After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name.
Ver. 9. After this manner therefore pray ye] Forms of wholesome words are profitable. A set form of prayer is held fittest for the public, and for such weak Christians as are not yet able to express their own desires in their own words. The utterance of wisdom is given to some Christians only, 1 Corinthians 12:8, yet all are to strive unto it, that the testimony of Christ may be confirmed in them, 1 Corinthians 1:5,6. God will take that at first which afterwards will not be accepted. If words be wanting, pray that God who commands thee to take words and come before him, to vouchsafe thee those words, wherewith thou mayest come before him, Hosea 14:2. Speak, as the poor man doth, supplications, Proverbs 18:23 : so did the prodigal: forecast also (with him) what thou wilt say; premeditate on the matter, disposing it in due order (as one would do that is to speak to a prince; "God is a great King," Mal 1:14). Some think we must never pray but upon the sudden and extraordinary instinct and motion of the spirit. This is a fancy, and those that practise it cannot but fall into idle repetitions, and be confused; going forward and backward, like hounds at a loss, saith a good divine (Parr's Abba, Father), and having unadvisedly begun to speak, they know not how wisely to make an end. This to prevent, premeditate and propound to thyself fit heads of prayer: gather catalogues of thy sins and duties by the decalogue; observe the daily straits of mortal condition, consider God's mercies, your own infirmities, troubles from Satan, pressures from the world, crosses on all hands, &c. And because you cannot lack matter, so neither words of prayer. The Spirit will assist, and God will accept, if there be but an honest heart and lawful petitions. And albeit we cannot vary them as some can: our Saviour in his agony used the self-same words thrice together in prayer, and so may we when there is the same matter and occasion. He also had a set form of giving thanks at meat; which the two disciples at Emmaus hearing, knew him by it, Luke 24:30,31. A form then may be used, we see, when it is gathered out of the Holy Scriptures, and agreeable thereunto. Neither is the spirit limited hereby; for the largeness of the heart stands not so much in the multitude and variety of expressions as in the extent of the affection. Besides, if forms were unlawful, then neither might we sing psalms nor join in prayer with others, nor use the forms prescribed by God.
Our Father which art in heaven] Tertullian calls this prayer a breviary of the gospel, and compend of saving doctrine (breviarium totius Evangelii, et salutaris doctrinoe compendium). It is framed in form of the decalogue; the three former petitions respecting God, the three latter ourselves and others. Every word therein hath its weight. "Our," there is our charity; "Father," there is our faith; "in heaven," there is our hope. "Father" is taken sometimes personally, as in that of our Saviour, "My Father is greater than I;" sometimes essentially for the whole Deity, so here. Now that God is in heaven, is a notion that heathens also have by nature; and do therefore in distress lift up eyes and hands thitherward. And lest man should not look upward, God hath given to his eyes peculiar nerves, to pull them up towards his habitation, that he might "direct his prayer unto him, and look up," Psalms 5:3, that he might feelingly say with David, "Whom have I in heaven but thee?" "Unto thee I lift up mine eyes, O thou that dwellest in the heavens. Behold, as the eyes of servants look to the hand of their masters," &c., Psalms 123:1,2. It is reported of Farellus, that he preached so powerfully, that be seemed to thunder, and prayed so earnestly, that he seemed to carry his hearers with him up into heaven (ut audientes in coelum usque subveheret. Melch. Adam, in Vita.) But how often, alas, do graceless men approach God with their leaden lips; and indeed reproach him in their formal prayers with that appellation, "Our Father which art in heaven?" Those brain sick disciples of Martin Steinbach of Selestad in Germany, who would needs mend magnificat (as they say), correct the Lord's prayer as not well composed, are not worth mentioning.
Hallowed be thy name] i.e. "Honoured by thy Majesty." "According to thy name, O God, so is thy praise," Psalms 48:10. Now God's name is "holy and reverend," Psalms 111:9; "great and terrible," Psalms 99:3; "wonderful and worthy," Psalms 8:1; James 2:7; "high and honourable," Isaiah 12:4; "dreadful among the heathen," Malachi 1:14; and "exalted above all praise," Nehemiah 9:5. His glory is as himself, eternally infinite, and so abideth, not capable of our addition or detraction. The sun would shine though all the world were blind, or did wilfully shut their eyes. Howbeit to try how we prize his glory, and how industrious we will be to promote it, God lets us know that he accounts himself, as it were, to receive a new being by those inward conceptions of his glory, and by those outward honours we do him; when we lift up his name as a standard, saying, "Jehovah Nissi, The Lord is my banner," Exodus 17:15; when we bear (נשא) it up aloft (as the word used in the third commandment, whereunto this petition answers, signifieth), as servants do their masters' badges upon their shoulders: a "Being confident" (with St Paul) "of this very thing, that in nothing we shall be ashamed" (while we hallow this holy God, Isa 5:16), "but that with all boldness or freedom of speech, as always, so now, Christ shall be magnified in our bodies, whether it be by life or death," Philippians 1:20 .
a Elevavit, evexit: confer Isaiah 5:26. Elevabit vexillum ad gentes. Iudaeorum massam adhuc ira inficit fermentum Pharisaeorum, ut Messiam, quem tantis hodie exposcunt ululatibus, non ut redemptorem expectant a peccato, sed ex gentium temporali iugo. D. Prid., Lect.