Having stated these points of distinction, I come now to a question of great practical importance: What was the Lord's intention in regard to the use of this prayer? The answer is involved in my first statement. I showed that, while intended for disciples, it exactly suited the condition they were in before Christ had finished His work. It therefore follows that when redemption became a fact and a known basis of relationship with God, the prayer that suits those who stand in the enjoyment of its full results, would be formed according to their new circumstances. In other words, referring to my former illustration, the man's prayer when out of prison would not be the same as his prayer in prison unless he were under a delusion. If he had afterward to do with the Sovereign, he would owe not a petition for deliverance, but a memorial of gratitude and a lifelong service of devoted loyalty.
But besides this, we shall find that the accomplishment of redemption was the foundation of another and a most exalted privilege—the gift of the Holy Ghost, in a way of which the Old Testament saints had no experience. It must be remembered that there are certain operations of the Holy Ghost, common to all saints in every age, such as the new birth, conviction of sin, holy obedience produced in the heart and ways. These ways of the Spirit are not peculiar to any time; they were always true of every saint of God from the first; true of Noah, Abraham, David, &c. They were all men born of God and believers. But while this is matter of common knowledge, there is another thing equally true, but not so generally acknowledged. When the Lord Jesus Christ was about to finish His work on earth and ascend on high, He promised His disciples that the Holy Ghost should be given in a way never before known. The disciples were certainly believers then, and possessors of eternal life. Yet we find that when the Lord was about to depart, He says: “It is expedient for you that I go away.” What could make it expedient that they should have their best Friend and Savior no longer here? Why was it not rather preferable for them in every way that He should stay? The word is plain: “It is expedient for you that I go away; for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but, if I depart, I will send Him unto you.” Does not this imply that there was to be some further and immense blessing imparted to them that they had not enjoyed before? Clearly so. But more than that. There are persons who confine the gift of the Holy Ghost to tongues, miracles, ministerial gifts, &c. But “the Comforter” is not to be confounded with the various powers which the Comforter produces. It is the Holy Ghost in person Whom the Father would send in Christ's name. This was the grand truth that the Lord was teaching His disciples. All saints had had the Holy Ghost operating upon them from the beginning; but besides and beyond that, after the departure of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Holy Ghost Himself was to come down, in a more direct, and immediate way, to be in the disciples and with them unto the end. The Son of God had come down in proper person and become incarnate. The Holy Ghost would come after Christ had accomplished redemption and gone up to the Father. Therefore it is said in Acts 2: “Being by the right hand of God exalted, and having received of the Father the promise of the Holy Ghost, He hath shed forth this which ye now see and hear.” The powers that were conferred on the day of Pentecost drew attention to this blessed divine Person, Whose presence these powers indicated; they were valuable chiefly as the outward evidence and effect of that unprecedented gift, the promise of the Father.
This, then, is the great truth that lies at the bottom of the question as to the Lord's prayer. It was intended for those who were true believers, but for whom redemption was yet a prospective thing, and to whom the Holy Ghost had not been given in this fuller and unexampled way. In this very context in Luke the Lord says, a little afterward: “If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask Him?” This was their condition—they were already children, and yet were to ask the Father to give them the Holy Spirit. It could not mean the Holy Spirit to make them believers; such they were already, “children of God by faith in Christ Jesus.” But there was still the Holy Ghost to be given personally, to bring them into all the full consequences of the redemption, of Christ, when that should be effected, and to form them into union with Him as the glorified man at the right hand of God, members of His body, of His, flesh, and of His bones. These privileges, which were neither known nor possible to be enjoyed by the saints before the cross, are nevertheless the essentials of Christianity, properly so called. Therefore, one need not hesitate to say, that while the Lord's prayer was the perfect expression of the disciples' requests to God in their then circumstances and actual condition, for this reason it was not intended to be the. expression even of the same men when their whole standing and condition was changed: when the work was done and all trespasses were forgiven; when all that believed, whether Jew or Gentile, were by one Spirit baptized into one body, and were all made to drink into one Spirit.
