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Title:
"Sons
and Heirs"
Author:
J.I. Packer
"After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father which art in heaven,
Hallowed be thy name."
Matthew 6:9
If we are to pray and live as we
should, we must grasp the implications of God's gracious Fatherhood.
First, as God's adopted children we are loved no less than is the
one whom God called His "beloved Son" (Matthew 3:17;
17:5). In some families containing natural and adopted
children the former are favored above the latter, but no such defect
mars the fatherhood of God.
This is the best news anyone has ever heard. It means that, as
Paul triumphantly declares, nothing ". . . in all creation,
will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our
Lord" (Romans 8:39). It means that God will never forget
us, or cease to care for us, and that He remains our forbearing
Father even when we act the prodigal (as, alas, we
all sometimes do).
It means too that, He is always more ready to hear than we to
pray," and is "wont to give more than either we desire or
deserve." "If you then, who are evil," said our
Lord, "know how to give good gifts to your children, how much
more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who
ask Him!" (Matthew 7:11; the parallel saying in Luke 11:13 has
"Holy Spirit" for "good things," and the
sustained ministry of the Holy Spirit was surely
one of the good things Jesus had in mind.) To know this truth
of God's fatherly love gives boundless confidence not merely for
praying, but for all our living.
Second, we are God's heirs. Adoption in the ancient world was,
for securing an heir, and Christians are joint heirs with Christ of
God's glory (Romans 8:17). "We are God's children now
...when He appears we shall be like Him." (I John 3:2).
Already "all (things) are yours" in the sense that they
further your good here and your glory hereafter, for "you are
Christ's" (I Corinthians 3:21-23; Romans 8:28-30). To
grasp this is to know oneself rich and privileged beyond any monarch
or millionaire.
Third, we have God's Spirit in us. With our changed
relationship to God (adoption) goes a change of direction and
desire, of outlook and attitude, which Scripture calls regeneration or new birth. Those who "believed in" Jesus'
"name" were "born . . . of God" (John 1:12ff.), or more precisely "born of the Spirit" (3:6, see verses
3-8). "Because you are sons," says
Paul, "God has sent the Spirit of His Son into our hearts,
crying [that is, prompting us to cry, spontaneously, as the
expression of a new spiritual instinct], 'Abba! Father!'" (Galatians 4:6). And when, to our distress (and this comes to
us all), we find ourselves so muddle-headed, dead-hearted, and
tongue-tied in prayer that "we do not know how to pray as we
ought," then our very desire to pray as we should and our grief
that we are not doing so shows that the Spirit is Himself making
effective intercession for us in our hearts (Romans 8:26ff.); which
is as reassuring as it is mysterious, and as thrilling as it is amazing.
Fourth, we must honor our Father by serving His interests. The
center of our concern must be "thy name . . . kingdom . .
.will," and we must be like good children in human families, ready to obey instructions.
Fifth, we must love our brothers, by constant care and prayer for
them. The Lord's Prayer schools us in intercession for the family's
needs: "Our Father . . . give us . . . forgive us . . . lead us
. . . deliver us . . . ." "Us" means more that
just me! For God's child, prayer is no "flight of the
alone to the Alone," but concern for the family is built into
it.
So we should be expressing faith in Christ, confidence in God, joy
in the Holy Spirit, a purpose of obedience, and concern for our
fellow Christians when we go to God and call Him "Father."
Only so shall we answer Jesus' intention in teaching us this form of
address.
Praise and Thanks
As invocation of God as Father opens this pattern prayer, so renewed
realization of the family relationship -- His parenthood, and our
sonship by grace -- should always come first in our practice of
prayer. All right-minded praying starts with a long look
Godward and a deliberate lifting up on one's heart to give thanks
and adore, and it is just this that "Father" calls us to.
Thanks for grace, and praise for God's paternity, and joy in our
sonship and heirship should bulk large in Christian prayer, and if
we never got beyond it we should still be praying to good purpose.
First things first!
So I ask: Do we always pray to God as Father? And do we
always praise when
we pray?
* * *
Excerpt:
"The Lord's Prayer - Heart to Heart" from the book "I
Want To Be A Christian" by J.I. Packer, 1977
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