His love and power can bless,
To praying souls He always grants
More than they can express.
II
“Our Father”
“After this manner therefore pray ye, Our Father which art in heaven.”—Matt. vi. 9.
“When ye pray, say Father.”—Luke xi. 2.
I said last Sunday morning that in the prayer He taught, Jesus was grandly, supremely original. That originality appears in most striking fashion in the invocation with which the prayer opens. The prayer Jesus taught His disciples to pray begins with a new name for God, “When ye pray, say Father.”
In the Old Testament God is very seldom spoken of as Father, and when the name is used, it is always with reference to the nation of Israel and not to individuals—that is to say, the name “Father,” the few times it occurs in the Old Testament, stands for a national not a personal relationship. The Old Testament has many names for God—names that tell of His might, His power, His majesty. It speaks of Him as Jehovah; it speaks of Him as the great “I am”; it speaks of Him as “King” and “Lord”—but from Genesis to Malachi you will not find a single instance of an individual speaking of God as “Father.” Moses did not dare to use this name. David, the sweet singer of Israel, missed this note of tenderness from his songs. Isaiah, in the sweep of his passion and genius, never took this name into his lips. It was left to Jesus Christ to tell us God’s best and truest name. It was left to Him to say, “When ye pray, say Father.”
I suppose no one can pass from the Old Testament to the New without being conscious of a change of atmosphere. Between the books there is a difference of theological climate. It is the difference between starlight, clear but cold, and the warm and gracious sunlight; it is the difference between law and gospel; it is the difference between debt and grace; it is the difference between fear and love; it is the difference between servitude and sonship; it is the difference between Sinai and Calvary. And the whole of this vast difference is made by this word “Father.” That name is written large upon every page of the New Testament, and that new name has brought with it a new joy and gladness into the world.
This name “Father” is a new name. It is a name no one but Jesus could have revealed to men. We could never have known God the Father save through the Incarnate Son. Men only saw God from the outside. They only judged Him by His works. They were impressed by His greatness, His wisdom, His power, as revealed to them in the wonders of earth and sea and sky, and they named Him accordingly. But men felt that, after all, wisdom and power and might were only parts of God’s ways; they felt there was a secret about God which they had not been told, and they had to confess that, strain as they would, there were clouds and thick darkness about Him through which no eye could pierce. But here we get a view of God, if I may so speak, from the inside. Here you have God’s heart laid bare. Here you have light thrown upon the inmost nature of God. The secret hidden from prophet and psalmist and seer is here declared to the world in this name “Father.” Who could have given God this name? Who could have discovered this grand secret? Who could have thrown this light upon the Divine nature? Only Jesus—only the Son who from eternity had lain in the bosom of the Father. The knowledge of God, the Father, is only to be gained through the Incarnate Son. “No man knoweth the Father save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son shall reveal Him.” And it seems to me that one of the chief ends for which Christ came to earth was just to tell us this new name, and so to bring sunshine into our souls and hope into our lives. In Bethlehem, in Nazareth, in Galilee, in the garden of Gethsemane, on the Cross of Calvary, Jesus was spelling out for us this new name, revealing to us that God is more than wisdom, more than power, more than justice; that God above and beyond everything else is Love. So the very opening phrase of this “Pearl of Prayers” brings us the best news ever whispered into the ears of men. It tells us that love is at the heart of all things. It tells us that God is our Father and we are His children.