The change, indeed, was so momentous and complete, that our Lord Himself prepares the disciples for it solemnly, in John 16, when, after having fully brought out the mission and presence of the Comforter in and with them, He says: “In that day ye shall ask Me nothing. Verily, verily, I say unto you, Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in My name, He will give it you. Hitherto have ye asked nothing in My name: ask, and ye shall receive, that your joy may be full."......"At that day ye shall ask in My name,” &c. What did our Lord mean when He said, “In that day ye shall ask Me nothing?” This was what they had been doing while He was upon earth; they always went to Him as their blessed and gracious Savior, and were quite right in doing so. Yet He adds: “Verily, verily, I say unto you, &c.... Hitherto have ye asked nothing in My name.” What! asked nothing in His name? Had they not been using the Lord's prayer for some years? Certainly they had; and yet they had asked nothing in Christ's name. Now He says to them, you are going to be put upon a new ground—no longer to be merely coming to Me and asking Me, but asking the Father and asking in Christ's name. What is meant by asking in Christ's name? Is it merely saying “for Christ's sake” at the end of a prayer? No. The meaning seems no less than this: that, by virtue of redemption when accomplished, and by the Holy Ghost uniting them to the Lord Jesus in heaven, they would be put in the same position as Himself. Therefore it is said in 1 John 4: “As He is, so we are in this world.” And so Paul, in 1 Cor. 6, “he that is joined to the Lord is one spirit.” This may illustrate the meaning of the asking in the name of Christ, or rather of the ground on which it rests. Not only to ask the Father in the consciousness of all their sins being put away, and of their being actually brought nigh to God, and in the full enjoyment of His favor, without a question or cloud between God and their souls: but going to God and making application to Him as standing in the possession of the full blessing to which Christ above, and the Holy Ghost below, should entitle them in that day: this is asking the Father in Christ's name. The Lord had given the prayer already, and the disciples had been using it. Yet He intimates to them here that there was a new position into which they had to be put, and that the old ground would no longer do. Their circumstances being changed by the gift of the Holy Ghost, prayer must now take its form from the new standing, the full grace into which they were brought. What is the effect of believers now putting themselves back into the position of disciples before redemption was accomplished? They never can know what it is to have settled peace; they cannot take the place of worshippers once purged, having no more conscience of sins. In a word, they forfeit, as far as enjoyment goes, the vast and entire sum of blessing which Christ's death and resurrection have procured.
Still more manifest is the mistake for a company of believers, or of believers and unbelievers mixed together, to take up the Lord's prayer, as the expression of common public worship. Not Christ's body is the thought, but the aggregate of God's family. Indeed, just before, the Lord had told them, when each prayed, to enter his closet, and then follows this prayer as the suited language of an individual's wants. But whether it be a company or an individual now expressing wants to God in the Lord's prayer, one has only to repeat, You are putting yourselves back into the state of the disciples under law and before the Lord had done His work of reconciliation; and thus you are doing unconsciously disrespect to the will of God the Father, to the work of Christ, and to the witness of the Holy Ghost (comp. Heb. 10). If a son! converted indeed, but still under bondage of spirit and ignorant of the Lord's ways, and of the full extent of His redemption were to kneel down and pour out his heart in the words of the Lord's prayer, one could quite sympathize with the feeling; for in point of fact such a condition of heart and conscience as nearly as possible approaches that of the disciples whom the Lord actually had before Him. Still, under the gospel of God's grace, the state described is surely anomalous. It is themselves who go back—not God who puts them—as it were, before redemption. Though believers in Christ, they are not quite sure that they are forgiven their sins, or whether they stand in the present favor of God or not. They certainly do adopt and use a prayer given to disciples who could not know what every Christian since the cross ought to have his heart filled with, and what his prayers should assume and more or less express to God. So that, without questioning the final security of such believers in Christ, I ought not to withhold the conviction that they do not see their most precious privileges, and thus, without ill-tending it, are guilty of real dishonor to the Lord's sufferings and glory.
The fact is; then, that in the prayer, saints on earth are contemplated and provided for before Christ died and rose, and before the Holy Ghost was sent down from heaven, the witness of perfect acceptance in the Beloved. True honoring of Christ is to apply His words as He intended. If our souls have entered into this, that we are brought nigh to God; that our sins are all forgiven; that we have got the Holy Ghost sealing us, and uniting us to Christ in heaven; we are on altogether new ground, and our prayers should savor of and express it. This would be to ask the Father in the name of the Son.
