Our Father in heaven (Matt. 6:9)

In what ways can God be called Father? Two ways are mentioned in the Bible. One is that he is the Father of everyone by creation and the other is that he is the Father of all who have believed in Jesus. The petitions of the prayer reveal that it is the second way that is intended here because they can only be offered by a person who values the progress of the kingdom of the Father.

Jesus has just contrasted Christian prayer with both Pharisaical prayer and pagan prayer. Pharisaical prayer was ostentatious, trying to please God by formality, and pagan prayer was manipulative, trying to pressurise God by shouting longer about an issue. The difference between those options and Christian prayer, as John Stott pointed out, ‘lies in the kind of God we pray to.’

 

Adolph Saphir pointed out that it is not only the simplicity of the way of addressing God that should be recognised but also the sweetness of what this says about God. It is a sweet way to pray when we are converted and brought into the heavenly family. It is a sweet way to pray as we travel through life through all the various experiences that come our way, in the valleys and on the mountaintops. It will be a sweet way to pray when we come to the end of life as we prepare to enter the heavenly country. It will also be a sweet way to speak in the heavenly world.

 

How does one become a child of God?

We all know the answer to that question. Through responding to the gospel offer of mercy, we trust in Jesus and receive forgiveness from the Father and are adopted into his family. They are consequences of the gospel that we cannot lose, even although neither of them makes us perfect in this life. Every person who truly prays this prayer is a sinner and a sinful member of the family of God. This is a prayer for saved sinners to use as often as they wish.

 

What is the goal of the gospel? Different answers could be given to this question. We could say that the goal is for sinners to be delivered from sin and ultimately for them to get to the perfect environment of the new heavens and new earth. But that answer could suggest that the goal is our comfort rather than God’s honour. The goal of the gospel must be that sinners will praise the Father in the perfect world of the future. 

 

But this goal is not confined to the perfect world of the future. Jesus informed the woman of Samaria that the Father was seeking for such as her so that she could become one of his worshippers (John 4). And prayer is an expression of worship while we are in this world.

 

Who is the Father?

Obviously, there are several ways by which this question can be answered. To begin with, we know that he is first person of the Trinity – the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. The Trinity is a mystery because it means that there are three divine persons but only one God. The divine persons are equally eternal, and equal as far as divine attributes are concerned, although each of them has specific functions. For example, it is only the Son of God who has added a human nature to his divine person. 

 

It is possible to speak about the Trinity in a complicated manner. I don’t mean that it is wrong to do so. There are depths in every biblical doctrine and some believers can wade far deeper than others into what the Trinity is. But it may not always be helpful to go where others cannot follow you. For the moment, we can think briefly about six things Jesus said the Father had done or would do.

 

The first matter is that the Father chose his people in eternity and gave them to Jesus. The Saviour referred to this in his prayer recorded in John 17. But it is helpful to remind ourselves of this when we pray to the Father. If we are Christians, we are praying to the One who gave us to Jesus.

 

The second matter is that the Father sent his Son to save us. This is the message of numerous texts in the Bible. The road to Calvary was mapped out by the Father. Every inch of the way was planned by him. It was the Father who placed on Jesus the penalty of our iniquity. Paul drew a marvellous deduction from this action of the Father: ‘He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?’ (Rom. 8:32).

 

The third matter is that the Father would send the Spirit. Jesus mentioned this Fatherly action several times because it was a future event that was going to change things greatly outside the church and inside the church. And one of the consequences of the arrival of the Spirit would be revealed in the prayer life of God’s people. This is not a suggestion that believers did not have the Spirit in previous ages, but there are promises connected to his coming that were future for the church then and are now fulfilled in New Testament times.

 

A fourth detail that Jesus mentioned is that the Father wants sinners to draw near to him. Earlier we thought about what he told the woman of Sychar. She was a person with an empty heart, but he told her that she was welcome to come to the Father and worship him (John 4). Jesus basically told her that externals in worship were not the priority. Rather she with her disappointed and defiled heart could draw near to the Father.

 

A fifth detail that Jesus mentioned about the Father is found in his parable about the vine and its branches, in which he said that the Father will deal with his people in a manner similar to how a gardener removes impediments to the growth of fruit in the branches of a vine. Therefore, we can expect the Father to deal with us in that way. He will not tolerate anything that will hinder the growth of spiritual fruit. If a literal branch could speak, what would it say to the gardener? Perhaps, ‘I don’t find this activity pleasant, but I know it is for my growth.’ In a far higher sense, we can pray to the Father when such things are happening to us.

 

A sixth detail that Jesus mentioned about the Father was that he said to the disciples that it was the Father’s good pleasure to give them the kingdom. The kingdom is not a geographical space, but a spiritual one in which God rules. If a ruler said to a subject, ‘I am giving you out of my kingdom,’ that subject could anticipate something good coming to him. When the Saviour says that the Father will give the benefits of his kingdom to his people, that is a very wonderful promise and a reminder that we can anticipate divine blessings in this world and in the next, including answers to prayer while we are in this world.

