In the parable of the Sower, “the cares of this world, and the deceitfulness of riches” (Mt. 13:22) are identified by Jesus as the influences most powerful in men’s lives to choke the growth or the new spiritual life. So, appropriately, the Sermon on the mount deals with these side by side.

It is well-known that when the Lord said: “Take no thought for your life”, he meant: “Do not be anxious”, or-a trifle more accurately-”Stop worrying!

Luke has also another somewhat unexpected word (12:29) translated rather doubtfully: “neither be ye of doubtful mind”. This reading leaves most students in doubtful mind as to its correctness. Six times the LXX has it in the sense of “uplifted”- “though thou exalt thyself as the eagle”(Obad. 4). In that case the Lord may be saying: ‘ In this matter of food and clothes, don’t try to keep up with the Joneses’ -a not unnecessary admonition for the moderns who are fashion and affluence conscious.

LXX also (four times) uses a very similar word for ocean billows, thus suggesting the meaning; ‘Cease to agitate yourself over these things like a wild sea with uplifted waves.’ This meaning has in its favour an interesting passage in James which in its context seems to look back to the Sermon on the mount: “But let him ask in faith, nothing wavering. For he that wavereth is like a wave of the sea driven with the wind and tossed” (1:6).

In these days of the affluent society, the commandment: “Take no thought, saying, What shall we eat?” or “What shall we drink?” or, “Wherewithal shall we be clothed?” seems to be completely irrelevant except in a very different sense! Yet even today many in the family of God find that the provision of the basic necessities of living means an unremitting struggle. In the Palestine of our Lord’s day, with all its acute social inequality, there was much hard grinding poverty, so that for many parents how to clothe the children and how to fill their bellies next day, must have been problems rarely out of mind.

It has been suggested that this year of the ministry was a sabbath year, bringing special worries regarding food supply, but also giving people leisure from work so that they could flock to Jesus in crowds. The following passages may have a bearing on this thesis: Mt. 6:11, 12, 26; 9:38; 12:8; Lk. 4:19; Jn. 6:11, 12.

The warnings of Jesus regarding worry are just as needful today as ever they were. Human nature is more than capable of making itself miserable over aspects of life.

Young people worry about passing examinations, about their careers, and especially about their boy-girl friendships. The aged get anxious regarding their personal needs in declining days and who will care for them in protracted illness. Parents never cease to worry about their children — about their health, their progress at school, their friendships and moral outlook. And the middle-aged, who should have learned some degree of poise and maturity from their experience of life, are perhaps worst of all, if only because of the evident and inevitable signs of declining physical powers. And the number of those, of all ages, who have made life a burden to themselves and to many others through inability to accept a situation which they cannot mend, is positively countless. For all such the message of Jesus, based on the primitive example of food and clothes, can be a wonderful help. More than this, it can be a cure.

But the problem is an enormous one. Jesus did not underestimate it or treat it lightly as a trivial neurosis which a man can shrug off for himself.

So, contrary to his usual authoritarian style, Jesus proceeded to reason long and logically about this ingrained weakness so common in his followers. He catalogued nine separate reasons for a new and better outlook regarding the problems in life which steal a man’s sleep and give him ulcers.

Notes: Mt. 6:25-34

Lk. 12:32

There is no religious exercise which is more open to abuse than the practice of prayer. The Pharisees had brought their observance of this religious duty to a fine art. For them it must be yet another opportunity for self-glorification in the eyes of the common people who esteemed piety but thought its practice beyond their own capabilities.

It was normal among the Jews to pray standing. But these Pharisees struck an attitude (Lk. 18:11), to be seen and admired by others. Their posturing and open declamations in street and synagogue were all carefully contrived for the sake of effect on others. There were set times for daily prayer, and these hypocrites were even capable of timing their day’s activities so that at the hour of prayer, instead of being at home where petition could be offered privately with sincerity and concentration, they were abroad in the streets. There the ordinary folk would continue about their business, letting prayer go by default. But not so the Pharisee. This was the very opportunity for parading the piety which he revelled in.

On this Plummer has the discerning comment: “As in almsgiving, it is not the being seen, but the wish to be seen, and to be seen in order to be admired, that is condemned. Of all hypocrisies, that of pretending to have intercourse with God … is one of the worst.”

More than this, with shrewd incisiveness Jesus ‘exposed the calculating hypocrisy which could even cause these sham worshippers to be not only in the street but at the corner of the street when the call for prayer was heard, for then there was the advantage of admiring notice from passers-by in four directions and not just two.

“Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.” Both in its form and tense this verb “have” is specially to be noted. It was commonly used in commercial transactions for the receipting of a bill. Thus Jesus declared: They seek a particular reward — the esteem of lesser mortals than themselves-and they get it there and then; and that is the transaction closed. They need expect nothing from God, because in the first place they are not really interested in what God can do for them, nor do they deserve anything further.

Concentration and Sincerity

True prayer, Jesus went on, will seek the other extreme: “When thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father.” It may be that this counsel is couched in the words of an Isaiah passage (26:20) which has the Passover deliverance in Hezekiah’s reign as its background. God can see who are His and respond to their cry, without needing a flamboyant exhibition of piety. Prayer behind shut doors was Elisha’s way when there was special importunity to be made to God (2 Kgs. 4:33). Perhaps Jesus was referring to that, and thus, in effect, was saying: To raise a dead child calls for specially intense concentration in prayer; then let this be the spirit of all your prayer practice; you will achieve it best in complete privacy, not in public posturing.

In such circumstances a man’s mind is uncluttered by outer distractions or by insidious considerations of the effect on others. Then a man can give himself to real prayer which is altogether sincere and “energized” (to use the apostle James’ word; 5:16). The Lord neatly emphasizes essential sincerity by his phrase: “pray to thy Father.” A strong personal awareness that one’s prayer is addressed to the Guardian of one’s life can go a long way towards exorcising any spirit of vainglory.

“Much Speaking”

There is an evil of a different sort besetting the practice of prayer-to mistake quantity for quality. So the Lord’s next warning was: “When ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking.” Jesus built this warning on the Book of Proverbs (10:19 LXX): “In the multitude of words, much speaking (the only other occurrence of this Greek word), there wanteth not sin: but he that refraineth his lips is wise.” Evidently the Lord read this passage with special reference to prayer. “He who knows all things does not need detailed information bulletins” (Floyd Filson). But to much prayer-a very different commodity from much speaking — the Father’s ear is ever open (Lk. 18:1; 6:12).

In modern times the church of Rome and various eastern religions have provided trenchant demonstrations of the need for such admonition. The classic examples from the pages of Scripture are the priests of Baal, who spent six hours howling and capering before the altar of an unknowing god, and the leather-lunged devotees of Artemis who gave two hours’ non-stop vocal moral support to a goddess who could do nothing for herself.

There was, perhaps, some excuse for them. But for Pharisees who piled up phrase on phrase and prayer on prayer in the presence of the God of Glory there could be only censure. Thirtle has provided evidence that it was regarded as good form to repeat each petition twenty-two times, beginning in turn with each letter of the alphabet. (What a contrast the matchless conciseness of the Lord’s Prayer presents!). He has also suggested that this wearisome futile artificiality gave rise to the very word used by Jesus for “vain repetitions”-a far more likely explanation that the ususal one which derives it from the Greek word for “stammer”.

What irony, also, there was in the Lord’s words: “Use not vain repetitions as the heathen do”, for at the time he said this, none were better at it then these Jewish professional religionists. Their own Law had a pointed lesson for them, if only they chose to heed it. The smallest item in the equipment of the tabernacle was the altar of incense-one cubit square and two cubits high (Ex.30:2). And the incense itself was to be beaten “very small” (30:36). “God is in heaven, and thou upon earth: therefore let thy words be few: (Ecc.5:2).

Unresolved Problem

The Lord’s own reason for simple unprolix prayer is a reminder of the obvious: “Your Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask him.” To some this is a difficulty of no small magnitude. Let it be a divine paradox to be accepted whether understood or not. From one point of view to tell God what we want or what we need smacks of human presumption. Nevertheless, God seeks the prayers of His children. He wants them to pray to Him, and-somehow-takes account of what they ask for. So there need be no rationalistic inhibitions.

Modern Practice

This brief section of the Sermon on the Mount has important lessons for the Lord’s people in modern times. Especially is it true regarding the offering of prayer in the ecclesia. The temptation to pray so as to make an impression on the rest may prove too strong to be resisted. And, not infrequently, for reasons akin to this, prayers proliferate into long pointless repetitions, mere word-spinning.

It is a sad irony that those best qualified to use with understanding the short pattern prayer given by Jesus have come to avoid its use almost completely, out of respect for the Lord’s warning about “vain repetitions” and out of disgust for conventional abuse of these divine words glibly and regularly parrotted off with hardly a thought to their meaning.

And when thought is given to some of the alternatives- long repetitious platitudes and flat circumlocutions, punctuated by an over-frequent “Heavenly Father” – when consideration dwells on the uninspiring inadequacy of a big proportion of what passes for prayer in the average ecclesia, the irony becomes double-distilled. Assuredly the Lord’s people have much to learn in these exercises in godliness.

Notes: Mt. 6:5-8

It was the Lord’s own prayer in more senses than one. In Gethsemane, in his hour of greatest need, its phrases were on his lips and its petitions fervently spoken: “Abba, Father…Thy will be done” (Mk. 14:36), and to his disciples: “Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation” (14:38). Only a little while earlier in his high-priestly prayer the simple meaningful phrases were echoed: “I pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from the evil…sanctify them through thy Truth…Holy father, keep in thine own name those whom thou hast given me, that they may be one, as we are” (Jn. 17:15, 17).

But it could never be completely his own prayer. “Forgive me my trespasses” was a petition never spoken by him. Instead: “Father, forgive them; they know not what they do.”

It is almost to be expected that Jesus would derive his Prayer from the Old Testament. In fact, the problem here is why there are some phrases which are not already made familiar by the Old Testament.

Two considerations suggest that Luke’s setting of the Lord’s Prayer is the true origination of it:

1. “It came to pass that, as he was praying in a certain place, when he ceased, one of his disciples (who was it?) said unto him, Lord, teach us to pray, as John also taught his disciples” (Lk. 11:1).
2. The shape of Matthew 6, where v. 7-15 clearly forms a parenthesis interrupting the tidy structure of v. 1-18.

The Ten Commandments were also given twice.

A Prayer used by Paul

It was Paul’s prayer also. The man who prayed as he wrote could hardly help but employ these phrases already familiar in the early church. “Our Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins, that he might deliver us from this present evil world, according to the will of God and our Father: to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen” (Gal. 1:4, 5).

Here three, perhaps four, allusions to the Lord’s Prayer cluster together, to be followed soon offer by “Abba, Father” (4:6), the cry of God’s adopted sons. And similarly in the last thing Paul wrote: “The Lord shall deliver me from every evil work, and will preserve me unto his heavenly kingdom: to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.” (2 Tim. 4:18). It is hardly possible to believe that Paul was not adapting the familiar well-loved words when he wrote this.

In Col. 1:9-16 also Paul’s mind seems to have been running on the Lord’s Prayer: “pray…his will…the might of his glory…the Father…delivered us from the power of darkness… into the kingdom…the forgiveness of sins… in heaven and in earth.”

Abuse and Neglect

Here, then, is apostolic evidence, which early church history confirms, that from primitive times the Lord’s Prayer became an integral part of Christian devotion. The early church taught this prayer to converts who had been carefully instructed and were now ready for baptism. The contrast with more modern times when little children — and not only little children — have been taught to gabble the words in meaningless unintelligent fashion morning offer morning, could hardly be greater – unless one excepts the phenomenal neglect of the Lord’s Prayer by Christadelphian congregations. No doubt this, traditional abstention began as a sharp ‘_w reaction to the gross abuse of precious holy words, but it is a matter of question whether perhaps the reaction has itself created a problem of a different sort.

