THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
rendered it neither impossible nor improper to join Jesus in his invocation of God as " our Father." That this prayer is not intended as an utterance of an individual but of believing disciples as a body appears in Luke's version from the fourth petition, and from Matthew's in the addition to the invocation "Our Father," etc. As the synagogue prayer was evidently congregational, so Jesus gave a prayer which was common and not individual. God is also addressed as Father in heaven (Matt. v. 48, vi. 14, 26, 32, xv. 13, xviii. 35, xxiii. 9) to indicate the distinction between him and a merely earthly father. With this may be compared the old Hebrew usage (Isa. xxxviii. 5), and in the Kaddish is read: " Let all Israel pray, and flee to the Heavenly Father." The Heavenly Father is the God unlimited by earthly bounds, who knows all, sees all, is the omnipotent. He is the Father who " seeth in secret " and hears the secret prayer (Matt. vi. 4, 6, 18). In other words he is the God who is spirit and life (John iv. 24, v. 26). In the earliest years of Jewish Christianity, for the use of which the first Gospel was written, the prayer was not considered a cast-iron form, but as the gift of Jesus which might be altered and expounded at will in the words which Jesus himself employed.
2. The First Petition: "Hallowed be thy name." The Greek translation of the original Aramaic uses throughout the aorist imperative, except in the fourth petition of Luke's version, didou. The aorist is employed to express an act at once completed (cf. I Pet. i. 13, where teleios elpisate expresses a hope continuing to the end). The petition is not expressed in the active voice, " Hallow thou thy name," but " let thy name be hallowed by men, especially by thy disciples." As Bengel says: " God is holy, that is God is God, he is therefore hallowed when he is acknowledged, worshiped and proclaimed to be what he is " (Gnomon, on Matt. vi. 9).
3. The Second and Third Petitions: "Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven." Although itf might be said that the full object of the prayer is attained when God's name is hallowed, yet this can actually never be realized until heaven and earth become one. God is manifested in his children, and his children walk as under his eye. Therefore Jesus directs the gaze of his disciples toward the future union of the heavenly and the earthly world. These two petitions must therefore be taken in an eschatological sense. " The kingdom of God, which we pray may arrive, tends unto the consummation of the age" (Tertullian, De oratione, v.; ANF, iii. 683). Then shall the world be changed from a state of sin and death into a land of peace and life and the perfect congregation of the saints shall praise their king whose will it is their delight to fulfil.
The next four petitions deal with the earthly interval which must elapse before the consummation of all things and the actual kingdom of God arrive. The disciples of Jesus are taught to pray that they may have strength to live in faith and love as children of God and thus hallow the name of the Father, who is asked to supply their material and spiritual needs.
4. The Fourth Petition: " Give us this day our daily bread " (Matthew), " Give us, day by day, our daily bread " (Luke). Bread is the staff of life, " all that pertains to the support and necessities of life " as Luther says. The followers of Jesus may well expect to receive daily the bread they need, as on the night of his passion Jesus asked his disciples: When I sent you without purse and scrip and shoes, lacked ye anything ? (Luke xxii. 35). The anxiety of the Gentiles or pagans about food and clothing is put forth by Jesus as a warning in Matt. vi. 25-34. Although Cyprian (" On the Lord's Prayer," viii.; ANF, v. 452) and Tertullian (De oratione, vi.; ANF, iii. 683) emphasize the spiritual meaning of the word " bread," yet they admit that it is used here also in a material sense. Jerome in translating epiousion by supersubstantialis also attributes to it a spiritual meaning; still not only is this a false translation but it gives a false meaning to the words of Christ. Hugo Grotius is perhaps nearer the true interpretation when he says (Critici sacri, vol. vi.) : " Epiousia is all that period of life which we have yet to live; unknown to us, known to God; epiousion what is sufficient for that period." In the same way Bengel interprets the word (Gnomon, on Matt, vi. 11), " Bread, as a single gift, is to be supplied to us for our whole life, but the giving of it is portioned off day by day."
5. The Fifth Petition : "And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors " (Matthew), " And forgive us our sins; for we also forgive every one that is indebted to us " (Luke). The interval which the disciples of Jesus must spend before the coming of his glorious kingdom brings them not only in need of bodily nourishment but of permanent peace in the soul also. Man lives not by bread alone (Matt. iv. 4), especially sinful man. This is the connection of the fifth with the fourth petition. The forgiveness of sins prayed for refers to a daily forgiveness. The words imply that in comparison with God the suppliant is not good but evil (Matt, vii. 11); the spirit being willing but the flesh weak (Matt. xxvi. 41). It would be a sign of self-deceit against which Jesus gives express warning (Matt. vii.) for a man to consider himself sinless (John i. 8). The disciples of Jesus are to take an attitude exactly opposite to that indicated in the proud prayer of Apollonius of Tyana, " O ye gods pay the debts ye owe tome" (Vila Apollonii, II., i. 11, ed. Kayser, p. 10) . The term debt, opheile, opheilema, is primarily used of money owed but not paid (Matt. xviii. 32); hence in a spiritual sense it becomes equivalent to paraptomata "transgressions" (Matt. vi. 15), or hamartia, "sins " (Luke xi. 4; cf. Luke xiii. 4 and 2). But this prayer that God would remit our debts to him is not so much the appeal of slaves to a master (Luke xvii. 10) as of children to a father (Matt. xxi. 28-31), and the less the disciples of Jesus boast of their own perfection and the more conscious they are of their debts to God, so much the more when they utter this prayer will they have the consciousness of God's forgiveness and feel moved to forgive their brethren, even to the end (Matt xviii. 22; Luke xvii. 4). For when the disciple of Jesus forgives his neighbor it is by no