 

The common feature of those six aspects of the Father’s activity is that each of them is certain. There are areas in the Christian life where blessings are conditional. If I don’t read the Bible, how can I know its contents? If I don’t obey its instructions at a particular time, how can I experience at that time the blessings connected to obedience? Sadly, we often find ourselves there. But the six features I have mentioned are not conditional, they are certain, and we can bear them in mind when we pray to the Father. 

 

Why should we say ‘our’ Father?

As we can see, Jesus does not here say that a disciple should use the singular personal pronoun when he or she prays. This does not mean that believers cannot use the singular pronoun. Yet it could be a reminder that each believer is not to assume that his or her prayers are more important than those of another believer. What aspects of biblical prayer can be deducted from this usage of the plural?

 

First, we are reminded by the pronoun ‘our’ that prayer marks the unity of God’s people. Sadly, there are Christian privileges that divide God’s people. An obvious example is baptism. We can understand to some extent why there is disagreement about some Christian practices. Yet it is easy to see how prayer would not have such barriers to agreement. We can pray for those with whom we have disagreements as well as for those with whom we agree about doctrine and practice.

 

Second, we are reminded by the pronoun ‘our’ that prayer is a method of revealing brotherly love. One of the striking features of Paul’s prayers is the gratitude he expressed for other believers and the intercession he made about their circumstances. Each of his letters reveals that he knew a great deal about those he prayed for. His motivation for praying for them was his love for them, even for those like the Colossians whom he had never met physically. None of the people he informed about his prayers for them could say that he did not love them. And we can pray similarly for other Christians today.

 

Third, the petitions of the prayer tell us that we should realise that we pray as subjects of the King. There are references to the Father’s kingdom in the prayer. Whatever else may be said about a kingdom, it means that its members are subjects. Although they are servants, they are under the care of the Father as well as the command of the Father. So the shared status of being servants of God is an important reason for praying for one another.

 

Fourth, the use of the plural pronoun ‘our’ is a reminder not to be self-focused in our prayers. It is possible for that to happen, for a believer to only pray about the issues that trouble him or her. Sometimes, when that happens, it means that we have an outlook in which we assume that God’s only role is to meet our personal needs. But Jesus teaches us to pray for all Christians.

 

In heaven

Obviously, this is a reference to a specific location. Yet we also know that the Father is omnipresent. Right away, we can see that there is a big difference between us and the Father. We cannot be in more than in one piece of space, and we cannot choose to be anything in one place that is different from what we do elsewhere. But the Father can. He can choose to reveal himself differently in heaven than he does on earth. Or to reveal himself more clearly in heaven than he does on earth. It is what the Father does in heaven that Jesus wants us to focus on. What does he do from heaven – he answers prayer? He uses his sovereignty, his power and his wisdom to answer prayer (of course, he does other things as well).

 

If we read a letter with the address line of 10 Downing Street, we would know that it was sent to a very important person. ‘In heaven’ is the address line of the Father. It tells us that he is high above us. How high is heaven? Suffice to say that we cannot conceive of anywhere that is higher. A person on the top of Mount Everest is not closer to the Father, although he would be higher than we are. When we speak of heaven, we are speaking about a different kind of height. Heaven is not a place that can be reached by a space rocket. We are being reminded here not to take God down to our level as we pray.

 

When we climb a hill, we can see more than when we are at sea level. The higher we climb, the larger the area we can see. Since heaven is the highest place, it means that when God looks down from there, he can see everything. There is nothing hidden from his view. Heaven, from this point of view, is not very far away. This is a reminder that God sees us when we pray and also sees all the others for whom we are praying.

 

Heaven is not only very high; it is also very holy. There is no sin in heaven. The word ‘holy’ is connected to what is elevated, to what is superior, to what is separated from the mundane. In a sense, the height of heaven is the holiness of heaven. God being high reminds us of his sovereignty, but we should also remember that he is perfect, he is holy. Prayer is not only a privilege in the sense that we speak to One with sovereign power and wisdom; it is also a privilege in the sense that we, the imperfect and the sinful, speak to the One who is perfect, and we can do so at any time. Prayer is not only a statement of our dependence on God; it is also a statement that we recognise the sacredness of God.

 

Heaven is also a place that can be called home. Jesus, in John 14, called it the Father’s house, which is a description of a home, the Father’s home. In the heavenly home at the moment are angels and the spirits of believers who have passed away, as well as some like Enoch who are there in their bodies. Prayer, we can say, is making a temporary visit to the home that we will yet live in in the future. And there is no limit to the number of temporary visits that we can make. 

 

The invocation to our Father is one that expresses the wonder and the warmth of heavenly grace. God is not only the almighty creator, he is not only the high and lofty one who inhabits eternity, he is not only the arranger and disposer of providence – he is also the Father. And that is what Jesus wanted us to call the One who he also addressed in his prayer as Holy Father and Righteous Father.