01.04. Our Father which art Heaven, Hallowed
Chapter IV. Our Father which art in Heaven OUR Lord, as was said above, did not give us mere abstract principles of prayer, but something much more intelligible an example or pattern of prayer. And this, which we call The Lord’s Prayer/ is not so much one prayer among many, as for Christians the type in which all their praying is to be moulded, the form which is to express each petition they wish to offer, the test of whether indeed it is a permissible petition at all.
We proceed then to reflect upon its several clauses. Our Father which art in heaven.
We begin by solemnly invoking God under His character as a Father. To approach God as our Father was indeed in apostolic times understood to be the great and distinctive privilege of Christians. God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, Abba, Father l And indeed it requires but little thought to perceive that it makes the whole difference 1 Galatians 4:6. in prayer whether we in fact realize that God is our common Father. What we ask of men, and the expectation with which we ask it, depends on what we think of them. With what difference in our hopes do we ask for some sacrifice or some kindness of different people! With what fulness of hope ought we to present our selves with our requests before God, whom we believe in as Father. God’s Fatherhood means that He has brought us into being. The responsibility for bringing other lives into existence rests indeed in large measure on earthly parents. But behind all, it rests on God our Creator. God, who has created us, because He is also our Father, is bound to care for each of His creatures; bound to make the best of each. Not indeed that He can exempt them from the moral discipline which belongs to rational and free beings, or can exempt them from the consequences of it. God, we may well say, cannot prevent us experiencing the consequences, and even the eternal consequences, of our own moral wilfulness. But, consistently with the laws of our being, He can make the best of us. And this we can confidently entreat of Him to do for each. None is forgotten in His sight. None is under-rated. There is no forgetfulness and no favouritism. There is discipline for all, but contempt for none. The God whom we approach is the Father of all, and accepts nay, desires to have pressed upon Him in prayer the responsibility of His Fatherhood. And we further qualify His Fatherhood by the addition to Our Father of the words which art in heaven? No doubt this expression recalls a time when men thought of the sky as a vault not so very far above their heads, and of God, or gods, as residing just be yond the vault, as it were on the upper storey of the universal house. Now in our scientific age we know that there is no ceiling over our heads, and no possibility of locating God somewhere above. But none the less we cannot help thinking and talking in the old figures; and we know what lift up your hearts means as well as our less scientific forefathers. Indeed, long before the age of science, long before the time of our Lord, God’s residence in heaven had come to have a moral meaning attached to it. His spiritual omnipresence was asserted by psalmists and prophets, and the true meaning of His heavenliness proclaimed. As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts. 1 The idea then that we are intended to attach to God’s heavenly Fatherhood is, that He is infinitely raised above us in the height of His holiness and the largeness of His wisdom. To call God our Father in heaven, is to lift up our minds in awful reverence above all the narrowness, short-sightedness, shallowness, and defilement of earth, and to remember
1 Isaiah 55:9. that the best we can think or imagine or hope is but a feeble image of the largeness, the resourcefulness, the richness, the holiness of the mind of God. God is in heaven, and thou upon earth; therefore let thy words be few. 1 God is farther from us in the loftiness of His revealed character than ever He seemed to be to Greeks or Romans, who fashioned Him after their own likeness in temper and lusts. But, on the other hand, He is infinitely nearer to us in the condescension of His love. It is only sin that kept earth, the abode of men, apart from heaven, the abode of God. Now the kingdom of heaven or of God is come; it is within us/ or among us. Our citizenship is in heaven. The Christian institutions are heavenly things. We are made to sit in heavenly places in Christ. 2 All this language describes the intimate closeness of union which in Christ has been granted us with the heavenly God. Thus in appealing to our Father which is in heaven we are appealing to one who is closer than breathing and nearer than hands and feet, to whom the slightest motion of the heart and will is audible. How is it, then, that so many people still in their spiritual imagination think of God in heaven as if He were far off, so that it needed some great effort to penetrate to His abode?
2 Matthew 12:28; Luke 17:21; Php 2:20; Hebrews 9:23; Ephesians 1:3. The name of God means the revelation of God, or rather God as He makes Himself known to men; and we may say, that human history is in one aspect the record of the way in which God has gradually spelt out His name among men, or suffered them to spell it out.