“For the sake of Jesus Christ”

“And whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son” (Jn. 14:13). The words have often been interpreted as a requirement that every prayer uttered by a child of God must include the words “for the sake of Jesus Christ”, or their

equivalent. Indeed some go so far as to deem it necessary to include such words at the very beginning of every prayer. To such the Lord’s Prayer presents a problem. Surely it is not outmoded by the fact that, being taught to the disciples before Jesus died, it could not include allusion to his mediatorial work? Such an unconvincing view carries its own limitations on the surface.

The fact is that the routine mention of the name of Jesus in every prayer is by no means necessary. The idea has sprung from a misunderstanding of the expression “in my name”. “If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you” (Jn. 15:7). These words interpret the others. It is impossible for any true disciple to pray to God other than “in the name” of Jesus, whether the actual name be employed or not. When the apostles prayed for guidance in the choice of a successor for Judas, the name of Jesus was not specifically used. And Stephen’s prayer: “Lord, lay not this sin to their charge” was another which only tacitly recognized the unceasing mediatorial work of Jesus.

The beginning of the Prayer- “Our Father” – itself carries with it the clear implication that this sublime relationship has been established through the unique work of Jesus. When the Jewish leaders, in controversy with Jesus, boldly asserted: “We have one Father, even God”, the Lord’s retort was: “If God were your Father, ye would love me” (Jn. 8:42). The two facts are not to be separated. Those who love Christ have God for their Father. Those who know God to be their Father know also that their adoption is only through Christ, and that apart from his sacrifice there could be no acceptance.

This thought is implicit even in the brevity of the parable of the Pharisee and the Publican. The prayer: “God be propitiated to me, the sinner” (Lk. 18:13), clearly implies an understanding of the need for propitiatory sacrifice offered specifically for the one who prays. All this is wrapped up also in the words: “Our Father…forgive us our sins.”

Pattern or Example?

Did Jesus frame his prayer as an example, or is it to be used as given? The introductory phrase: “After this manner pray ye” simply means “Thus”, and might refer either to its form or to the very words. The examples cited from the epistles of Paul imply the validity of either use. Certainly Paul sometimes made use of the exact words, but he also varied the phrases and the order of them. It seems a pity that the formal recitation of the Lord’s Prayer should be shunned just because of abuse by others. “A king who draws up the petition which he allows to be presented to himself, has doubtless the fullest determination to grant the request.” Provided this comparison is not taken in too rigid a fashion, its point is a good one.

“Our Father”

The address to God as “Father” immediately implies a close relationship and a confident approach – a true mean between the formalism of early Victorian days when sons addressed their parent as “Sirl” and the sloppy familiarity of the moderns with whom “Old dad” and “Pop” are some of the more respectful soubriquets. But “Our Father which art in heaven” properly preserves the balance between a confident close relationship and a sense of awe at the majesty of God. The words are an appropriate reminder to the child of God as he prays, and also a needful acknowledgement, that “God is in heaven, and thou upon earth.” There is confidence in a God who, being in heaven, is All-Good. There is also respect because He, being in heaven, is the omnipotent Maker of all. Both are necessary.

In the Old Testament God is not infrequently spoken of as the Father of the nation or Israel (lsa. 1:2; 63:16; Mal. 1:6), but only in the sublime Psalm 103 is there any real approach to the close confident relationship Jesus taught: “Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear him” (v. 13).

Corresponding to that plural – “children” – there is the uniform use of the plural pronoun in the Lord’s Prayer. “Our Father” does not mean “Father of man and wife praying together” (though indeed the prayer could well be used thus), nor does it imply “Jesus and the individual disciple.” It must signify “Father of my brethren and me.” Before the throne of God especially the redeemed are a family with deep concern for one another as much as for themselves. Job prayed for his friends, and so found healing for himself (42:10). “So we, being many, are one body in Christ, and every one members one of another” (Rom. 12:5).

There is necessarily a difference between the way in which disciples pray “Our Father” and the way in which Jesus prayed “Holy Father.” Time and again he spoke of “my Father”, “my heavenly Father” but never of “our Father”. It is a distinction which needs no explaining – except by Unitarians and Trinitarians. Specially pointed was his word to Mary Magdalene: “Go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend onto my Father, and your Father” (Jn. 20:17). Such details quietly forbid approach to God through “our elder brother”. That Jesus does stand in this wonderful personal relationship to his disciple is a fact to be recognized with unremitting thankfulness, but it is a thing for him to insist on in his priestly mediation, rather than for his brethren to assert out of their status of undeserved privilege.

Personal petitions

It would be a mistake to infer from the plural pronouns in this pattern prayer that the Lord would have his people exclude petitions on all matters of personal concern. From the very nature of things a pattern prayer for general use could hardly cover such items. But there are examples enough in Scripture of men of God taking their own personal problems and difficulties to the throne of God’s grace with confidence. Paul prayed concerning his thorn in the flesh. Even though the answer was not the one he sought, there was evidently no doubt in his mind that it should be prayed about. Abraham interceded for Lot in Sodom, David for his sick baby son, Hezekiah for himself at death’s door.

Motive

All such emergencies are right and proper subjects for heartfelt sustained petitions to the Father, provided always that the motive is right. If self- interest dictates the plea, it were better not spoken. David and Hezekiah both provide examples of the best possible attitudes. Psalm 6 reveals a David laid low with what seemed to be an incurable disease. His impassioned prayer for recovery climbs to this climax: “Return, O Lord, deliver my soul: oh save me for thy mercies’ sake. For in death there is no remembrance of thee: in the grave who shall give thee thanks?”

Hezekiah’s request for annulment of his death sentence has the same unimpeachable ground: “For the grave cannot praise thee, death cannot celebrate thee: they that go down unto the pit cannot hope for thy truth. The living, the living, he shall praise thee, as I do this day” (ls. 38:18, 19). When a man’s outlook is completely taken over by considerations such as these there is no limit to what he may ask.

Accordingly, the first three of the seven petitions in the prayer are concerned, not with self but with the glory of God. It is like that also in the Ten Commandments and in the Two Great Commandments, let the praise and love of God come first and last, so the Lord’s Prayer insists.

Here there is an impressive example of envelope form – three petitions all governed by the phrase which concludes them. Thus the meaning is:

Hallowed be thy name on earth as it is in heaven.

Thy kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven

Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven

The words: “which art in heaven” set the tone of proper reverence. There is no implication here of a Deity resident among sun, moon and stars, for they are His creation, obeying Him fully and accurately. Nevertheless the Old Testament (eg. Ez. 1) encourages God’s servants to think of Him not as lost in a vague unknowable unattainable fourth dimension, but as having specific location, enthroned above all that He has made. Yet Ezekiel’s awestruck repetition of “appearance” and “likeness” (11 times in 3 verses) shows how completely the heavenly vision beggared his vocabulary. Such Old Testament descriptions are doubtless an accommodation to human limitation. But they evidently set out a concept that it is best for God’s servants to have in mind. We must learn from them as best we may.

The Father’s Name “holied”

But how is the Lord’s Name hallowed, that is, “holied”? Certainly the avoidance of any taking of His Name in vain is included here. But this is to be content with the most superficial meaning of the words. In scripture the name of a man is much more than the conventional label which he wears in society. It signifies his personality, character and purpose in life. There is something of this in modern usage when, for example, the police demand: “Open, in the name of the law” — that is, because I have the authority of the law of the land behind me.

So, to hallow God’s Name is to give Him the reverence and honour due to Him as Maker and Sustainer of all. More than this, it is to glorify Him by an intelligent understanding of His revealed Purpose, a Purpose which His memorial Name embodies.

This aspect of the prayer — glorifying God as the Holy One of Israel and as the God of wondrous irrefragable covenants – does not go by default amongst “the Israel of God” in these days. But, strangely enough, as L.G.S. has very incisively pointed out in “The Teaching of the Master”, the same people are capable of a practical disbelief in His very existence! The Name of God is hallowed best of all by an unceasing recognition that He is Lord of all, the One to be acknowledged in all the activities of life, big and small.

A Neglected Practice

Yet, in fact, few know “the practice of the presence of God” (as it has been called). Much the biggest part of each day goes without conscious acknowledgement of God. Not only is it true that “God is not in all their thoughts”: He is in hardly any of them. Such is the weakness of human nature. It is the most saintly of the saints of God who are most aware of this besetting sin of “atheism”. Many go blithely about their affairs day by day, content to pay to God just a tithe (or less) of time and effort in Bible reading, prayers and religious duties. Yet this prayer, properly prayed, implies not only: we will never cease to regard Thy Name as holy; but also: we will do all in our power to make it known as holy; and we will seek holiness in every aspect of our daily living.

Alas! for one who would be “a vessel unto honour, sanctified and meet for the master’s use”, this “holy-ing” of God’s Name must remain at best a conscious ideal (ls. 8:13), a discouraging but not discouraged pursuit of “righteousness, , faith, charity, peace, with them that calf on the Lord out of a pure heart” (2 Tim. 2:21, 22). And individual consecration will make a sanctified community, “not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but…holy and without blemish” (Eph. 5:27). A holied ecclesia means the Name of God is hallowed (Jn. 17:17, 19).

Future Fulfilment

This was David’s ideal in his day: “Let thy name be magnified for ever, saying, The Lord of hosts is the God over Israel” (2 Sam. 7:26). But, alas, in his day there was only meagre realisation of such an aspiration, and even less thereafter. Notwithstanding, the great Purpose does not falter. The ultimate fulfilment will put all in perspective: “I do not this for your sakes, O house of Israel, but for mine holy name’s sake, which ye have profaned among the Gentiles, whither ye went. And I will sanctify my great name, which was profaned among the Gentiles, which ye have profaned in the midst of them; and the Gentiles shall know that I am the Lord, saith the Lord God, when I shall be sanctified in you before their eyes” (Ez. 36:22, 23).

So, most of all, “Hallowed be Thy Name” is a prayer for the open manifestation and vindication of the Holiness of God in a world which has written Him off.

“Thy Kingdom come”

And similarly with the next petition. Prayer for the coming of God’s kingdom may be an expression of a personal eagerness to take part in a heavenly prize-distribution, or it may have as its springboard an intense zeal for the honour of God. L.G.S. has well said concerning the former emphasis: “To desire the kingdom merely as an end for ourselves is to desire not God’s kingdom but our own.” Yet assuredly personal participation and blessing should be, can hardly help but be, a vital part of the thinking of those who truly seek God’s kingdom and God’s righteousness. Hezekiah’s prayer when the invincible Assyrians were at his gate was for personal deliverance and that or his people, but the ground for his irresistible petition was that this proud Assryian had “reproached and blasphemed…had exalted his voice and lifted up his eyes on high against the Holy One of Israel” (ls. 37:3, 23). Therefore God must assert Himself. The rabbis were right in principle, if extreme in enunciation, when they declared: “The prayer wherein there is not mention of the kingdom of God is not prayer.”

What then, exactly, is the force of this petition? Is it a prayer which in some way actually influences the time of the bringing of God’s kingdom? Or is it no more than an expression of personal involvement: “We should like the kingdom to come”?

A Prayer with Power

Those who are wedded to the view that God has put a ring round a date on His calendar, and that nothing in heaven or earth can change that decision are necessarily committed to the latter view, which reduces “Thy Kingdom come” to a petition so milk-and watery as to be hardly worth praying at all: “We would like the kingdom to come, but we know that nothing we say or pray can alter what is already settled.”

Yet the Greek aorist tense imparts a real sense of urgency to the words. And even if it did not, it is unthinkable that the steadfast importunities of countless saints of God should be as though they had never been spoken. “I have set watchmen upon thy walls, O Jerusalem, which shall never hold their peace day nor night: ye that are the Lord’s remembrances, keep not silence, and give him no rest, till he establish, and till he make Jerusalem a praise in the earth ‘ (ls. 62:6, 7)

This is also the apostle Peter’s exhortation: “Looking for and hastening (by your holy way of life and your godliness; v. 11) the coming of the day of God” (2 Pet. 3:12). The A.V. reading here: “hastening unto the coming of the day of God” is possible as a translation but is meaningless in this context. But if godliness can hasten the coming of the kingdom, then so also most assuredly can fervent prayer for it.

