What a new thing it must have been for the Jew, and it would have been a new thing too for every converted Gentile, if the church had been faithful, addressing God as Father. What I say to the Gentile if the church had been faithful is, the world would have been the world, the church would have been the church, and Christian the Christian; but now we have a vast territory owned as Christian country, and everywhere in it there goes up this prayer, “Our Father which art in heaven.” That prayer should never be found in the lips of a Gentile at all. It is not a Christian prayer.
After the Lord Jesus died and rose again, redemption accomplished, and went back to heaven, we never read of “our heavenly Father” in the epistles, nor “our Father which art in heaven.” I don’t find fault with people for using it. I am on earth and He is in heaven, so in a sense He is our Father which art in heaven. I am just calling attention to its not being a proper Christian prayer. It is what is called “the Lord’s prayer.” It is in a sense. He is the author of it. It is not a prayer He prayed, but what He taught His disciples to pray in their then position, and their position then was a transitional one. Not on Jewish ground, nor on Christian. That is where the 5th of Matthew comes in—a period of transition. When the Lord had finished His course and went back to heaven, that period was done away with. I don’t speak of it everywhere because it bothers people.
The A-B-C of the Christian’s relationship to God is, he is a child of God, and addresses Him as His Father in the consciousness of the relationship. “God hath sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying Abba, Father” (Gal. 4:66And because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father. (Galatians 4:6)). What does that mean? Where did the Lord use it? In Gethsemane. That is very striking, dear friends. The Lord there speaks in the consciousness of His full relationship, “Abba, Father.” Literally, it is “Father, Father.” Redemption has been accomplished, and the believer is brought into the full consciousness of this relationship. The Spirit of God causes Him to cry, “Abba, Father,” “Father, Father.” “Abba” means Father.
How strange and what a real thing it must have been to them—Christianity. Not Jehovah and the nation any more. To be brought to God as His children was a new thing. God from whose presence they shrank and whose presence they dreaded, brought to know Him as Father. If things had remained as they should, the Jew would be the Jew, the Gentile the Gentile, and the church the church.
Don’t you think it very touching, the Lord using that word “Abba” in Gethsemane? “Father, Father.” O, the agony of soul that led Him to cry—to appeal in that way. I think that is only found in Mark. What way is He presented to us in Mark? Servant—Servant Son. “Jesus Christ the Son of God.” There He falls back, it seems to me, upon this relationship. “He went forward a little, and fell on the ground, and prayed that, if it were possible, the hour might pass from Him. And He said Abba, Father, all things are possible unto Thee; take away this cup from Me; nevertheless not what I will, but what Thou wilt.”
Look at the end of the 14th of John. There in a few words we get the character of the Lord’s obedience. It says in the 30th verse, “Hereafter I will not talk much with you: for the prince of this world cometh, and hath nothing in Me.” That was when He was going to Gethsemane and the cross. 31st verse, “But that the world may know that I love the Father; and as the Father gave Me commandment even so I do.” There was the proof of the Lord’s love to the Father—obedience to His commandment. That commandment goes on to the cross. “That the world may know that I love the Father.” It is the kind nature or character of obedience that we have before us here. Not obedience to the law, but the obedience of this relationship.
“The Prince of this world cometh; was that when He died on the cross?”
It is Gethsemane too. Nothing in Him to respond. “Nothing in Me.” There is in you and me, but nothing in Him. In a certain way Satan was defeated before the Lord actually went to the cross. He was when he went into the judgment hall. He could not get the Lord to refuse the cup. He said to them when they came to take Him, “This is your hour and the power of darkness.” There was the joining together of the world and Satan’s power to crush the Lord and turn Him aside from obedience.
There were two periods in the Lord’s life when He met Satan, as it were face to face and alone. That was at the beginning—temptation in the wilderness and then at the cross. It says, Satan departed from Him for a season. That interval between the first and the last was the season that he departed from Him. He returned in the power of the Spirit and then goes on in the power of the Spirit all through His life—performing all those miracles, spoiling the strong man and his goods after He had bound him. At the first it was a kind of beguiling—subtility—could not seduce the Lord. Think of that panoramic view of all the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them he had made pass before the Lord in a moment of time. Now, he says, all shall be yours if you will bow the knee to me. That was subtility. It was crushing in Gethsemane.
(Continued from page 191)
(To be continued)