Something of that name is discovered in the aspect and processes of nature; something again is audible in the whispered suggestions and threatenings of conscience; some elements of it have become apparent to the founders of the different religions of the world; but nowhere is the gradual process of discovery so distinct, as among the Jews. At the bottom of the Old Testament revelation the personality and personal dealings of God are indeed strongly emphasized, but the conceptions of His infinitude, His holiness, His spirituality, leave still very much to be gained. That His holiness is moral, not ceremonial, reveals itself to prophet after prophet. His love is discovered to a Hosea, His impartiality to an Ezekiel, His sympathy with the sorrows of His people to an Isaiah. And all that was disclosed to prophets was deepened in His revelation by the Son, through whom the name of God is finally spelt out as the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, with all the moral significance attaching to each of the elements of this threefold name. In the Lord’s Prayer the place of primary importance is given to the petition that God’s revelation of Himself may be held in honour, “ Hallowed be thy Name.” The matter of first and dominant importance is, that men should believe and hold what is true about the being and character of God, and believing aright, should let their belief be expressed in the reverence of their lives.
It may be said of the pagan religions not without qualification, but generally that the character ascribed to God in them is the simple reflection of the character of His worshippers. The most powerful modern expression of this lower anthropomorphism, this fashioning of gods after the image of men, is to be found in Browning’s poem of Caliban upon Setebos. Poor savage Caliban is there represented as ascribing all his own arbitrariness and fitfumess to Setebos his god. This is an universal tendency; but in the Bible we have the record of the counterprocess, which, if it were going on everywhere in a measure, was nowhere enacted as among the Jews the process of God impressing Himself as He truly is on the hearts and intellects of His people.
True it is that the self-revelation of God at its highest verifies the belief in a special kinship of man to God.
Man at his best recognizes his own best self infinitely glorified in the character of God as manifested in Christ.
Still, here is a revelation of God to man, not a fashioning of God after man’s ideas; and the result is, that it lays on men a strong and searching claim to re-model their own natures, that they may become truly in the divine image. To believe in God as He is indeed, is to recognize our need to be born again and fashioned anew.
How is it that some people are so shallow-minded as to suppose that it makes no difference what a man believes about God? The contrary lies written in the record of history. For, however inconsistent are men’s beliefs and practices, if you look at individual men at a particular moment, yet if you look at human nature in its long reaches and over its broad surfaces, it appears that men’s conduct has depended on what they think about God. The civilizations which have grown up under the influence of Jewish, Greek, Mohammedan, Buddhist, and Christian beliefs about God, have been morally different civilizations. And the necessary connection between the intelligence and the will in man makes it necessary that belief should, in the long run, mould behaviour.
Hallowed be God’s name then! Let Christians believe with all their hearts in the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost one God; and believing, have the courage to profess their belief, and let it mould their public conduct and their private lives. It is probably quite true, in fact mathematically true, that there lives more faith in honest doubt than in half the creeds, for half the creeds, that is, the beliefs of half the believers, are little more than formalisms, and of little moral value; whereas honest doubts, the sincere seekings of the perplexed hearts from whom God’s face is hidden, have a great deal of moral value, and are undoubtedly on the way to final light. But it does not therefore follow, nor is it true, that there lives more faith, or more value, in doubts in general than in sincere creeds. Indeed, quite the opposite is the case; and no one who knows any thing of current society can fail to perceive that a great deal which passes for religious doubt proceeds from little but want of moral effort, and worldliness, and very often lack of moral courage. Doubt, however inevitable in some cases, need not be a normal condition of mind.
Renan used cynically to remark, that very few people have the qualifications for being sceptics. And if we want to play our part as men and Christians in the world, we should do our best to believe simply, and to confess loyally in worship and in conduct the faith which we believe. How vast a part of what is worst in modern society is due to lack of moral courage! How deep the truth in our Lord’s question How can ye believe which seek glory one of another, and the glory which cometh of the only God ye seek not?
Let us then learn to pray Hallowed be Thy Name, and indeed to give it the dominant and leading place in all our prayers. God has revealed Himself. If under a veil, He can yet be known by us, and we pray that the infinite benefit of this revelation of Himself may be realized and accepted by all men. Hallowed be Thy Name by being believed. And believing on God in their hearts, we pray that men may not be ashamed of their best selves, but may confess Him in their lives, and pay to Him the out ward reverence which is reasonable from men to God.
Hallowed be Thy Name by frank outward confession. And we pray that the public worship of the Church may be a worship in spirit and in truth, a worship worthy of its great object; for we remember the sane words of Hooker Duties of religion performed by whole societies of men ought to have in them a sensible excellency correspondent to the majesty of Him whom we worship/ Hallowed be Thy Name by glorious and spiritual worship. Lastly, we pray that men may hallow the name of God in their own private lives, and live worthily of that holy name in that holiness without which no man shall see the Lord.
Hallowed be Thy Name in the continual sanctification of the lives of Christians, that they may indeed be, in the Son and through the Spirit, a holy priesthood to God, even the Father.