This is surely the main point of the Lord’s parable about importunate prayer. The story of the widow and the unjust judge is the continuation of a long discourse about the coming of the kingdom; and it concludes with the solemn words: “Nevertheless when the Son of man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth?” The faith which is not content to wait passively for the coming kingdom but storms the citadel of heaven with prayer for the vindication of God’s righteous remnant, will be a rare commodity in the last days. It is!

“Thy will be done”

Since the next petition: “Thy will be done/ is more closely linked with “on earth as it i; in heaven” than its predecessors, it is inevitable that it should be thought of chiefly as adding emphasis to the prayer for the kingdom. This it certainly does, yet the very fact of its use by the Lord in Gethsemane should teach its value as a marvellously simple expression of a basic philosophy of life-that there is no higher achievement in this age than to be content with what God appoints as one’s lot in life. Certainly in Gethsemane this was the case. “Not my will, but thy will be done” was the ultimate spirit of complete resignation reached by Jesus, yet it was not achieved without the sweat which was as great drops of blood.

The Muslim mutters his “Kismet! it is the will of Allah”, and makes this resignation, which could be altogether admirable, into a blanket excuse for indolence, both physical and spiritual. But with Jesus, complementary to “Thy will be done” was the Scripture written concerning him: “Lo, I come; in the volume of the book it is written of me, I delight to do thy will, O my God” (Ps. 40:7). Accordingly his short ministry was one ceaseless surge of godly activity, as Mark’s often-repeated “straightway” eloquently testifies. It therefore ill becomes any disciple to squat on his haunches (or, more likely, loaf in an armchair), the while murmuring: “Thy will be done (by somebody else)”. “Whosoever shall do the will of my Father which is in heaven , the same is my brother and sister and mother” (Mt. 12:50).

A Prayer without Power?

There is another mistaken acceptance of the will of God which can be equally devastating in its effect on one’s prayers. This springs from a misunderstanding of the familiar words: “If we ask anything according to his will, he heareth us” (1 Jn. 5:14). Very often this is taken to mean:

“If we ask according to what the omniscient foreknowledge of God has pre-determined.”

How often are the words used in this way in communal prayer-and privately also, no doubt. Yet if this really is what is meant, where is the power of prayer, what point is there in praying? The child of God is reduced to pious hopefulness that peradventure what he asks before the throne of grace may happen to coincide with what the Almighty has already made up His mind to do anyway. Either way, the prayer has achieved exactly nothing.

The error lies in a misunderstanding of the key word “will”. It does not signify “that which God has pre-determined and will inexorably carry out”. The meaning is: “that which God is willing to do.” The clear implication is that there are many things which God is willing to do. There are also many which He is not willing to do, because they would involve denying Himself or working harm to His children. (Consider the experience of Paul – 2 Cor. 12:7-10).

It stands true then, that “Thy will be done” means “my will be done”, when motive and outcome are alike according to God’s mind. This is also emphasized by the qualifying clause: “on earth as it is in heaven”.

A high ideal

Here, in the thinking of most, the tendency is to put the emphasis on the idea of fulfilment of the will of God in the lives of His children as perfectly, promptly and completely as in the service and obedience of the angels. Thus repetition of the prayer holds constantly before the mind an ideal of godliness so lofty and far-reaching as to be sadly discouraging by its very impossibility to the earnestly striving child of God.

Yet this is only half the story. The angels in heaven serve the Creator with a will, which is wholly, and entirely His. In them there is no inner conflict, no split personality, but only a happy whole-hearted devotion to the fulfilment of the Almighty’s purpose. Then how far-reaching is the plea: “Thy will be done (in me) on earth, as it is done by the angels in heaven.” It is the biggest thing a man can ask this side of the kingdom of God: “Lord, take this poor self-centred sin-cursed nature of mine, and change it even now to be wholly godly, spiritual, Christ-centred.” But the first requisite in such a prayer is faith – faith to believe that such a thing can happen.

Those who in this spirit dedicate themselves to doing the will of God are brother, sister and mother to Jesus (Mt. 12:50). Thus, to pray this prayer in all sincerity is to aspire to true kinship to the Son of God.

Daily Bread

The Prayer switches now, apparently, from the biggest things to the smallest. After ranging forward to the grand realisation of God’s great redemptive Purpose and after daring to ask for present fulfilment in one’s own pathetic present experience, there comes in the petition for daily bread. Here, if it is, is the only phrase where the Prayer comes away from wholly spiritual aspirations.

The answer to the often-canvassed issue: Does “daily bread” mean that which sustains physically or spiritually? – must surely be: Both. Philosophers and early church ascetics, alike misguided by a doctrine of innate immortality independent of the body, find no encouragement in the Bible for their despising of the marvellous body God has given them. The teaching of Christ concerns the whole man, both now and hereafter. “Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit which is in you…therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s” (1 Cor. 6:19, 20). So a man has a responsibility to keep himself physically as fit as he can in order that his body may be a good efficient instrument in the service of God. And accordingly he has a right to ask his Father’s help and encouragement in such self-dedication. Hence “give us this day our daily bread.”

Physical and Spiritual Food

But let there be a due sense of perspective. Physical fitness and efficiency are relatively unimportant compared with the things of the Spirit. In nearly every place where the Bible talks about food for the body it invites further meditation on the appropriateness of its words to spiritual food. Even without the Lord’s own lengthy commentary in John 6 on the giving of manna to Israel in the wilderness, it would be evident that everything written about that wondrous providence of God has, and was intended to have, a higher spiritual meaning. The gracious words of- Isaiah when read properly, sum up this truth in matchless fashion: “Ho, everyone that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, and he that hath no money; come ye, break (bread), and eat; yea, come, buy wine and fatness (marrow) without money and without price” (55:1). Here the water and bread which men need become wine and marrow for their greater blessing (compare 25:6). And if a man is bidden look to God for the satisfying of his material needs, how much more may he

confidently look for the providing of the food of the Spirit.

It is noteworthy that twice in the immediate context of the Lord’s Prayer in Luke 11 material food is used as a symbol of man’s higher need. There is the parable of the neighbour seeking to borrow three loaves (it is a parable of preaching, if ever there were one). And there is the apostrophe: “If a son shall ask bread of any of you that is a father, will he give him a stone?” leading on to: “How much more shall your heavenly Farther give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him?”

In John 6 the Lord’s exposition of the giving of manna leaves no room for doubt that he intended his disciples to see both that marvel and his own miracle of feeding the multitude in the wilderness as parables of God’s Providence for the satisfying of another more serious hunger.

Other words of Jesus suggest a yet wider scope to this simplest of petitions. “I have meat to eat that ye know not of…My meat is to do the will of him that sent me, and to finish his work” (Jn. 4:32, 34). The context is the Lord’s conversation with the woman of Samaria. He began that discussion tired and hungry. When the disciples returned, they found him alert and refreshed, so that they were constrained to ask: “Has anyone brought him food?” Comparable experiences are possible for any who attempt the same kind of personal evangelisation.

Problems

There remain for discussion two problems, neither of which are evident to those who read the common version. What is the exact meaning of the word translated “daily”? And why the different form of the verb “give” in Matthew and Luke (in the original text)?

A great deal of very scholarly ink has been used up on the first of these.

Until Deissman found this word in an Egyptian papyrus, Matthew 6:11 and Luke 11:3 were its only known occurrences in all Greek literature. So the grammarians and philologists had a field day, producing all manner of guesses as to its meaning. And even now Deissmann’s find does not allow of any degree of certainty.

In such circumstances the Old Testament is probably the best aid, as it nearly always is. There is the familiar prototype of the manna. Also, Proverbs 30:8, 9 is remarkably close in idea: “Give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with food convenient for me: lest I be full, and deny thee, and say, Who is the Lord? or lest I be poor, and steal, and take the name of my God in vain.” Here the Hebrew word is, literally: “bread of my statute”, which might mean either “the food decreed for me by God’s Providence” (cp. Dt. 8:3), or “my food, which is God’s statutes” (cp. Ps. 119:103). The unusual phrase was probably chosen to carry both ideas, as seems certainly to be the case with this petition in the Lord’s Prayer.

The switch of tenses from Greek aorist to imperfect-in crude English translation, from “Give us right now”, to “Keep on giving us” – is readily seen to be appropriate to the change of emphasis between the two versions (Mt. Lk). In the former the stress goes on immediate need: “Give us this day our daily bread.” Abraham forgot this (Gen. 12:10) and as a result faced the most humiliating experience of his life. In the later form of the petition there is also recognition that always, without intermission, there must be dependence on the lovingkindness of God: “Give us day by day our daily bread.” Each emphasis has its proper place. It is right to lean hard upon God for due provision for any immediate need. It is right also to cultivate always the attitude of mind which recognizes how inevitably God’s Providence will be needed day by day, however long life may last.

“Forgive us our Sins”

One thing especially a man is constantly in need of if he is to remain integrated in the family of God — he needs to have his sins forgiven. Nothing is more fundamental. But Jesus speaks of debts. In the later version in Luke, where the petition is: “Forgive us our sins”, the apodosis is “for we also forgive every one that is indebted to us.” The word is valuable as emphasizing aspects of sin which tend to be lightly regarded. A sin of omission-failure to care for aged parents, neglect of one’s personal prayers-is as much a sin as any direct transgression of the law of God such as getting drunk or speaking spitefully of another. More than this, with all debts, even when there is no formal agreement, there is clear acknowledgement of an obligation to pay. So this word chosen by Jesus also involves frank recognition that much is owing in service to God and to one’s fellows which, sometimes with the best will in the world, goes undone.

God is a forgiving God

There is no phrase in this pattern Prayer which offers part-payment of the “debt”. Instead there is implicit in the four simple words: “Forgive us our debts”, the profound assumption that God is a forgiving God. Some of the Old Testament’s

most eloquent passages underline this grand truth. Nevertheless, their truth is realised only very slowly. “The Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, long-suffering, and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin (every kind of wrong!)” (Ex. 34:6, 7). “Come now, and let us reason together, though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool” (Is. 1:18). And there is the constant refrain of Solomon’s eloquent prayer at the dedication of the temple: “then hear thou in heaven thy dwelling place, and when thou dearest, forgive”. That, more than anything else, was what the temple was for.

But how slow men are to believe this truth! And the more sensitized a man’s conscience is, the greater the shame of his own sin, and the harder it is to believe that God is so gracious as to forget all about it. Always there is the vague feeling that forgiveness must be earned. Yet this cannot be. In the forgiveness parable it was when the servant had no means of repayment of the massive debt that his lord

“was moved with compassion,

and released him,

and forgave him the debt” (Mt. 18.27).

Earning Forgiveness?

There are conditions attached to forgiveness, to be sure, but earning this grace of God is not one of them: If we walk in the light… the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin…If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 Jn. 1:7, 9).

A famous Frenchman once said: “Le bon Dieu il pardonnera; c’est son metier” – “The good Lord will forgive us; that’s the thing He’s good at.” Both the French and English might have been better expressed, but the idea is right.

There is nothing a man can do to merit the forgiveness of God. Else there would have been no necessity for Christ to die. Sinners could have been left to get on with it by effort, self-denial and hard discipline. Instead, the redeeming work has been wrought for them. It is offered freely to the man of faith, who pays with all the loyalty and devotion he is capable of, not in order that his sins might be forgiven but because they have been forgiven.

This is the great lesson of the anointing of the feet of Jesus by the woman of the streets. She showed her act of great love for the Lord as an expression of inexpressible gratitude for sins forgiven. The Lord’s parable (Lk. 7:41, 42) proves

this. No wonder he said to her: “Thy faith hath saved thee.” It was faith far beyond the ordinary which could recognize and thankfully accept that, her sordid life notwithstanding, this humble preacher from Nazareth was the means of her acceptance before God. No wonder Jesus rejoiced in her discernment.

On what conditions?

This gracious forgiveness which God holds out to men is given on conditions. There are strings attached. No quid pro quo, but simply a right attitude of mind in the forgiven sinner-a right attitude of mind which shows itself by:

faith in Christ as the Saviour;

walking in the light;

confessing one’s sins;

forgiving others- “Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors”.

