The Preface to the Lord's Prayer — Our Father Which Art in Heaven
Having, through the good providence of God, gone over the chief grounds and fundamentals of religion, and enlarged upon the Decalogue, or Ten Commandments, I shall now, at the close, speak something on the Lord's Prayer.
Matthew 6:9 reads, "After this manner therefore pray ye, Our Father which art in heaven, hallowed," etc.
In this Scripture two things call for our attention: first, the introduction to the prayer, and second, the prayer itself, which consists of three parts: a preface, petitions, and a conclusion.
First. The introduction to the Lord's Prayer: "After this manner therefore pray ye." Our Lord Jesus, in these words, prescribed to his disciples and to us a directory for prayer. The Ten Commandments are the rule of our life, the Creed is the sum of our faith, and the Lord's Prayer is the pattern of our prayer. As God prescribed Moses a pattern for the tabernacle (Exod 25:9), so Christ has here prescribed us a pattern for prayer: "After this manner therefore pray ye," etc. The meaning is, let this be the rule and model according to which you frame your prayers.
As Calvin says, it is necessary to measure our prayers by this rule. Not that we are bound to the exact words of the Lord's Prayer; Christ does not say, "After these words, pray ye," but "After this manner," that is, let all your petitions agree and correspond with the things contained in the Lord's Prayer. Indeed, we may well make all our prayers consonant with this prayer, since it is a most exact prayer. Tertullian calls it a breviary and compendium of the whole gospel; it is like a heap of solid gold.
The exactness of this prayer appears, first, in the dignity of its Author. A piece of work receives its commendation from its maker, and this prayer receives its commendation from its Author: it is the Lord's Prayer. As the moral law was written with the finger of God, so this prayer dropped from the lips of the Son of God. It does not sound like the voice of a man; it is God speaking.
Second, the exactness of this prayer appears in the excellence of its matter. I may say of this prayer that it "is as silver tried in a furnace of earth, purified seven times" (Ps 12:6). Never was a prayer so admirably and skillfully composed as this one. As Solomon's Song, for its excellence, is called "the Song of Songs," so this may well be called "the Prayer of Prayers." The matter of it is admirable in three respects. First, its succinctness: it is short and pithy, a great deal said in a few words. It takes the greatest skill to draw the two globes of the earth accurately on a small map, and this short prayer is a whole system of divinity. Second, its clarity: this prayer is plain and understandable to every mind, and clarity is the grace of good speech. Third, its completeness: this prayer contains the chief things we have to ask for, and the chief things God has to give.
Application: Let us hold the Lord's Prayer in great esteem, and let it be the model and pattern for all our prayers. A double benefit comes from shaping our petitions to match the Lord's Prayer. First, doing so prevents error in prayer: it is not easy to write wrongly when copying from a perfect original, and we cannot easily go astray with our pattern set before us. Second, doing so secures the mercies we request, for the apostle assures us that God will hear us when we pray "according to his will" (1 John 5:14). And surely we pray according to his will when we pray according to the pattern he himself has given us. So much, then, for the introduction to the Lord's Prayer: "After this manner therefore pray ye."
Second. The prayer itself, which consists of three parts: a preface, petitions, and a conclusion.
The preface to the prayer has two parts: "Our Father," and "which art in heaven." Let us begin with the first words of the preface.
"Our Father." The word Father is sometimes used personally, as in John 14:28, "My Father is greater than I." But Father in our text is used essentially, referring to the whole Deity. This title, Father, teaches us to whom we must address ourselves in prayer: to God alone. There is nothing in the Lord's Prayer like, "O you saints or angels in heaven, hear us!" but rather, "Our Father which art in heaven."
Question: In what order must we direct our prayers to God? Only the Father is named here, may we not also direct our prayers to the Son and to the Holy Ghost?
