“Our Father which art in heaven.”
The spirit of a prayer depends in great measure on whether the worshipper’s thought of God is true or false, adequate or inadequate. The Christian invokes God under the completest of all His titles, the title of Father, for “God hath sentforth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts crying, Abba, Father.”[69] And we call Him the Father which is in heaven, not because He is far off us—for in the Kingdom of Christ heavenly and earthly things are mingled and we“are come unto the heavenly Jerusalem,”[70]—but because He is raised far above all the pollution and wilfulness and ignorance of man “as the heaven is higher than the earth.” So we invoke our Father, infinitely above us yet unspeakably near. And the first prayer we offer is:
“Hallowed be thy name.”
What is the name of God? That is very well worth our consideration. The name of God in the Bible means that whereby He discloses or reveals Himself. You may indeed almost say that the name of God means God Himself as He is manifested. God has shown Himself to man; He has spelt out His great name, letter by letter, syllable by syllable, before the eyes of men or into their hearts, in nature, in conscience, by the voice of His prophets and in Jesus Christ His Son. Thus to hallow or sanctifyHis name is to set store by His revelation of Himself, as Father, Son and Spirit, one God. To pray that His name may be hallowed, is to pray that His revelation of Himself may be accepted of men, and His religion professed openly and secretly: that He may be acknowledged in conduct and worship, in Church and in State, on Sunday and on week-day.
“Thy kingdom come.”
The kingdom of God meant to the Jews, of course, the kingdom of the Messiah: that is to say that coming age, when heaven and earth shall be fused in one, when God shall be manifested in His glory, when all things shall be seen in their true light, and the reign of Christ in truth and meekness and righteousness shall be not only real but also manifest and indisputable. This is “the end of the world,” the “far off, divine event,” which is still future. At times, indeed, the Church as it already exists among us is called “the kingdom of God,” but at other times (as is implied here) the Church is regarded as a divine institution, representing indeed the kingdom here and now in the world, butalso preparing for its arrival in the future. To pray for the coming of the kingdom is therefore to pray for the spread and progress of the Church, and also for the diffusion in every way of all truth and meekness and righteousness and of all that can find its place in the city of God. It is to pray for the overthrow of every form of “lawlessness”—lawless lusts and appetites, lawless ambition and insolence and denial, godless worldliness and lies and vanities, cruelty, oppression and malice in every shape. For all these are forms of rebellion; and we know that they represent only a temporary usurpation. We are looking forward to, and would fain hasten, the coming of the King.
“Thy will be done, as in heaven, so on earth.”
This is a prayer against all wilfulness and also against all sloth: a prayer for the vigorous co-operation of all rational creatures in furthering the divine order of the world. And we should notice that the phrase “as in heaven, so on earth” refers probably to all the three preceding clauses: Hallowed be Thy Name, as in heaven, so on earth; Thy kingdomcome, as in heaven, so on earth; Thy will be done, as in heaven, so on earth. The Church of Rome, in the Catechism put forth by the Council of Trent, specially exhorts her clergy to call the attention of the faithful to this connexion of the clauses of the Lord’s Prayer.
“Give us this day our daily bread.”
Strangely enough, one of the most difficult words in the whole New Testament is this word translated “daily” in the Lord’s Prayer. Nobody can be quite certain what it means,but probably it means “the bread for the coming day.”[71] Give us to-day the bread for the coming day, is therefore a prayer that the bodily needs of the immediate future may be supplied for all members of the Christian family. It is a prayer which only those can truly pray who are contented with such satisfaction of their bodily needs as enables them to do the work of God, who will ask nothing for themselves that they do not askfor others, and who are content to wait from day to day upon the hand of God.