From the very nature of the transaction, it is only those who fulfil these conditions, or, rather who are in this condition who can be forgiven.

Jesus evidently regarded the forgiving of others as so vital that he made it the subject of a special comment. It is the only clause of the Prayer which he elaborated on at all and this he did both positively and negatively: “For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you: but if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses” (compare also Mk. 11:25, 26).

“As we forgive”

The very obviousness of this simple principle would surely make emphasis superfluous. But Jesus knew human nature. How often there is need for pointed reminder that if a man comes to the Lord’s Table seeking forgiveness of his own sins he must rid his mind (even as he “stands praying”; Mk. 11:25) of any resentment against any. “If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me” (Ps. 66:18). Yet it is not unknown for long-standing resentments to be cherished in the hearts of those who deem themselves to be members of the family of God in Christ. It constitutes not only a strange anomaly but also a shameful tragedy.

By their Law the people of Israel were bidden release all slaves and cancel all debts in the Year of Jubilee. The Lord’s words: “as we forgive our debtors”, bid his disciple live as though in an endless Year of Jubilee. As “debts” are contracted, so they are to be cancelled. The very idealism behind such an approach to the problems of human relationships often precludes its practical application. Yet there must be at least some sort of attempt to reach out towards fulfilment. To shrug off this exacting teaching of Christ as too remote from the brass tacks of ordinary daily living is to pass a vote of “No confidence” in him, as well as in one’s fellows.

Rather remarkably, Paul enunciated this forgiveness principle the other way round: “And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you” (Eph. 4:32). Not only must the Lord’s people forgive in hope of forgiveness, but also because of it. The conviction of the grace of God extended to oneself should beget a like graciousness towards others. Could anything be more far-reaching in its influence on all human associations, and especially in the family of God.

Temptation

It is useful at this point to note how the three main petitions have present, past, and future reference-daily bread,

forgiveness, and trials yet to come.

“Lead us not into temptation” is a petition fraught with considerable difficulty in the minds of some. It seems to carry the plain implication that God can and does designedly bring His children into situations where their integrity and survival as members of His family are in peril. The problem is pin-pointed by the excruciating experience of Abraham when bidden offer up his only-begotten son: “And it came to pass that God did tempt Abraham” (Gen. 22:1). Yet over against this is the explicit declaration of James that “God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man” (Jas. 1:14).

It is needful to recognize that the Bible uses the word “tempt” in two closely related but distinct senses. An illustration may help here. On one occasion when I was considering buying an oldish house I took an expert to inspect it. One of the first things he did was to go into each room, jump in the air and bring his two hundred pounds heavily down on the floor. That was a fair test to apply in order to assess whether the timbers were sound. Since they were, there was no harm done, but only satisfaction from the result of the test.

Now contrast what happens when automobile manufacturers are considering a new type of latch for a car door. With one of these new latches installed a mechanisn is rigged up which opens and slams the door time after time until at last the device wears out or breaks down. This test is deliberately designed to find out what is the breaking point, the absolute limit of endurance or service.

God “tempts” or tests His children in the first sense illustrated here, but not in the second. “The Lord thy God led thee these forty years in the wilderness, to humble thee, and to prove thee, to know what was in thine heart, whether thou wouldest keep his commandments, or no…he fed thee in the wilderness with manna, that he might humble thee and that he might prove thee, to do thee good at thy latter end” (Dt. 8:2, 16). “My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations; knowing that the trying of your faith worketh patience” (Jas. 1:2, 3). And specially valuable here is Paul’s explicit assurance that “God will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it” (1 Cor. 10:13).

Confession of Weakness

Thus, “lead us not into temptation” is no protest against unfair treatment by God, but a humble confession of human weakness such as even Jesus would fain acknowledge in himself. In Gethsemane his exhortation to the disciples was: “Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation: the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak” (Mt.26:41). The words were more an expression of his own desperate conflict and need than of theirs.

Yet how difficult it is to be honest in the praying of this prayer. The fact is that there are very few who do not have their own favourite sins which they are too much in love with to want to be for ever rid of them. It is written concerning Jesus that he “loved righteousness, and hated wickedness.” For those in Christ also the first of these is true, but not the second. With ruthless honesty Augustine’s famous prayer put the problem in a nutshell: “Lord, make me chaste-but not yet!” God can save a man from his sins only when he desperately and with utter sincerity wants to be saved from them.

To illustrate the point on a relatively trivial level (though admittedly not trivial for some) -if a smoker seeks to be rid of his bondage to tobacco, is he wise to go about with a pack of his favourite cigarettes in his pocket? And is he helping God to help him if, when the craving for a smoke is on him, he loafs around indoors, alone and bored with his own company? In such circumstances would he not do better seeking activity and the society of those who can not only distract his mind from the temptation but also provide positive help with the good spiritual tone of their conversation? It is futile to pray: “Lead me not into temptation”, if there is to be the implicit addendum: “But I reserve the right to lead myself into temptation.”

“Deliver us from evil”

Perhaps this evil within is what the Lord specially meant when he added: “but deliver us from evil”. The phrase as he spoke it has the definite article: “the evil”, but it does not follow that the received translation is defective, for in Greek abstract nouns commonly carry the definite article even when it is not to be translated. The reading: “deliver us from the Evil One”, as though with reference to a superhuman Tempter may definitely be eliminated, not only because of the over-all teaching of Scripture but because of usage elsewhere in the Sermon on the mount: “whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil” (5:37)…“but I say unto you, that ye resist not evil” (5:39). In the second of these especially it would be palpably absurd to read: “Resist not the Evil One”.

But there is also the evidence of Paul’s use of the Lord’s Prayer: “that he might deliver us from this present evil world (or, age)” (Gal. 1:4); and, “the Lord shall deliver me from every evil work” (2 Tim. 4:18). This interpretative usage is decisive.

Evil which is not evil

Nor is it correct to interpret “the evil” only with reference to adverse circumstance, for that which men might well regard as a great evil in their experience — hard poverty, crippling disease, persecution, bereavement-may well be the Lord’s deliberate providential blessing, “I pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from evil”, Jesus prayed concerning his disciples. Nevertheless the early chapters of Acts show them facing much hardship. God promised Jeremiah: “I am with thee to save thee and to deliver thee, and I will deliver thee out of the hand of the wicked, and I will redeem thee out of the hand of the terrible (15:20, 21). But the experiences of that faithful prophet were such as would have broken many a lesser man.

So what may well appear to human judgement to be evil of the direst kind may actually be God’s blessing, potentially, if only there is the right reaction in His servant. Alas, it is all too easy, instead, to be dominated by less important considerations which happen to loom large in one’s own judgement. This happened to Paul, so it could certainly come in the experience of fellow-disciples of much smaller stature. He besought the Lord thrice that the thorn is his flesh might be taken away. Whatever it was – whether epilepsy, malaria, sexual desire, his personal adversary in Corinth (the guesses are many and varied) – Paul must have had a very high motive for seeking to be rid of it. Unhandicapped, how much better would be his work of spreading the gospel! But the Lord’s emphatic answer was: No! He could see, what was not so evident to Paul, that through the sheer magnitude of his achievements this great-hearted disciple was in grave danger of becoming a castaway. “Lest I be exalted above measure.” They are terrible words, but they tell a wonderful story of a divine deliverance from evil.

A telling example such as this, taken together with the close link in the Prayer between this petition and that which precedes, suggests that “the evil” specially covered by it is the temptation which not only tests but also destroys. (Many New Testament parallels could be cited for taking the definite article as demonstrative, “this evil”: the temptation that is more than a man can stand: see study 66). How many many times in life does a man need saving from himself. He is his own greatest evil. If in earnest repeated prayer Paul could seek as a blessing that which would have turned out to be his spiritual ruin it may be taken as certain that the same is possible a score of times over in the lives of others of lesser calibre. This, then, is not a part of the Prayer to be lightly dispensed with.

Doxology or not?

In Luke the Prayer ends at this point, and so also in Matthew, according to most modern versions. So the question needs to be faced: Is the doxology an authentic part of the Prayer as given by Jesus, or should it be regarded as a liturgical addition appended by the early church?

A careful investigation of the textual problem reveals that it was because the doxology was given a special place in the liturgy of the early church (3rd century and onwards) that it came to be omitted from a handful of manuscripts which have been accorded far more importance on this question than they deserve. But when all is said and done, the clear evidence of the writings of Paul (Gal. 1:4; 2 Tim. 4:18), in what are undeniable allusions to the Lord’s Prayer, and specially to its doxology, makes the entire textual controversy futile and unnecessary.

David’s Hymn of Praise

The close similarity to David’s wonderful hymn of praise to God (1 Chr. 29:11) makes it probable that the likeness was intended:

“Thine, O Lord, is the greatness, and the power, and the glory, and the victory, and the majesty: for all that is in the heaven and in the earth is thine: thine is the kingdom, O Lord, and thou art exalted as head over all.”

It was near the end of David’s reign that the people, in a rarely equalled surge of zeal for the God of their fathers, fired by the infectious enthusiasm of their aged king, brought lavish gifts out of their God-given prosperity. All was freely given for the new temple, “exceeding magnifical”, which was to be built. How readily David acknowledged that what was now given in such generous quantity was only what had been so abundantly showered on them by God Himself: “for all things come of thee, and of thine own have we given thee” (29:14).

Thus the doxology framed by Jesus expresses for his disciples the like recognition that all they are and know and enjoy are God-sent blessings, in acknowledgment of which there can be no re-payment but only praise and thanks.

This view of the doxology, learned from 1 Chronicles 29, goes a good way towards answering the mystifying problem: Why is it that there is no expression of thanks in the Lord’s Prayer? The answer appears to be: There is, but it comes in the form of praise and rejoicing at the surpassing goodness and glory of God. Let a man’s thanks to God take specially the form of deeper understanding of the character of God and a whole-hearted concentration of praise to His Name, and he is as near to the inner spirit of the Lord’s Prayer as he is ever likely to be.

In the context of 1 Chronicles 29 David’s prayer obviously meant: “Lord, all that I have I now gladly dedicate to Thee.” This, again, is what the believer’s doxology should mean. Here is the explanation of the mystifying present tense: “for thine is the kingdom…” In this present day of spiritual rack and ruin the words seem to be a mockery. Nevertheless they express David’s ideal. He did not see that wondrous temple in being, but he saw the site cleared for it and the people eager and earnest. His faith clothed the rest with reality. And today as the believer concludes his prayer, his faith turns into present reality the future kingdom and power and glory of the God he worships – and this “for ever”.

Paul’s fervour for the honour and majesty of God found this phrase of measureless time too inadequate for all that he would ascribe to the greatness and goodness of God. He is content with nothing less than “for ever and ever” (Gal. 1:5; 2 Tim. 4:18).

The Amen

Each of the five Books of Psalms similarly concludes with an eloquent ascription of praise to God, rounded off by a mighty “Amen and Amen”-spoken, it may be, first by priest and then by the people. At first sight the fifth Book may appear to be a disappointing exception, but in reality it is not, for what Psalms 41, 72, 89, 106 say in one verse, Psalm 150 says from start to finish.

These doxologies in the Psalms also remove what might otherwise be a vague sense of mystification that the Lord’s Prayer makes no allusion to the Covenant Name of God. It is there in the words: “Thy will be done”. It is here also in the emphasis on the timelessness of God, that He is “from eternity to eternity” He is “the Lord God, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty” (Rev. 1:8).

The Amen which rounds off the Prayer is not a mere formality, nor must it ever degenerate into such. The early church said an audible unanimous Amen. “How shall he that occupieth the room of the unlearned say the Amen?” (1 Cor. 14:16). And there is allusion to this in Paul’s words: “That is why, when we give glory to God, it is through Christ Jesus that we say ‘Amen’“ (2 Cor. 1:20 NEB.).

