already God's children, born "not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God." (John 1:12,13) Moreover [9] they were already a forgiven people; and their forgiveness was (as forgiveness must ever be) of God's free grace-no longer dependent upon any law observance, but as received through their faith in Him. "Already ye are clean," He says to them, "because of the word which I have spoken to you." (John 15:3) They were certainly not to merit their forgiveness by first forgiving their debtors. To them the words, "Even as I forgave you, so also do ye" applied, even as to us. But, if men who have been so freely and gladly forgiven refuse to forgive those who had trespassed against them--what shall we say then? The answer the Lord gives is plain: "If ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses." Make of that what we will--only be warned lest on any pretext of "grace" you might hope to be forgiven while refusing to forgive those who have sinned against you.

      It is not, however, that God only forgives on condition that we forgive; but our forgiving is really the natural and necessary fruit of God's forgiveness of us. A person who has believed and received the gracious forgiveness of God, will not, cannot, hold an unforgiving attitude toward those who have trespassed against him. If he does, be gives proof that either he has never in his heart appropriated the grace of God, or that he is a backslider who has "forgotten the cleansing from his old sins." And until he gets out of that condition and comes back to God, he cannot count on forgiveness for himself. "Thou wicked servant--I forgave thee all that debt because thou besoughtest me: shouldest not thou also have had mercy on thy fellowservant even as I had mercy on thee?" So spoke the Lord in the parable of the Unmerciful Servant. (Matt. 18:32, 33) Really, it is good for your soul to pray the prayer just as the Lord Jesus taught it: "Forgive us our debts even as we also have forgiven our debtors."

      Looking over this wonderful prayer again we see that it is divided into two main parts--the former of which contains three petitions, the latter four--and that the first part is concerned with God's interests, whereas the petitions of the second part concern our affairs. So it is God first! Surely that is significant. It is not that every prayer must necessarily begin so (though it would not be amiss if it did), but that in all true prayer God comes in for first and foremost consideration.

      If we examine the great prayers of the Old Testament, we shall see how God and God's glory and honor are always put in the foreground. It was so in Moses' intercession for Israel (Exod. 32); in Solomon's great prayer at the dedication of the temple (1 Kings 8) in Daniel's prayer on behalf of his people (Dan. 9); the great prayer of confession and penitence in Nehemiah 9, and in all the [10] prayer-psalms. Those men of old pleaded the honor and glory of God's name, and put His rights and claims above all else, as here the Lord Jesus does in the Lord's Prayer. First of all, it is "Our Father who art in heaven . . . thy name . . . thy kingdom . . . thy will." The things of God come first, then our personal needs and desires. But if we so pray from the heart we do not thereby suffer any loss, for in the honor of His name, the glory of His kingdom, the fulfilment of His good will, all our highest hope and happiness are bound up.

      The first of the first three petitions is "Hallowed be thy name." It is a prayer that God's Name be reverenced and held holy among men. It is not merely that the Name of God should not be used as a by-word as in common swearing and profanity, nor that it should not be used to establish a falsehood, as in perjury, which is the thing forbidden in the third commandment (Exod. 20:7). It means far more than that. God's Name is His character; and, secondarily stands for His reputation among men. That He should be truly known, that He should not be misrepresented, that His Name should not be despised nor blasphemed, but honored and exalted--that is the real point of this first petition. We know how jealous God has ever been for His Name, and how many things He does and has done "for His Name's sake." Upon the knowledge of and regard for God's Name hangs the hope and salvation of mankind; and all the work of our Lord Jesus is summed up in this, that He manifested God's Name to His own who were in the world, so that through them it might be made known to all men. (John 17:3, 6, 26)

      The request of the second petition, "Thy kingdom come" is in its broadest and final sense a prayer that God may be given His place as the supreme and only ruler. This naturally leads to the third petition (for the fulfilment of the third will follow as the consequence of the first and second)--"Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven." How is God's will done in heaven? Perfectly and absolutely, you say. But we must not get the idea that this is under compulsion, as though it were a penitentiary, where the inmates move by order and command in lock-step, like so many slaves and prisoners. There is no place in the universe where intelligent beings are so happy and so free as in heaven, yet no place where obedience is so perfect. There they obey God joyfully, wholly and wholeheartedly from love and not from fear. Will the day ever come when it will be so on earth? If not, why would the Lord Jesus have taught us so to pray?