It will be said, How was it that the Lord gave the prayer in His word, if it was not intended for the permanent use of all His people? I answer that the Lord said much which did not and could not apply to all. Look, for example, at Matt. 10. While there are of course principles there which abide for our instruction, who will deny that the mission of the twelve was Jewish? Supposing a person were to quote verses 5 and 6, and to say, “These are the Lord's own words: we are not to go into the way of the Gentiles, nor to enter any city of the Samaritans, but rather to go to the lost sheep of the house of Israel,” the absurdity would be manifest. We ourselves, poor Gentiles and yet saved, are proof enough that such an application of our Savior's words would be false. It would set a few words here against the great mass of the New Testament, which supposes special mercy to those very Gentiles. As the Lord then was sending out the disciples on a special errand, so He had previously provided for their then state in the prayer. The death of Christ, in my judgment, necessarily interrupted the prohibition of testimony to the Gentiles, deepened and extended the ground of prayer, and laid the foundation for the introduction of another order of things. Therefore, after His resurrection, the Lord, at the close of the same Gospel, charges them to go and make disciples of all the Gentiles; as in the Gospel of John He, anticipating His ascension, tells them that they at that day were to ask the Father in His name. Hitherto they had not done so.
Much, therefore, as one would sympathize with those who continue to use the Lord's prayer now, or at least feel for their difficulties, it must be said that we ought to understand His word and will, besides having upright intentions. And what intelligence can there be if it is not seen that the redemption of Christ and the gift of the Holy Ghost have wrought a total revolution as to conscience, communion, worship, and walk; have brought us out of bondage into liberty, and consequently put our prayers on a different footing from what would have been right and comely before our deliverance?
Hence, in the Acts of the Apostles, not a trace appears of such an use of the Lord's prayer as is become the traditional practice of Christendom. And when you read the various prayers which the Holy Ghost inspired. In the different Epistles, such as those in Romans, Ephesians, &c., everywhere the death, resurrection, and ascension of Christ form the great Substance and basis. The petitions were founded thenceforth upon these great and glorious facts, on which rest alike our faith and hope; they were not made, and were inapplicable, before.
Evidently this is a question of no small importance for the child of God who desires to know his full standing in Christ since the Holy Ghost has been given. We all believe that the Lord's prayer was divinely suited to the actual state of the disciples. But for this reason it could not fully express their subsequent relations nor the outgoing of affection proper to them. Those who appreciate the extent of the change can profit by every clause of the prayer, even if they do not repeat it literally. But to ignore the results of redemption is not to the honor of Christ, while it is a slight upon the presence of the Spirit, and voluntary poverty in the midst of the riches of grace which are now lavished upon us. The humble and obedient heart will seek to know and do the Lord's will in this, as in all else.
The last verse but one of Matt. 6 may be helpful to some, as an instance of the modifying effects of redemption, “Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness,” says the Lord to the disciples in the same chapter which contains the prayer. Does that adequately describe the condition of a Christian man now? Certainly not; because he is now made the righteousness of God in Christ. When the address was given by the Lord, the righteousness of God was a thing still to be sought; as yet none could be said to be made it. But since then for us “He has made Him to be sin Who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him.” There (2 Cor. 5) we are not said to be in quest of it; we are made God's righteousness in Him. Planted in Christ, a new and divine righteousness is ours. It is our present portion, but none could say so before redemption. They were told to look for that righteousness and to ask for the Holy Ghost previously. But when they received both, never will you find the saints still seeking and asking for them, as if they had them not: it would have been to overlook their best blessings. Again, in chap. 7: 7, it is written: “Ask, and it shall be given you,” &c. Here there is not, and could not be such a thing as asking in the name of Christ. It was precious and most surely not in vain, even then; but what an accession of blessing was there, when Christ, in view of their being set in this world in and as Himself before the Father by virtue of His all-sufficing work, could add “in my name!” “Hitherto” (I must repeat) “have ye asked nothing in My name: ask, and ye shall receive, that your joy may be full.”
May we too receive things as the Lord puts them in His Word. May we rise above our natural thoughts and be thoroughly rooted and built up in Him, and stablished in the faith as we have been taught, abounding therein with thanksgiving.
Courtesy of BibleTruthPublishers.com. Most likely this text has not been proofread. Any suggestions for spelling or punctuation corrections would be warmly received. Please email them to: BTPmail@bibletruthpublishers.com.