At the beginning of this century it was very common in the ecclesias for each individual to add his own quiet Amen, but the custom has now almost disappeared, and our corporate worship is the poorer for the omission. Indeed, the sorry state of affairs has arisen that often there is no Amen at all, for some ministering brethren have developed the habit of leaving the Amen to the congregation. Thus each leaves it to the other, to the detriment of the praise of God. It is high time the ecclesias got back to the practice of uttering a communal Amen. Some West Indian ecclesias do precisely this, and shame their brethren elsewhere.

Ideally, the Prayer should be one long Amen, each participant mentally supplying his own Amen to each item of praise and petition. But how many can muster the concentration to be altogether sincere and fervent in their personal assent to every phrase as it is spoken?

The Prayer realised

In the kingdom of God, when all is come to pass, that assent will be more real and intense. Just as the Breaking of Bread service will find a new fulness of meaning when it is fulfilled in the Kingdom of God, so also this Prayer. But then its petitions will have become glad and glorious affirmations, for then all will say:

Our Father

which art in heaven,

Thy Name is hallowed on earth as it is in heaven;

Thy Kingdom has come on earth as it is in heaven;

Thy will is done on earth as it is in heaven.

Thou hast given us this day and for every day our daily bread, the hidden manna.

Thou hast forgiven us our trespasses,

and we have forgiven those who trespassed against us.

Thou hast not led us into overpowering temptation, but

Thou hast finally delivered us from evil.

Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory

for ever and ever. Amen and Amen.

Notes: Mt.6:9-13

Luke 11:l-4

“Lay not up for yourselves treasure upon earth.” The Lord’s teaching on how to live the New Life was bound to be seriously incomplete if it laid down no principles about a right attitude to money, for in the minds of millions money is the great reality in life.

Pharisee righteousness had been shown to be bogus. So also Pharisee wealth – that which they chose to esteem as a God-given reward for their righteousness.

Jesus was too practical in outlook to deny money a place in the lives of his disciples, but the smaller the part it can be made to play the better. For the pursuit of riches is worse than the pursuit of pleasure. Appetite for the latter becomes sated, and in any case palls with advancing years. But not so the lure of wealth. For, no matter how much money a man accumulates, he always has some satanic reason for wanting more, if only as an insurance policy against the loss of what he has already accumulated.

Again, motive!

The corrective Jesus applies is in the two words: “for yourselves”. In this field, as in so many other aspects of human activity, all depends on a man’s motive. It is when the owner of wealth regards the money as his that it becomes “a root of all kinds of evil”. But what a need there is for a scrupulously honest attitude of mind in this. The heart of man is self-deceiving. How it can delude its owner into a state of “let’s pretend”! So easily a man may persuade himself that his money-making motives and intentions are right, when in fact they hide from himself his own true ambitions and aspirations. He is a rare individual indeed who can live the simple life whilst accumulating wealth to be turned to good account in the service of God.

“Moth and rust corrupt”

Desire for money and for yet more money is all too often an expression of fear. Men and women seek security in life, and money is their way to achieve it-so they think! But Jesus says differently, for “moth and rust corrupt”. This is strange language to apply to gold and silver, which all the world knows to be marvellously durable. Yet here is Christ saying that gold is flimsy as the garment on your back, and that your silver is unsightly and corroded as if it were old iron. Peter picked up this perspective from his Lord, caustically reminding that a Christian’s redemption is “not with corruptible things, as silver and gold.” Instead, still quoting Jesus, there is “an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for you” (1 Pet. 1:18, 4).

James also: “Go to now, ye rich men … Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are moth-eaten. Your gold and silver is cankered; and the rust of them shall be a witness against you” (5:1-3). But here James seems deliberately to switch to another word for “rust” in order to link up with Ezekiel’s prophecy of the destruction of Jerusalem (24:6 AV: scum).

In modern terms (the Lord’s warning implies) not only will your elegant clothes and curtains and carpets get the moth in them, and your fine cars rust away, but also your stock-market investments are subject to slump, your real estate may be taken over by the government, your accumulation of valuables is an incitement to burglary. Wealth, your main security, is itself not secure. So says the wisdom of the Book of Proverbs. “Do not slave to get wealth; be a sensible man, and give up. Before you can look round, it will be gone; it will surely grow wings like an eagle, like a bird in the sky” (23:4, 5 NEB).

In another place there is the warning: “One in a hurry to grow rich will not go unpunished” (28:20 NEB), the point here being that when money-making is a man’s target his moral principles become elastic and he is tempted to adopt shady methods in order to achieve his aim the more efficiently.

Paul’s commentary

Paul’s exhortation to the wealthy reads like a running commentary on the precepts of his Lord, without actual quotation of the words: “Charge them that are rich in this world, that they be not high-minded (the normal reaction of the well-to-do being precisely this, that they think themselves in the “upper class” in more ways than one), nor have their hope set on the uncertainly of riches, but in the living God, who giveth us richly all things to enjoy; that they do good, that they be rich in good works, ready to distribute (out of their material prosperity), willing to communicate (that is, to share fellowship); laying up in store for themselves a good foundation against the time to come (here is the true “security”), that they may lay hold on that which really is life” (1 Tim. 6:17-19). Here, there is the build up of the same kind of antithesis as was made by Jesus: “But lay up for yourselves treasure in heaven … for where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” It is an appeal to his disciples to see the worldly life and the life in Christ in their proper proportions. In the same way Paul, switching from literal riches to the figurative, proceeded to exhort Timothy to “guard the deposit” (6:20), as though he were a banker holding in trust valuable moneys on behalf of his clients, the ecclesia.

Rich and Poor alike

It is important to note that the Lord addressed his warning about the uncertain “security” of wealth to rich and poor alike. This is seen from the allusion to “treasure in heaven…where thieves do not dig through nor steal.” Palestine is a country of fine limestone where all save the poorest had solidly-built stone dwellings, whether big or small. But the verb “dig through” implies the poorest class of all, living in cottages of dried mud. Jesus was not taken in by appearances. He knew that, whether a man has five pounds in a Post Office savings account or whether he has a bulky portfolio of investments in government securities, he thinks more of his money than almost everything else. The exception to this rule is rare indeed.

The positive counsel: “Lay up for yourselves treasure in heaven”, can only mean, in this context: “Let your use of money be directed by the highest, and not mere mundane, considerations.” There are, of course, in the lives of all, the normal day-to-day expenditures which are an integral part of one’s routine. Jesus spoke of one’s attitude to the overplus which the ordinary worldling would regard as “treasure” to be laid up either against the proverbial rainy day or with a view to a self-indulgent spending spree later on.

And the spirit of the Lord’s teaching carries also the unspoken precept: And let your personal self-discipline see to it that that overplus is as large as possible. His word to the rich young ruler was: “Sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come and follow me” (Mt. 19:21). And after much hesitation and sorrow he did just that (see Study 148). By contrast with him the portrait of the Rich Fool in the parable (Lk. 12:16) was painted from the real-life experience of thousands.

In Luke the context of these words is somewhat different but the lesson is the same: “Sell that ye have and give alms; provide yourselves bags which wax not old, a treasure in the heavens J that faileth not … For where your treasure isl there will your heart be also” (12:33, 34). Thus Jesus teaches one of the secrets of learning how to love other people: Practice generosity towards them; the effect will be greater on you than on them.

This counsel is all of it palpably good and right, and yet human nature will not have it. It goes too much against the grain. Jesus foresaw this also. He therefore proceeded immediately to a serious warning against dishonest thinking. There is a big temptation, when faced with the exacting idealism of Jesus, to react with: “Well, of course, the Lord does not really mean this” -and then to go on to interpret or “bend” his teaching so as to bring it down to a lower, more matter-of-fact, and therefore more palatable, level. “Take thy bill and write fifty.”

Self-examination

So Jesus bade his disciples look well to their motives: “The lamp of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light. But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness.”

There is no man without a power of self-awareness, which enables him, with greater or less efficiency, to scrutinize his own mental processes, prejudices, and emotions. This is what is meant by the remarkable proverb: “The spirit (mind) of man is the lamp of the Lord, searching all the inward parts of the belly” (Pr. 20:27) – and here “belly” is a metonymy for a man’s natural appetites. In some this remarkable faculty can be so acutely developed as to come near to making life miserable. In others it may be so smothered and stultified over the years through dishonest thinking as almost to atrophy altogether- and then “how great is that darkness”!

The Lord’s warning against self-deception regarding the right use of money needs to be taken with the utmost seriousness. Incessantly a man should be scrutinizing his own motives and intentions with as scrupulous honesty as he can muster. Without this inner light flooding every corner of his soul, he will almost certainly continue, or end up, attempting that which Jesus declared impossible.

Attempting the impossible

“No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.” There is no adequate ground for believing that there was a Syrian god called Mammon. The word was commonly used in a bad sense to describe riches. It is probably derived from a Hebrew or Aramaic root which means “causing to trust” -an apt summary of the confidence people repose in their wealth.

Jesus was quite unequivocal. The service of God is incompatible with the service of mammon. The two cannot be successfully undertaken together. It is to be noted, also, that Jesus did not envisage the possibility of mammon being a slave to its owner. Only the reverse relationship is possible, that is, unless God is the master. Yet in every generation there are plenty of those bearing the name of Christ who think they know better than their Lord. They can serve both God and mammon. At least they are not prepared to admit defeat until they have spent long dedicated years in the attempt.

It is possible to sort out with precision the application of this vivid vigorous picture of a slave frantic and disorganized in his attempts to carry out simultaneously the instructions of two radically different masters. Since no man would go so far as to hate God, it must be the other way round-either he will hate mammon, and love God; or else he will hold on to mammon, and despise God.

In experience this is how it works out. The disciple of Christ who really loves the service of God comes to positively hate mammon for the large part which, willy-nilly, it insists on playing in his life. On the other hand when a man holds on to mammon, it is because (as the Greek text implies) this is where his real confidence and dependence is. Thus he despises God, as one unable to provide the help and support which he thinks he can count on from his money.

As a community how do we stand when assessed on the basis of the rigorous principles enunciated here? What manner of persons are we, and what manner ought we to be? Is there much difference?

Notes: Mt. 5:19-24

Lk.12

Jesus turned from instruction and reproof regarding one’s disposition towards others, now to encourage right attitudes towards God and one’s own personal needs and aspirations.

In a nutshell, what he taught here was: If it is a genuine need, and you want it hard enough, God will give it you. But there must be importunity and purposeful personal dedication to the goal in view. This is indicated by the form of the verbs which the Lord used: “Keep on asking…keep on seeking…keep on knocking.”

These precepts of persistence each find their illustration in one of the Lord’s later parables. There was the widow who knew her cause was right and who therefore would not desist from her pleading, even though the character of the judge who could help her was in itself a massive discouragement (Lk. 18:1-8). There was the merchant man “seeking goodly pearls” (Mt. 13:45, 46). Implicit in this short parable is a picture of journeys undertaken far from home, of patient enquiries and yet more patient bargaining, of disciplined sacrifice of pearls already treasured, but also of ultimate acquisition and deep satisfaction. And there is the story (Lk. 11:5-8) of the householder who, because faced with the obligations of hospitality, beat ceaselessly on his neighbour’s door in the night to plead for the help which he could get from nowhere else. Indeed, this parable has all three elements asking, seeking, knocking.

The spirit of precept and parable is the same. A man must know what he wants, and must want it so badly that all his desires and energies are focussed on this one thing until the end is achieved. Alas, the children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light. The purposeful spirit of men in eagerly seeking their aims or desires on a more mundane material level so rarely carries over into the field of spiritual aspiration. Yet, clearly, it is these that Jesus was talking about. Whether it be understanding concerning the fulfilment of God’s Purpose in the world (Mt. 24:3), or wisdom to direct one’s life aright, or that of the ecclesia (Jas. 1:5, 6), or aid in the exacting work of preaching the gospel (Jn. 15:7), or deeper understanding of the work of Christ (Jn. 16:23-30), or help for a brother in spiritual low water (1 Jn.5:16)-whatever the need, if it be not selfishly materialistic, the Father stands ready to give the desired aid. The Lord’s repetition, which might be judged unnecessary, emphasizes this truth: “For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened.”

