BEING LESSONS FROM THE GOSPEL OF MATTHEW.
CHAPTER VI. (Continued from page 218.)
The whole prayer is an address to God as Father:"Our Father which art in heaven." What underlies this title given to God is in fact a relationship never yet 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 had declared as the "Almighty" His power, or as the "Most High" His exaltation, or as "Jehovah " His enduring immutability. "Father" declares, not such things as these, but what is His heart toward us, while it gives us title to enjoy the love implied. The character of the tie is such as gives us 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" (Ex. 4:22). And this, which had been repeated in the law, and made the foundation of perceptive argument,-"Ye are the children of Jehovah your God" (Deut. 14:i),-might seem in itself to justify Israelites, such as were these disciples that had gathered round the Lord, in taking the place He gave them here. But in fact this, in the national ruin that had intervened, had passed away. Israel was Lo-ammi, "not my people," though with a promise for the future of a restoration not yet fulfilled (Hos. 1:9, 10). They could not comfort themselves with assurances thus forbidden them to apply, -nor with a legal covenant to which God's faithfulness on His side "could but make them partakers of curse rather than 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 is 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 seen to 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 of God.
Thus that old relationship to the Unchangeable had after all changed. The "children of Jehovah " were now as a nation outcast from Him. The tie, stable as it might look, had not the elements of en-durance in it. As we look back upon it from the stand-point of the new revelation, it is simple to understand that Israel's sonship was not the result of new birth, as it is now in Christianity. An Israelite was not necessarily, because that, either a penitent or a believer in that God who had drawn nigh to him. A Jew was, as the apostle says, a "Jew by nature" (Gal. 2:15); but that nature was not new nature. The child of law, as he shows afterwards by the type of Hagar and Ishmael (4:22-31), was but "born after the flesh," and showed the nature of the " wild man," as Ishmael did (Gen. 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 insured beyond death, nor even from day to day, but as obedience lasted or God's pity spared.
But the "Father," of whom Christ spoke to His own, was not the Father of the nation in this manner. Only the pure in heart should see Him, only the peacemakers be called His children. Even before this, although not having place 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 simply that which (when it begins) abides, or 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 we are born into the family of God and "partakers of the divine nature" (2 Pet. i, 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 underlay the teaching of the prayer. This Father in heaven, known for what He is, becomes thus rooted in the affections, supreme over the heart that has learned the cry of children. Of this the prayer at least is the expression. The first petition is one which 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 to the way in which it has felt-the ecstatic joy of God so made known to it.
But the world knows not this joy, and the abounding evil 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 of us may well force from us a prayer like 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; everything finding its relation to Him as the planets to the 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 can alone be His ; 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 blessing, is but a step towards this glorious consummation. It is earth's "regeneration," (Matt. 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 a final outbreak of evil, the most openly defiant that the world has ever seen (Rev. 20:7-10). The judgment that follows reaches to the very frame-work of material things, and the earth and its heaven-the "firmament" of the second day (Gen. 1:)-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 (i Cor. 15:24-28), and the kingdom of the Father contemplated here 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 where God rests alone 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 to be ever with the Lord at His coming, the Father's house receives us. And thus it is that, in the parables of the kingdom, in the gospel we are now considering (chap. 13:42), 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." 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. They are the expression of personal needs in a state of things such as now surrounds us. Personal needs in the very highest sense, of course, the first class of petitions represents; but here it is God that is distinctly before the soul, and His glory that absorbs it. 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 in our prayers! F. W. G.
(To be continued.)