After this manner. — Literally, thus. The word sanctions at once the use of the words themselves, and of other prayers — prescribed, or unpremeditated — after the same pattern and in the same spirit. In Luke 11:2 we have the more definite, “When ye pray, say,....”
Our Father. — It is clear that the very word “Abba” (father) uttered by our Lord here, as in Mark 14:36, so impressed itself on the minds of men that, like “Amen” and “Hallelujah” and “Hosanna,” it was used in the prayers even of converts from heathenism and Hellenistic Judaism. From its special association with the work of the Spirit in Romans 8:15; Galatians 4:6, it would seem to have belonged to the class of utterances commonly described as the “tongues,” in which apparently words from two or more languages were mingled together according as each best expressed the devout enthusiasm of the worshipper.
The thought of the Fatherhood of God was not altogether new. He had claimed “Israel as His son, even His firstborn” (Exodus 4:22), had loved him as His child (Jeremiah 31:9; Hosea 11:1). The thought of an outraged Fatherhood underlies the reproaches of Isaiah (Isaiah 1:2) and Malachi (Malachi 1:6). “Thou, O Lord, art our Father” (Isaiah 64:8) was the refuge of Israel from despair. It had become common in Jewish liturgies and forms of private prayer. As the disciples heard it, it would not at first convey to their minds thoughts beyond those with which they were thus familiar. But it was a word pregnant with a future. Time and the teaching of the Spirit were to develop what was now in germ. That it had its ground in the union with the Eternal Son, which makes us also sons of God; that it was a name that might be used, not by Israelites only, but by every child of man; that of all the names of God that express His being and character, it was the fullest and the truest — this was to be learnt as men were guided into all the truth. Like all such names, it had its inner and its outer circles of application. It was true of all men, true of all members of the Church of Christ, true of those who were led by the Spirit, in different degrees; but all true theology rests on the assumption that the ever-widening circles have the same centre, and that that centre is the Love of the Father.
The words “Our Father” are not a form excluding the use of the more personal “My Father” in solitary prayer, but they are a perpetual witness that even then we should remember that our right to use that name is no peculiar privilege of ours, but is shared by every member of the great family of God.
Which art in heaven. — The phrase, familiar as it is, has a history of special interest. (1.) In the earlier books of the Old Testament the words “Jehovah is God in heaven above and in earth beneath” (Deuteronomy 4:39; Joshua 2:11), express His universal presence; and this was embodied also in the name of “the Most High God, the Possessor of heaven and earth,” of the earliest patriarchal faith (Genesis 14:22). Later on, men began to be more conscious of the infinite distance between themselves and God, and represented the contrast by the thought that He was in heaven and they on earth (Ecclesiastes 5:2); and this thought became a liturgical formula in the great dedication prayer of Solomon, “Hear thou in heaven thy dwelling-place” (l Kings 8:42, 43, et cet.; 2 Chronicles 6:21, etc.). And so, emancipated from over-close identification with the visible firmament, the phrase became current as symbolising the world visible and invisible, which is alike the dwelling-place of God, uttering in the language of poetry that which we vainly attempt to express in the language of metaphysics by such terms as the Infinite, the Absolute, the Unconditioned. (2.) We ought not to forget that the words supply at once (as in the phrase, “God of heaven,” in Ezra 1:2; Daniel 2:18-19) a link and a contrast between the heathen and the Jew, the Aryan and Semitic races. Each alike found in the visible heaven the symbol of the invisible forces of the universe of an unseen world; but the one first identified his heaven (the Varuna of the Vedic hymns, the Ouranos of the Greeks) with that world, and then personified each several force in it, the Pantheism of the thinker becoming the Polytheism of the worshipper; whilst to the other heaven was never more than the dwelling-place of God in His undivided unity.
Hallowed be thy name. — The first expression of thought in the pattern prayer is not the utterance of our wants and wishes, but that the Name of God — that which sums up all our thoughts of God — should be “hallowed,” be to us and all men as a consecrated name, not lightly used in trivial speech, or rash assertion, or bitterness of debate, but the object of awe and love and adoration. The words “Jehovah, hallowed be His name,” were familiar enough to all Israelites, and are found in many of their prayers, but here the position of the petition gives a new meaning to it, and makes it the key to all that follows. Still more striking is the fact, that this supplies a link between the teaching of the first three Gospels and that of the fourth. Thus the Lord Jesus taught His disciples to pray — thus, in John 12:28, He prayed Himself, “Father, glorify Thy name.”