It is clear that Jesus expected unbelief of these assurances (and how justified he has been in this!). So he went on to reason his case with a devastating logic and insight into human nature which are not to be gainsaid. Would a man mock his hungry child by offering him a stone to chew? And instead of the customary dried fish as appetizer, would he hand him a serpent or scorpion to scare or sting him? Such things-the first a mockery, the second and third positively dangerous-are unthinkable. “If you, then, bad as you are (and Jesus was addressing his close disciples!) know how to give your children what is good for them, how much more will your heavenly Father give good things to those who ask him!” (NEB). Jesus himself exemplified this by giving his hungry disciples both bread and fish (Mt. 14:19; 15:36; Jn. 21:9)-and this without their asking. And for those who do ask for fish his response is even better (Lk. 5:6, 10).

The realism about these words shows Jesus to be no starry-eyed air-borne enthusiast. He knew from personal experience the tremendous power of the ties of family affection. But he was not blind to the innate evil of human nature (Mt. 15:19). “Bad as you are!” – the phrase stresses: ‘This is your very nature!’ If even this ingrained selfishness can be swamped by parental instinct, then with how much more confidence may not the children of a God who is all loving-kindness look to Him in every need! (Cp. the argument in Lk. 18:6, 7.)

This counsel, which God’s sons accept so readily in theory and are yet so loth to profit by in practice, is the positive counterpart to what the Lord had taught a little while earlier regarding the danger and sin of worry. Both there and here his illustrations from ordinary experience were designed to bring faith and dependence on God into everyday life as a normal reality.

Yet is it not true in practice that men do ask God to satisfy their needs, they do seek wisdom and guidance from Him, they do knock at doors which He can open? – and then they positively forget to scrutinize their experience, whether soon or late, for the divine response. The children of God are not comfortable breathing the rarified atmosphere of the life of faith, although this is their native air. So it was not for nothing that Jesus said: “Keep on asking, keep on seeking, keep on knocking.”

Indeed, it is almost as though Jesus were saying, in modern phrase: “You can’t lose!” The hungry child in God’s family, asking for something to eat (as healthy children always do) and already taught to ask when hungry (Lk. 11:3, 5), will not be fobbed off with the mockery of a piece of stone. The worst of human parents, “being evil”, would hardly indulge in such mockery. And isn’t your Father in heaven the best of all possible parents in this world? The child clamouring for a fish to add flavour to his barley bread-would you dream of offering him an unclean eel or a deadly serpent? Will a stinging scorpion show your love for your little one asking for an egg? Then with what confidence may not God’s children come to Him and experience His opening the windows of heaven to pour forth blessing-not necessarily the blessing that is asked for, but certainly the blessing that is needed.

In Luke, the promised gift is “Holy Spirit”. It is doubtful if the absence of a definite article makes any difference to the meaning here. It might mean “a holy mind or disposition”. It might mean “the powers of the Holy Spirit” to aid the work of preaching the gospel (see Study 128 on vv. 5-8). Yet apparently Jesus had already given Holy Spirit powers to the Twelve and the Seventy (Mt. 10:1; Lk. 10:1).

Next follows an altogether unexpected inference from the simple but difficult principle just taught: “Therefore (because your heavenly Father is ready to show such liberality towards you), whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them.”

The words were not unfamiliar to the ears of his disciples, for something rather similar had been enunciated as a leading principle of one of the two main rabbinic schools. Hillel, father of the Gamaliel who trained Saul of Tarsus, a pleasant humble man, had taught his followers: “What is hateful to thyself do not to thy fellow-man; this is the whole Law, the rest is commentary.” Jesus said the same, but stated it positively, and thereby widened its scope enormously, charging it with an idealism which is positively frightening. And he introduced it with an important “Therefore”, as though implying from the context: ‘God does good to you because that is His nature. But men are naturally evil. Therefore, if you would receive good from them, should you not first show that kind of divine goodness to them?’ The Lord does not add that such an attitude will infallibly succeed. But neither does God’s lavish goodness to all His creatures evoke that response (indeed, hardly ever!), yet is He never dissuaded, never discouraged.

In this all-embracing principle-doing to others as one would be done by–there is turned to positive usefulness the ingrained selfishness which is a natural trait of every man alive. Would he know his bounden duty to his fellows in the world or in the ecclesia? Then let him mentally change places and ask himself what he would most appreciate in friendship, understanding, practical aid, sympathy, fellowship. Few things said by Jesus are more wide-ranging in the impact they can make on daily life. Perhaps it is for this reason that this principle appears to be so rarely invoked. It is just too uncomfortable.

Notes: Mt. 7:7-12

Jesus concluded his survey of the main principles of the New Life with a blunt reminder that the disciple who is not a fully committed disciple is no disciple at all. He requires not only that there be a life of active service for God, but also that such service be undertaken in the right spirit.

How startled that Galilean crowd must have been when this Jesus, the carpenter of Galilee, tacitly assumed the role of Judge of all the earth: “Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven”. At first appearance here is a flat contradiction of the constantly-reiterated teaching that he seeks faith in himself rather than self-justifying works: “This is the work of God, that ye believe on him whom He hath sent” (Jn. 6:29).

Wonderful Works

Nor is Jesus satisfied by the vociferous self-justification: “Lord, Lord, ” (they are at it again! and in Lk. 6:46) “have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works?” Here is godly service done in the name of Jesus. What more could be desired?

The answer which the Lord himself supplies is: A different spirit! The right things must be done with the right attitude of mind (1 Cor. 13: 1-3). Since God is Lord of all, He does not need even the most fully dedicated efforts of even the finest of His servants. And it may be — alas, it often is the case-that gargantuan labours, undertaken In the name of Christ, minister mote to the glory of the servant than the honour of his Master.

Double Danger

So here the conscientious disciple finds himself on a knife-edge. On the one side, good works done with the wrong motive. On the other, laziness “justified” by the knowledge that one’s finest efforts only minister to spiritual pride and in any case are at best minuscule before a God who does not need them.

Jesus probed at the second of these with his expostulation: “Why call ye me Lord, Lord, and do not the things that I say” (Luke 6:46). And if a man will press his own conscience for an honest answer to this question he is well on the way to a worthwhile self-knowledge. The apostle James’s blunt exhortation attacks the same spiritual cancer: “Be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves (into thinking that ye are doers)” (1:22).

The attitude of mind must be right, or all is effort thrown away, and these holy deeds done “in thy name”-note the triple repetition! – are works of iniquity to be reprobated as such in the day of scrutiny. The insincere profession of a dedicated life (Tit. 1:16) will then be answered by the Lord’s own utterly sincere profession: “I never knew you”. Never! This grim word declares the ghastly truth that many a life deemed to have been lit up by a blaze of heavenly light has in fact never emerged from the smoky pall of Gehenna.

Who is right?

This astonishing picture of human assessments being reversed in the Day of Judgment is by no means unique in the teaching of Jesus. But even more surprising is the reiterated self-justification of those rejected by the Lord. With what persistence and apparent confidence are they willing to pit their evaluation of themselves against that of the One with “eyes a flame of fire” (cp. Lk. 19:20, 21). The triple self-testimonial of Matthew 7: 22 is reinforced by another six-fold: “when saw we thee an hungred, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or In prison, and did not minister unto thee?” (25:44). Duty has been done! Of that these rejected ones are sure. But what is the disposition of a man who is more confident of his own moral worth than the Lord is? In what spirit has this catalogue of good works been undertaken?

Again, “Lord, open to us … We have eaten and drunk in thy presence, and thou hast taught us in our streets” (Lk. 13:25, 26). Does it mean that among those whom the Lord refuses in the Last Day there will be some who actually remonstrate in protest against his “unfair” decision? Or is it that Christ’s pictures of judgment are framed this way in order to bring out into present daylight the tragic self-deception indulged in bv some who are unwilling to be honest with themselves about themselves? Their pious application to Christian duty is baldy exposed as “working iniquity”. This can only be because of the motive with which these self-acclaimed “wonderful works” have been undertaken.

A Messianic Prophecy

Somewhat unexpectedly the Lord’s word of reprobation harnesses a short Messianic psalm which has suffered neglect. Psalm 6:1-7 describes the sufferings of one brought to the point of death. The primary reference is to the sickness and tribulation of David at the time of Absalom’s rebellion (2 Sam. 15, 16; “David’s leprosy’ Testimony, November 1961). The rest of the psalm celebrates his restoration to health and authority over God’s people: “The Lord hath heard my supplication…let all mine enemies be ashamed and sore vexed…Depart from me, all ye workers of iniquity.” Thus the words which reprobate in disgust the hypocrites who act falsely in the name of king David will one day be used against those who would steal the honour of King Jesus.

Another possibility is that Jesus was alluding to a different psalm: “Do good, O Lord, unto the good and to the upright in their hearts. But as for such as turn aside unto their crooked ways, the Lord shall lead them forth with the workers of iniquity” (125:4, 5). If this is the reference, then the implication is that these whom the Lord rejects are thrust away because earlier faithfulness has turned to disloyalty. He seeks those who “go on doing (continuous participle) the will of the Father”.

The decidedly grim note which had crept into earlier sections of the Sermon on the Mount was now intensified. It is a measure of the seriousness of the warning which Jesus deemed necessary because of the spiritual dangers and temptations which his followers would inevitably face. In the parable with which he concluded the same solemn note of warning is there to the end.

Notes: Mt. 7:21-23

This very brief but vitally important section of the Sermon on the Mount presents a problem which is not easy to resolve – the question whether it is to be linked with what has gone before or be taken as introduction to the ensuing section about false prophets and false religion.

In favour of the former it can be urged that the definite article: “the strait gate”, often has a demonstrative sense in New Testament Greek: “this strait gate”. In which case reference would appear to be to the comprehensive but difficult precept which Jesus had just laid upon his disciples: “All things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them.”

Yet this is not free from difficulty. The picture presented to the mind is of a narrow gate giving access to a narrow way, with eternal life as its end. Such a mental picture does not seem appropriate to this principle of Christian graciousness. And, further, to apply it in this way would surely imply justification by one’s own good works. If indeed a man is to keep himself in the narrow way to life by observing the Golden Rule, then it must be admitted that a vast proportion of the Lord’s people, with the best will in the world, are frequently astray from it.

Again, the commentary: “few there be that find it” is hardly appropriate to the Golden Rule, which is easy enough to “find” but terribly difficult to maintain as a constant guiding influence in one’s life.

The words of Jesus here strongly suggest a faith which has to be sought out, and a personal decision and choice which have to be made. A man does not drift into the service of Christ. He becomes a disciple by making up his mind that this is the only loyalty he can accept, the only way of life for him to follow. This is the spirit of the appeal made to Israel by Moses, an appeal now reiterated by Jesus in even more challenging fashion: “I call heaven and earth to witness this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live” (Dt. 30:19).

It was a far-reaching claim that if a man would have eternal life he will find it in no other way than through the service of Christ himself: “I am the true and living way: no man cometh unto the Father but by me” (Jn. 14:6). “I am the door: by me if any man enter in he shall be saved” (Jn. 10:9). A man must give his own personal assent to these truths, and make his own personal decision in the light of them.

The only alternative is the wide gate and broad way by which the many follow the road to destruction. The teaching of Jesus here could hardly be more explicit. There are not many or even several ways a man may follow. There are only two, and every individual is in one or the other.

This “either – or” theme gets plenty of emphasis in the Bible-and needs it. Two ways (Jer. 21:8; Pr. 4:10-19); two trees (Ps. 1:6, 7; Jer. 17:5-8); two houses (Mt. 7:24-28). The Greek word for “narrow” is rather frightening. It means “squeezed up”; not “narrow”, but “made narrower”. Everywhere else in the New Testament it is associated with affliction, tribulation.

This narrow way in Christ has to be sought for: “Few there be that ffndit.” And since, only a short while before, Jesus had declared so unequivocally: “Seek, and ye shall find” (7:7), it follows logically that there are only few who seek! Experience underlines the truth of this. The vast majority, if not actually content with life as they find it, are so devoid of higher spiritual aspirations that they never seek anything different from what they naturally know. They do not have to “find” the way that leads to destruction. They are already in it, and are well content to make fast or slow progress there.