Answer: Though only the Father is named in the Lord's Prayer, the other two Persons are not thereby excluded. The Father is mentioned because he is first in order, but the Son and the Holy Ghost are included, because they share the same essence. Just as all three Persons subsist in one Godhead, so in our prayers, though we name only one Person, we pray to all three. To come, then, more closely to the first words of the preface: "Our Father." Princes on earth give themselves titles that express their greatness, such as "High and Mighty." God might have done the same, calling himself "Our King of Glory" or "Our Judge." But instead he gives himself another title, "Our Father," an expression of love and condescension. God, to encourage us to pray to him, presents himself under this sweet name of a Father, "Our Father." The name of a father is a sweet name. The name Jehovah carries majesty in it; the name of Father carries mercy in it.
Question 1: In what sense is God a Father?
Answer 1: By creation; it is he who has made us: “We are also his offspring” (Acts 17:28). “Have we not all one Father? Hath not one God created us?” (Mal 2:10). But there is little comfort in this alone, for God is Father to the devils in this sense too, by creation; yet he who made them will not save them.
Answer 2: God is a Father by election, having chosen a certain number to be his children, to whom he will grant heaven as their inheritance. “He hath chosen us in him” (Eph 1:4).
Answer 3: God is a Father by special grace; he sets apart the elect by his Spirit and infuses in them a supernatural principle of holiness. For this reason they are said to be born of God (1 John 3:9). Only those who are sanctified can truly say, “Our Father which art in heaven.”
Question 2: What is the difference between God being the Father of Christ and the Father of the elect?
Answer: God is the Father of Christ in a far more glorious and transcendent way. Christ holds the right of the firstborn; he is the eldest Son, a Son by eternal generation: “I was set up from everlasting, from the beginning, or ever the earth was” (Prov 8:23). “Who shall declare his generation?” (Isa 53:8). Christ is a Son to the Father in such a way that he shares the same nature as the Father, possessing all the incommunicable properties of the Godhead. But we are sons of God by adoption and grace, “that we might receive the adoption of sons” (Gal 4:5).
Question 3: What is it that makes God our Father?
Answer: Faith. “Ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus” (Gal 3:26). An unbeliever may call God his Creator and his Judge, but not his Father. Faith legitimizes us and makes us of the royal blood of heaven, “Ye are the children of God by faith.” Baptism makes us church members, but faith makes us children; without faith, the devil can display as respectable a coat of arms as we can.
Question 4: How does faith make God our Father?
Answer: Faith is a uniting grace. By faith we have union and communion with Christ, and through that union our kinship with God comes in; being united to Christ, the natural Son, we become adopted sons. God is the Father of Christ, and faith makes us Christ's brothers (Heb 2:11), and so God becomes our Father as well.
Question 5: In what ways does it appear that God is the best Father?
Answer 1: In that he is most ancient. “The Ancient of days did sit” (Dan 7:9), a figurative picture of God, who existed before all time. This should stir our reverence.
Answer 2: God is the best Father because he is perfect. “Your Father which is in heaven is perfect” (Matt 5:48); he is perfectly good. Earthly fathers are subject to weaknesses, even Elijah, though a prophet, “was a man subject to like passions” (Jas 5:17), but God is perfectly good. The most perfection we can attain in this life is sincerity; we may faintly resemble God, but we can never equal him. He is infinitely perfect.
Answer 3: God is the best Father in respect of wisdom. “The only wise God” (1 Tim 1:17). He has a perfect idea of wisdom in himself; he knows the fittest means to accomplish his own purposes, and the angels themselves draw light from his lamp. In particular, part of his wisdom is this: he knows what is best for us. An earthly parent, in difficult situations, often does not know how to advise a child or what course is best. But God is a supremely wise Father, he knows what comfort is best for us, and he keeps his remedies ready for the moment we grow faint: “God that comforteth those that are cast down” (2 Cor 7:6).
He knows when affliction is best for us, and when it is fitting to give a bitter medicine: “If need be ye are in heaviness” (1 Pet 1:6). He is the only wise God; he knows how to make even evil things work for the good of his children (Rom 8:28). He can turn poison into a healing remedy. In this way he is the best Father in wisdom.