      Now from the lofty interests of God, in which really the happiness of all mankind is wrapped up, the great Teacher turns to our own individual and personal concerns. And, strange to say, He begins with the bread-and-butter question. We might have expected that He would have put our spiritual need, which is indubitably the greater and more important, first. But He knows [11] the pressure of our problems and the anxiety that so easily besets us; and He would have us know that He is not indifferent to our earthly and bodily needs. Here also the assurance that God can and will see to those needs is implied in the very prayer which the Lord gave us. He did not mean that we should ask in vain, but, as further on in the Sermon on the Mount He taught His disciples, He would have us to cast all our cares upon the Father in heaven: "Give us this day our daily bread"--not anxious about the future days, for sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof; yet, also, as Luke gives it, including all the future days: "give us day by day our daily bread."

      The supreme spiritual need, the need of forgiveness, is brought forward in the next petition: "forgive us our debts." And we are to ask Him to forgive us as we have forgiven our debtors! So important is this point that, at the close of this prayer, the Lord again repeats it and insists upon it!

      Now another petition--really two petitions that bang together--"bring us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil." This puzzles the mind of some. Would God lead anyone into temptation? Is it not written elsewhere that "God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no man"? (Jas. 1:13) True. But there is a difference between tempting a man and leading him into a place or a situation where he will be tested and tried. God does not do the one, but He does do the other that He may prove us, and test the genuineness of our faith and loyalty. He Himself does not tempt any man with evil, but He suffers us to be tempted--all of us, each one of us, at some time--but never (as Paul tells us) above that which we are able to bear, nor without giving us a way of escape. Yet it is unspeakably better to be kept from temptation. "Watch and pray that ye enter not into temptation: the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak." How many a fateful temptation has been avoided by timely prayer! How many a battle has been fought and won in the secrecy of the closet, before ever it came to the field of conflict! So pray to be kept from temptation, for we dare not face it needlessly.

      And with that goes the further request: if we do have to face it, may we be kept from sin! When by God's will we have to fight the warfare without and within, may we know the victory that comes by faith. "Each victory will help us some other to will."^a

      We note a startling change here in the wording of the Revised Version, not merely that we be kept from evil, but from the Evil One. The word itself, as it stands in the original, does not decide whether evil in the abstract is meant, or a person, the Evil One, that great and terrible spirit of evil, who is called the devil and Satan. [12] The evidence favors the latter. For Our wrestling is not against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world-rulers of this darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness--the armies of evil spirits--in the heavenly places (Eph. 6:10-12)--and against him who has command of them, who is spoken of as "the prince of the powers of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the sons of disobedience" (Eph. 2:2). He is the real antagonist. And we are no match for him. Whether he comes as the serpent to deceive with "the wiles of the devil," or with threat and brute force, as the roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour or--most awful of all--in the guise of an angel of light to mislead and entice us with charming lies, he is too much for us, we can only flee for refuge and defense to Him who has conquered Satan on our behalf. In no other way can we prevail. We do well to sing those old words:

      It is a serious matter, very grave, and fraught with heavy consequences. Foolish men may, but the Bible does never, speak lightly of Satan, but always in solemn tone. But those who seek refuge in Christ are more than conquerors through Him who loved them.

      Now we look back over the Lord's Prayer, again we know that we have not exhausted it. It is just beginning to open up, and to unfold its significance and manifold application. Truly a child can lisp it, but the wisest and greatest of God's saints have not fathomed its profound depths. It is indeed (as someone has called it) "The prayer that teaches to pray." How often, when the heart is dead and dry, and we cannot find how to pray, have we been led through this sweet and simple prayer into true, earnest petition, into thanksgiving and praise, into intercessions and supplications, into lowly adoration and worship! [13]

[CTOP 8-13]