The teaching of Jesus here is eclecticism in its most rigorous form. In plain unvarnished fashion he made it perfectly clear that he expected no sweeping success in his preaching. The nation’s ultimate response to his appeal would be small. And in the wider field of Gentile evangelism also the same would be true.

Notes: Mt. 7:13, 14

The danger of ending up on the broad way to destruction is not so great for the earnest well-intentioned disciple as for the heedless easygoing self-centred worldling. But this danger does exist-for a different reason. A man’s eagerness to ensure that he is following the way of truth may lead him to attach himself to any dogmatic teacher who recommends himself by his own self-assurance. Such have been known to appear among the faithful with all the trappings of dedicated zeal and specialised knowledge.

“Grievous wolves”

Paul foretold the phenomenon: “Grievous wolves shall enter in among you, not sparing the flock. Also of your own selves shall men arise. speaking perverse things to draw away disciples offer them” (Acts. 20:29, 30). The apostle learned that term “wolves” from his Master. And the word he used for “grievous” suggests men who throw their weight about.

Jesus expressed the same idea when he bade his disicples “beware of false prophets”-men who rise up claiming falsely to speak with divine authority (cp. 1 Kgs. 13:11-32). He was to round off his ministry with a similar and even more pointed warning against these self-accredited teachers (Mt. 24:23-26).

Such men come “in sheep’s clothing”, soft and white-that is, with all the outward signs of being respectable and conformable members of the flock-but “inwardly they are ravening wolves”. But “sheep’s clothing” may mean more than “a sheep’s appearance”. Enduma means “a garment which is put on”. So it could be that this false prophet is pictured as a shepherd who fleeces or slays his sheep for his own comfort and well-being. The description: “ravening wolves” now follows very suitably. The picture could hardly be more accurate. When a wolf behaves as a wolf, it is not deliberately setting out to be fierce and predatory, it is simply behaving according to its nature. In the same way the false teacher leaves a trail of damage and ruin because this is his nature — his old nature, unchanged by the influence of Christ.

The figure (used again by Jesus in his parable of the Good Shepherd; Jn. 10:12) is drawn from one of Ezekiel’s searing censures of evil men in his own generation, but (like Ezekiel’s other prophecies) with prophetic reference to later days also. Prophets, priests and princes are all bitterly condemned for “ravening the prey like wolves” (22:25-27).

Paul passed on his Lord’s warning as one urgently needed in the early church: “Grievous wolves shall enter in among you, not sparing the flock” (Acts. 20:29.) It was one of the apostle’s characteristic understatements. They did much worse than that.

This basic characteristic of an unchanged nature is stressed yet again: “Do men gather a grape (even a single grape?) of thorns, or figs of thistles?” The fruits of the Spirit (Gal. 5:22, 23) do not grow on the least attractive of God’s plants.

Thorns and thistles, one of the curses of the Fall in Eden (Gen. 3:18), may still make their rank presence felt in the New Creation.

Needful Repetition

The principle that a leader in the church shall be judged by his fruits seems simple and obvious. Nevertheless the Lord’s insight into human nature led him to stress this truth again and again, both positively and negatively. It is as though he were teaching little children. Looking back over the years, who can say that the warning was unnecessary? To what extent has it been heeded? Perhaps there has been some uncertainty as to what Jesus meant by “their fruits”. The easy assumption that this describes a man’s personal righteousness is not adequate. The public act put on by the Pharisees had taken in an entire nation, and it would be strange indeed if there have not been more recent revivals of so successful a stage play.

Fruits – Judging Others

Yet in one respect this criterion is sound. In Luke’s gospel the advice to judge the quality of a tree by its fruits is closely linked with the beam and the mote – the denunciation of those who, heedless of their own short-comings, judge others with gusto. Faction leaders have ever shown a marked flair for disreputable activities of this kind.

Deceitful teachers may seek to add to this deceit by a show of good fruits. But the discerning will not be taken in. “A corrupt tree cannot bring forth good fruit”. This is an achievement beyond the power of men. Only God can achieve it, and only in Messiah’s family, as the genealogy of Messiah’s family illustrates: “Coz begat Anub” – Thorn begat Grape (1 Chr. 4:8).

The apostle James appears to have given the Lord’s words the same sort of meaning. In a chapter which used the figure of the tongue for the influence of the teacher in the ecclesia he more than implies that a teacher who is capable of both “blessing and cursing…bitter envying and strife” (3:1 RV, 10, 14) is not fit to have disciples at all: “Can the fig tree, my brethren, bear olive berries? either a vine figs?”. Does not each bear “offer his kind”? Yet, unwilling to lacerate his readers too much with the sharpness of his Lord’s figure, James seems deliberately to have modified the original saying.

Fruits-Disciples

Alternatively, it could be that the “fruits” Jesus alluded to are the actual teachings of these unworthy upstarts, but if so the figure loses some of its fitness, for fruits grow and ripen slowly. Again, and more probably, it is the quality of the disciples of these men to which the Lord pointed: ‘You can assess these prophets by the; kind of followers they gather round them’. In another place where the crop was recognized by its fruits-the parable of the tares – this seems; to be the main point: “When the blade was sprung up, and brought forth fruit, then appeared the tares also” (Mt. 13:26). The sowing of the tares corresponds to the introduction of false teaching. The ripening in the ear suggests the kind of converts made by this introduction of error.

Fruits – Attitude to Christ

The Lord himself indicated yet another application of this mini-parable, in a later encounter with the Pharisees, when his wonderful miracles were being airily attributed to an alliance with the powers of evil, he bade these baneful adversaries apply his own simple test to himself: “Either make the tree good, and his fruit good; or else make the tree corrupt, and his fruit corrupt: for the tree is known by his fruit” (Mt. 12:33). But Jesus meant the test to be applied to these Pharisees also-and with what damning results?

So the Lord’s test of false prophets could have as its main point: “You are to judge these men by what they say about me”. (In Mt. the context has precisely this idea; see Study 75). All stand or fall by their attitude to Jesus Christ! This is the very test by which the apostle John proposed to sort out the true and the false among the crop of self-appointed teachers with which the early church found itself afflicted: “Many false prophets are gone out into the world. Hereby know ye the spirit of God: Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God”. To this day there is no better single test of truth and error.

Judgment

And if the teacher be found wanting, if the tree bear evil fruit, what then? Christ answers bluntly: “It is hewn down, and cast into the fire”. This is also the fate of the tree which bears no fruit: “Cut it down; why cumbereth it the ground?” (Lk. 13:7). Even in the present day such decisions are made by “the owner of the vineyard” through the Word that He has given to His servants. And so Paul excommunicated Hymenaeus and Alexander for the blasphemies of their erroneous teaching (1 Tim. 1:19-20); 2 Tim. 2:17, 18). If the mouths of harmful leaders cannot be stopped (Tit. 1:11), this is the only alternative.

Notes: Mt. 7:15-20

Luke 6:43-45

In sharp contrast with the patient sustained reasoning in his discourse about the sin of worry, Jesus became peremptory regarding the universal human foible of sitting in judgement (condemnation) on the actions and motives of others. This he curtly proscribed: “Judge not, that ye be not judged.” The Greek imperative neatly implies: ‘You already have the bad habit (true of everybody!). You are to stop it!’

No word he spoke was more needed, or less heeded. To make censorious assessment of the character and behaviour and even the intentions of others is a human sin which is more often than not reckoned almost a virtue. Men-and, even more, women-pride themselves on being able to read character and discern motives. And always these demonic abilities contrive to minister to personal pride. For, behind every unspoken censure of one’s fellow is the tacit self-congratulation: “I thank thee, Lord, that I am not as he.” Yet at that very moment the Lord is probably grieving that the self-appointed judge is himself ripe for condemnation.

There is about this common critical spirit a rank unfairness which mostly goes unrecognized. Paul put it bluntly in his apostrophe to “whosoever thou are that judgest”: “Wherein thou judgest another, thou condemnest thyself; for thou that judgest doest the same things…And thinkest thou this, O man, that judgest them which do such things, and doest the same, that thou shalt escape the judgment of God” (Rom. 2:1, 3). Often enough – such being the power of the human mind for self-deceit-this is what happens.’’ *

Then does this mean that no reprobation of the actions of another should ever be spoken, or even thought? Are there not precepts enough in the New Testament bidding the Lord’s people assess and reject false teaching and evil ways of life?

Very true! But there is also, alas, the unattractive habit of passing censure on how other people behave. The principles of Christian living can often be interpreted or applied with different degrees of austerity or idealism, and then there is a temptation to write off the discipleship of others as paltry or lukewarm.

However, Paul insists that how believers express in practice their understanding of the Lord’s precepts rests between them and their Master: “Who art thou that judgest another man’s servant? Why dost thou judge thy brother? or why dost thou set at nought thy brother? for we shall all stand before the judgment seat of Christ…Let us not therefore judge one another any more: but judge this rather, that no man put a stumbling block or an occasion to fall in his brother’s way” Rom. 14:4, 10, 13).

And again: “I know nothing by (RV: against) myself; yet am I not hereby justified: but he that judgeth me is the Lord. Therefore judge nothing before the time, until the Lord come” (1 Cor. 4:4, 5).

Yet in the next chapter (5:3, 11-13) Paul requires the strongest repudiation of one whose way of life was not open to anything but an evil interpretation. It was as blatant a case as could be imagined.

There is a difference, then, which calls for careful discrimination. If a thing said or done is plainly condemned by Scripture, then for certain it is not the individual who passes judgement, but God in His inspired Word. And indeed in such instances there can be no better way of rebuking the manifest evil than by means of the specific Bible passage relevant to the situation.

It becomes evident, then, that the kind of judging Jesus specially warns against is the passing of judgement on other peoples’ motives. In such an activity even an inspired Bible ceases to be an infallible guide. The words of Jesus are a warning that, almost always, a man’s actions may be susceptible of more than one interpretation. And those who look for mercy for themselves in the Day of Account will surely wish to extend the same to their fellows. “Judge not, that ye be not judged.” Just as forgiving others is required as the needful accompaniment of one’s own forgiveness by God, so also in this matter of assessing and condemning the motives of others: “With what judgement ye judge, ye shall be judged.” Lex Talionis once again!

“With what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.” The two parts of the Lord’s pronouncement do not carry exactly the same meaning. The first refers to the formation of an adverse opinion, the second to the action taken on the basis of it.

The Apostle James’ caustic comment on these nefarious activities was doubtless written with his Lord’s words in mind: “He shall have judgment without mercy, that hath showed no mercy” (Jas. 2:13). And, alas, these unspoken verdicts on others are mostly without mercy just because they are unspoken!

Another reason why human beings indulge in this illicit activity is because they are persuaded that it does their fellows no harm The judgement is not uttered, so what damage can it possibly do? This assumption is false. Fellowship is seriously impeded. It is impossible to harbour a critical attitude towards one’s brother in Christ and at the same time express a true warmth of fellowship towards him. Maintaining a facade of fellowship may even bring in yet more hypocrisy. Without doubt, those who practise this kind of thing are themselves soiled by it. The corrosive influence of such a habit may be disastrous.

So, from every point of view, the wisdom of Christ should prevail, sweeping away all indulgence in this poisonous human penchant for passing judgement on the motives of others.

The hyperbole in the illustration used by Jesus the carpenter’s son deserves to be made more clear in translation than it has been. The “mote” is a tiny twig or splinter. In the only other occurrence of this Greek word it is used concerning the olive leaf in the beak of Noah’s dove (Gen. 8:11 LXX). And the “beam” is precisely what it is in modern building-a plank or baulk of timber. This word was used, for example, of the massive cedar pillars or boards in Solomon’s temple (1 Kgs. 6:15, 16).

Thus the grotesque picture conjured up by the Lord’s words is of a man vexed and irritated by some tiny foreign body in his eye; he is offered solicitous help by another who himself has a great plank of timber ruining his own vision. How is such a would-be “helper” in any position even to ascertain whether there is a mote in his brother’s eye? Much less is he able effectively to remove it!