Answer 4: He is the best Father because he is the most loving. “God is love” (1 John 4:16). He who stirs up depths of affection in others must himself possess even greater affection, the cause must contain what it produces. The tenderness found in earthly parents is like marble and hard stone compared to God's love for his children; he gives them the very cream of his love, electing love, saving love. “He will rejoice over thee with joy, he will rest in his love, he will joy over thee with singing” (Zeph 3:17). No father compares to God in love. If you are his child, you cannot love your own soul as fully or as faithfully as he loves you.
Answer 5: God is the best Father because of his riches. God has land enough to give to all his children; he has unsearchable riches (Eph 3:8). He gives the hidden manna, the tree of life, rivers of joy; God has treasures that can never be exhausted, gates of pearl. Who has ever seen gates of pearl, pleasures that can never end? Earthly fathers, if they kept giving, would eventually have nothing left to give. God is always giving to his children, yet has no less; his riches are shared, not diminished, like the sun that keeps shining without losing its light. He who is infinite cannot be made poor. So God is the best Father: he gives his children more than any father or prince could ever bestow.
Answer 6: God is the best Father because he can reform his children. A father, when his son takes a bad path, does not know how to make him better; but God knows how to make the children of election better, for he can change their hearts. When Paul was breathing out persecution against the saints, God quickly turned him from that course and set him praying (Acts 9:11): "behold, he prayeth." None who belong to the election are so rough and unpolished that God cannot refine them by his grace and make them fit for the inheritance.
Answer 7: God is the best Father because he never dies (1 Tim 6:16), "Who only hath immortality." Earthly fathers die, and their children are left exposed to many injuries, but God lives forever (Rev 1:8), "I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end." God's crown has no successors.
Question 6: Where does the dignity of those who have God for their Father lie?
Answer 1: They have greater honor than is given to the princes of the earth; they are precious in God's sight (Isa 43:4), "Since thou wast precious in my eyes, thou hast been honourable." The wicked are dross (Ps 119:119) and chaff (Ps 1:4), but God counts his children among his jewels (Mal 3:17). He writes all his children's names in the book of life (Phil 4:3), "Whose names are in the book of life." Among the Romans, the names of their senators were recorded in a register, the enrolled fathers. God enrolls the names of his children and will not blot their names out of that register (Rev 3:5), "I will not blot his name out of the book of life."
God will not be ashamed of his children (Heb 11:16), "God is not ashamed to be called your God." One might think it beneath God, that he might disdain to father children who are dust and sin mingled together; but he is not ashamed to be called our God. And to show that he is not ashamed of his children, he writes his own name upon them (Rev 3:12), "I will write upon him the name of my God," that is, I will openly acknowledge him before all the angels as my child; I will write my name on him, as a son bears his father's name. What honor and dignity this is!
Answer 2: God gives his children honorable titles: he calls them the excellent of the earth (Ps 16:3), or, as Junius renders it, the magnificent. They must be excellent, for they are born of heaven's royal blood; they are the spiritual phoenixes of the world, the glory of creation. God calls his children his glory (Isa 46:13), "Israel my glory." God honors his children with the title of kings (Rev 1:6), "And hath made us kings." All God's children are kings, though they hold no earthly kingdoms. First, they carry a kingdom within them (Luke 17:21), "The kingdom of God is within you"; grace is a kingdom established in the hearts of God's children. They are kings who rule over their sins, binding those tyrant powers in chains (Ps 149:8).
Second, they are like kings in that they bear the marks of royalty and majesty. They have their crown; in this life they are kings in disguise. They are not recognized, and so they are exposed to poverty and reproach; they are kings in disguise (1 John 3:2), "Now we are the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be." What, then, shall we be? Every son of God will receive his crown of glory (1 Pet 5:4) and white robes (Rev 6:11). Robes signify dignity, and white signifies holiness.