The careful manner of the Lord’s rebuke is to be observed here. As was usual with him, it is couched in the form of a question: “Why beholdest thou…?” And if any man will stop to ask himself this question and supply an honest answer, there will be more ready recognition of how honest judgement can be clouded by self-esteem. David the wife-stealer could explode with righteous indignation against ruthless expropriation of a lamb until Nathan brought conscience back to life with his “Thou art the man!”(2 Sam. 12:5-7).

One searching question is followed by another: “How wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye…?” Again, the honest answer to this question will expose the pretence of good will and helpfulness. Here, in fact, is superior self-satisfaction and the indulgence of a love of exercising authority. Pride! Luke’s version (6:42) is specially telling with its palpably insincere: “Brother, let me pull out the mote that is in thine eye…”

Appropriately Jesus continued his exposure with the stinging rebuke: “Thou hypocrite, first cast the beam out of thine own eye” – and for this you will need your brother’s help! The incisive reproof is not to be gainsaid. Contemplation of this accurate diagnosis will make any honest disciple recoil from himself with shame.

And the obvious corollary is to leave all censure of others, which is not already pronounced by Holy Scripture, to the one who has neither beam nor mote in his own eye – Jesus, the one “without blemish and without spot”(cp. Jn. 8:7).

Rather unexpectedly, Luke introduces here the mini-parable about the blind leading the blind (6:39). This suggests the importance of self-criticism in one who is a leader in the ecclesia. If his own spiritual insight be impaired by a beam in the eye, or a mote, he will involve others in his own downfall. There have been sad examples of this.

This sustained and almost over-emphatic warning against judging others is followed immediately by a startling contrast — an instruction to be diligent in judging unworthy men, assessing their true character and dealing with them accordingly: “Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet and turn again, and rend you” (7:6).

This warning can be applied only when a dog shows himself to be a dog, or a hog a hog, and not until. A careful weighing of a man’s behaviour is clearly necessary. So some attempt at “judging” him is implied. But this commandment does not concern one who is a “brother” (v. 3-5). It is about the one to whom you have something holy to offer which he has not had hitherto. The distinction is important. “He that reproveth a scorner getteth to himself shame…Reprove not a scorner lest he hate thee…” (Pr. 9:7, 8). “Speak not in the ears of a fool: for he will despise the wisdom of thy words” (23:9).

The dogs Jesus alluded to were not the faithful domesticated family pets known to the modern western world, but the wild and savage ownerless beasts which roamed the streets of all eastern cities. “Giving that which is holy to dogs” was probably intended to conjure up the mental picture of a man throwing to these fierce uncontrollable animals the sacrifice which should have been offered up to God or shared with one’s brethren in a meal of holy fellowship before the Lord.

And the parallelism suggests that the “pearls” which Jesus pictured being cast to swine were not the lustrous jewels which women prize but the small pearl-like grains of manna (see Num. 11:7) which God provided for Israel in their wilderness journey.

A proper appreciation of the true force of these figures of speech helps towards a right and proper application of the principle enunciated here. To write a man off at first superficial acquaintance as “dog” or “swine” unworthy to hear the message of salvation in Christ is clearly not a right use of these words, but is more likely to be the refuge of a man of idle or timid spirit dodging his duty as a witness for the Truth.

Peter was not deterred from preaching the gospel on the Day of Pentecost because some said: “These men are full of new wine” (Acts 2:13). And when Paul stood before worldlings like Felix, Festus, and Agrippa, he was more concerned to ensure that even such as they should hear the gospel than he was about his own freedom.

A more likely application of this teaching would be as a warning against opening up the inner riches of one’s faith to one who has already shown himself to be critical or hostile. Such an individual is not to be invited, for example, to the holiness of a Breaking of Bread service or a prayer meeting or a discussion on principles of fellowship. The tabernacle in the wilderness was shut off from the ordinary world by a wall of dazzling white linen to remind men of the holiness of the God they worshipped.

In another respect the Lord’s words have been misconstrued. The introversion in the structure of this precept is easily missed. “Give not that which is holy unto the dogs…lest they turn and rend you. Neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet.” Here is warning that evil men may not only do despite to the message of Christ but may also do incalculable harm to the believer himself. For example, a caustic critic of the Truth, set on doing damage, could sear for all time the memories of those who were exposed to his caricature of the sacrament he witnesses. There are times, though happily not often in these days, when a due caution is to be observed.

Luke’s version of this section of the Sermon on the Mount has some significant and valuable differences.

He links “And judge not…” (RV) with the preceding: “Be ye perfect, even as your Father…”, but here he substitutes “merciful” for “perfect” – a clear indication, surely, that Jesus taught on these lines more than once. The antithesis between

mercy and judging is very striking.

Then comes a warm assurance not found elsewhere:

“Give, and it shall be given unto you; good measure, pressed down,

shaken together, running over shall men give into your bosom.”

But this is palpably untrue. It is very much the exception rather than the rule that men reward generosity with a vastly greater generosity. The difficulty disappears when it is recognized that the word “men” is not in the original text (see RV). When the unspecified “they” is taken to mean the angels, no further explanation is needed. Here is an emphatic assurance that the selfless life of a true disciple does not go uncared for or unrewarded.

But via a mini-parable there is warning against being led away by teachers who should be shunned and not followed: “Can the blind lead the blind? Shall they not both fall into the ditch?” Imagination supplies all the commentary that is needed. Then if a man choose to follow some human leader, how careful he should be to satisfy himself first that the true qualities of leadership are there, for “the disciple is not above his teacher.” Over the past century neglect of this simple admonition has led to not a few spiritual disasters. And so it continues.

If he is worth following, the teacher himself, like all other human beings, grows to a fulness of powers, a greater grasp of principles, a more balanced judgement, a keener insight, a more intense spiritual maturity. In these respects he will beneficently influence his disciples, so that in time disciple and teacher grow together to be brethren. How specially true of Christian discipleship!

There are, then, times when there must be pause to assess the quality of human leaders, but not so as to find satisfaction in censure.

Notes: Mt. 7:l-6

Lk. 6:36-42

The Ten Commandments forbad adultery, and here again the rabbis were content to be strictly literal in their understanding and application of the precept. As one commentator has pithily expressed it: “Moses said it truly. The interpreters said it with altered meaning.” Yet it must have been evident to these acute minds that in this area of human sinfulness especially, the desire and intention are themselves guilt. But a court of law cannot sit in judgment on a man’s frame of mind, so they were quite content to stop at emphasis on the evil act itself. They could have gone further, and have bidden every man arraign himself before the bar of his own conscience, with his own God-given power of self-examination as chief prosecutor. But now in the time of Jesus these religious leaders were so many unjust stewards basely adulterating the principles of men’s obligation to God, all for the sake of their own standing before the people.

So Jesus bade his disciples cease concern with outward conformity to the law of God. Their target must be not a spiritual respectability in the sight of men but the peace of mind which only the satisfied scrutiny of an alert and educated conscience can impart.

The Modern Worship of Sex

“I say unto you, that whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her (or, looketh on a man to provoke him!) hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.” The words have wrung a cry of despair and almost of protest from the soul of many a sincere, well-intentioned disciple. Human nature being what it is-and with some more than others- how is guilt to be avoided? In a sex-ridden twentieth century there is a positive barrage of incitement (by book, newspaper, radio, television, advertisement, dress) to think in terms of sex almost every hour of the day and night. In such an environment what followers of the Lord with a normal equipment of human nature can feel anything but guilt and wretchedness? One would surely need to be literally without eyes and ears to avoid the bombardment of solicitation which today at every turn parades and screams the gospel of sensual self-indulgence. How the young people growing up in such an age are to be pitied’ But not the young people only. It is specially significant that the Lord used the word “adultery”, not “fornication”. So his warning was addressed to married people also, specially to them. The temptations of an earlier generation were bad enough, in all consicence. Then what is to be said about society not only permissive, but expressive, apparently set on making Sodom appear like kindergarten innocence?

Evil Thoughts made welcome

There is perhaps a crumb of comfort in the fact that the words of Jesus mean: “whosoever looks on a woman with intention to lust after her…” The alluring thought is not a sin in itself-else Jesus himself stands condemned for his state of temptation in the wilderness. It is the tempting thought given welcome and hospitality which is the fundamental sin, whether it matures into evil action or not. Paul infers the sinfulness of lustful thoughts from the Tenth Commandment: Thou shalt not covet” (Rom. 7:7)

But this is not to say that there is no essential distinction between the lustful desire, savoured illicitly in the imagination, and the active expression of such concupiscence. “Jesus is far too much of a realist not to know that there is a vital difference between the act contemplated and the act committed-just as there is a wide difference between hard words and murder. But that difference is in the injury suffered by the other person; and Jesus has in view the effect on the sinner rather than on the one sinned against. Not the man’s act but his state of mind erects a barrier between himself and God.”

The same writer (L.G. Sargent in “The Teaching of the Master”) very trenchantly adds: “This being so, what will the judgment of Christ be on a civilisation in which immense industries connected with publishing, the theatre and the screen, are so largely engaged in playing upon the weaknesses of human desire?” Those words, written in 1950, were a very restrained commentary on post-war society. Then with what shade of ink do they need to be re-written today?

Aids to Holiness

If ever there was a time in the history of God’s people when there was need for self-discipline in the use of the eyes and also of the imagination, the television screen of the mind, it is today. Yet in large degree this has been always true. Was there ever a time when men-and women-did not have “eyes full of adultery”? (cp. Job. 31:1).

Hence the wholesome wisdom of the Mosaic injunction that the people wear fringes or tassels of blue in the borders of their garments – “that ye may look upon it, and remember all the commandments of the lord, and do them; and that ye seek not after your own heart and your own eyes, after which ye use to go a whoring” (Num. 15:38, 39). This wearing of “the livery of heaven” was to be a constant reminder, to those who cared to be reminded, that they belonged to the Lord and must eschew all things incompatible with His holiness. The modern counterpart to this might be to inscribe on every Christadelphian television receiver: “Whatsoever things are true, honest, just, pure, lovely…think on these things: (Phil. 4:8). Or, if this is too long, “Holy to the Lord”.

Drastic Self-Discipline

In all the Sermon on the Mount there is only a handful of negative precepts. So the Lord’s warning here is all the more emphatic: “If thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell.” The figurative nature of this drastic precept is immediately obvious, for what a man can see with his two eyes he can see almost equally well with one. The evident meaning is that there must be no flinching from the severest se/r”-discipline, if such is needful, in order to avoid the overpowering temptation by which the fire of lust makes inevitable the fire of Gehenna.

There must be no half-measures about such self-discipline. To emphasize this the Lord’s instructions are dramatically pleonastic: “Pluck it out, and cost it from thee.” Once rooted out of its socket that eye is powerless for good or evil. So “cast it from thee” underlines the lesson-and how true it is!-that if a man would be rid of his lust he must want to be rid of it, nothing less.

Negative and Positive Action

The practical measures involved might mean a complete cessation of “looking” or “listening”, a clearing out of all books and journals which may be in a literary sense respectable, genius even, but which are spiritually unclean and defiling. The wisdom of Christ counsels a clean sweep. In issues of this kind it is certainly best to err on the side of severity. It was not for nothing that Paul counselled Timothy: “Flee also youthful lusts” (2 Tim. 2:22). In another place he was even more explicit: “Mortify (put to death) therefore your members which are upon the earth; fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil concupiscence…” (Col. 3:5).

All will be unavailing, however, except there be positive action to fill up one’s time and thought with better things. It was when David was loafing in his palace in Jerusalem instead of leading his army in the Ammonite campaign that he suffered the greatest defeat of his life. Accordingly Paul’s counsel to Timothy continues: “but follow after (pursue) righteousness, faith, charity, peace, with them that call on the Lord out of a pure heart.” Positive activities and wholesome association! And in Colossians: “Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth.”

With all this good counsel it still remains true that the price of liberty from the thraldom of the flesh is eternal vigilance.

Notes: Matthew 5:27-30