'When ye stand praying, forgive;' Or, Prayer and
Love.
'And
whensoever ye stand praying, forgive, if ye have aught against any one;
that your Father also which is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses.'--MARK
xi. 25.
THESE words follow immediately on the great prayer-promise, 'All things
whatsoever ye pray, believe that ye have received them, and ye shall have them.'
We have already seen how the words that preceded that promise, 'Have faith
in God,' taught us that in prayer all depends upon our relation to God being
clear; these words that follow on it remind us that our relation with fellow-men
must be clear too. Love to God and love to our neighbour are inseparable:
the prayer from a heart, that is either not right with God on the one
side, or with men on the other, cannot prevail. Faith and love are
essential to each other.
We find that this is a thought to which
our Lord frequently gave expression. In the Sermon on the Mount (Matt. v.
23, 24), when speaking of the sixth commandment, He taught His disciples how
impossible acceptable worship to the Father was if everything were not right
with the brother: 'If thou art offering thy gift at the altar, and there
rememberest that thy brother hath aught against thee, leave there thy gift
before the altar, and go thy way; first be reconciled to thy brother, and then
come and offer thy gift.' And so later, when speaking of prayer to God,
after having taught us to pray, 'Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven
our debtors,' He added at the close of the prayer: 'If you forgive not men
their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.' At
the close of the parable of the unmerciful servant He applies His teaching in
the words: 'So shall also my Heavenly Father do unto you, if ye forgive
not every one his brother from your hearts.' And so here, beside the
dried-up fig-tree, where He speaks of the wonderful power of faith and the
prayer of faith, He all at once, apparently without connection, introduces the
thought, 'Whensoever ye stand praying, forgive, if ye have aught against any
one; that your Father also which is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses.'
It is as if the Lord had learned during His life at Nazareth and
afterwards that disobedience to the law of love to men was the great sin even of
praying people, and the great cause of the feebleness of their prayer. And
it is as if He wanted to lead us into His own blessed experience that nothing
gives such liberty of access and such power in believing as the consciousness
that we have given ourselves in love and compassion, for those whom God
loves.
The first lesson taught here is that of a forgiving
disposition. We pray, 'Forgive, even as we have forgiven.'
Scripture says, 'Forgive one another, even as God also in Christ forgave
you.' God's full and free forgiveness is to be the rule of ours with men.
Otherwise our reluctant, half-hearted forgiveness, which is not
forgiveness at all, will be God's rule with us. Every prayer rests
upon our faith in God's pardoning grace. If God dealt with us after our
sins, not one prayer could be heard. Pardon opens the door to all God's
love and blessing: because God has pardoned all our sin, our prayer can
prevail to obtain all we need. The deep sure ground of answer to prayer is
God's forgiving love. When it has taken possession of the heart, we pray
in faith. But also, when it has taken possession of the heart, we live in
love. God's forgiving disposition, revealed in His love to us, becomes a
disposition in us; as the power of His forgiving love shed abroad and dwelling
within us, we forgive even as He forgives. If there be great and grievous
injury or injustice done us, we seek first of all to possess a Godlike
disposition; to be kept from a sense of wounded honour, from a desire to
maintain our rights, or from rewarding the offender as he has deserved. In
the little annoyances of daily life, we are watchful not to excuse the hasty
temper, the sharp word, the quick judgment, with the thought that we mean no
harm, that we do not keep the anger long, or that it would be too much to expect
from feeble human nature, that we should really forgive the way God and Christ
do. No, we take the command literally, 'Even as Christ forgave,
so also do ye.' The blood that cleanses the conscience from dead
works, cleanses from selfishness too; the love it reveals is pardoning love,
that takes possession of us and flows through us to others. Our forgiving
love to men is the evidence of the reality of God's forgiving love in us, and so
the condition of the prayer of faith.
There is
a second, more general lesson: our daily life in the world is made the
test of our intercourse with God in prayer. How often the Christian, when
he comes to pray, does his utmost to cultivate certain frames of mind which he
thinks will be pleasing. He does not understand, or forgets, that life
does not consist of so many loose pieces, of which now the one, then the other,
can be taken up. Life is a whole, and the pious frame of the hour of
prayer is judged of by God from the ordinary frame of the daily life of which
the hour of prayer is but a small part. Not the feeling I call up, but the
tone of my life during the day, is God's criterion of what I really am and
desire. My drawing nigh to God is of one piece with my intercourse with
men and earth: failure here will cause failure there. And that not
only when there is the distinct consciousness of anything wrong between my
neighbour and myself; but the ordinary current of my thinking and judging, the
unloving thoughts and words I allow to pass unnoticed, can hinder my prayer.
The effectual prayer of faith comes out from a life given up to the will
and the love of God. Not according to what I try to be when praying, but
what I am when not praying, is my prayer dealt with by God.
We may
gather these thoughts into a third lesson: In our life with men the one
thing on which everything depends is love. The spirit of forgiveness is
the spirit of love. Because God is love, He forgives: it is only
when we are dwelling in love that we can forgive as God forgives. In
love to the brethren we have the evidence of love to the Father, the ground of
confidence before God, and the assurance that our prayer will be heard, (1 John
iv. 20, iii. 18-21, 23.). 'Let us love in deed and truth; hereby
shall we assure our heart before Him. If our heart condemn us not, we have
boldness toward God, and whatever we ask, we receive of Him.' Neither
faith nor work will profit if we have not love; it is love that unites with God,
it is love that proves the reality of faith. As essential as in the word
that precedes the great prayer-promise in Mark xi. 24, 'Have faith in God,' is
this one that follows it, 'Have love to men.' The right relations to the
living God above me, and the living men around me, are the conditions of
effectual prayer.
This love is of special consequence when we labour for
such and pray for them. We sometimes give ourselves to work for Christ,
from zeal for His cause, as we call it, or for our own spiritual health, without
giving ourselves in personal self-sacrificing love for those whose souls we
seek. No wonder that our faith is feeble and does not conquer. To
look on each wretched one, however unloveable he be, in the light of the tender
love of Jesus the Shepherd seeking the lost; to see Jesus Christ in him, and to
take him up, for Jesus' sake, in a heart that really loves, --this, this is the
secret of believing prayer and successful effort. Jesus, in speaking of
forgiveness, speaks of love as its root. Just as in the Sermon on the
Mount He connected His teaching and promises about prayer with the call to be
merciful, as the Father in heaven is merciful (Matt. v. 7, 9, 22, 38-48), so we
see it here: a loving life is the condition of believing
prayer.
It has been said: There is nothing so
heart-searching as believing prayer, or even the honest effort to pray in faith.
O let us not turn the edge of that self-examination by the thought that
God does not hear our prayer for reasons known to Himself alone. By no
means. 'Ye ask and receive not, because ye ask amiss.' Let that word
of God search us. Let us ask whether our prayer be indeed the expression
of a life wholly given over to the will of God and the love of man. Love
is the only soil in which faith can strike its roots and thrive. As it
throws its arms up, and opens its heart heavenward, the Father always looks to
see if it has them opened towards the evil and the unworthy too. In that
love, not indeed the love of perfect attainment, but the love of fixed purpose
and sincere obedience, faith can alone obtain the blessing. It is he who
gives himself to let the love of God dwell in him, and in the practice of daily
life to love as God loves, who will have the power to believe in the Love that
hears his every prayer. It is the Lamb, who is in the midst of the
throne: it is suffering and forbearing love that prevails with God in
prayer. The merciful shall obtain mercy; the meek shall inherit the
earth.
'LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY.'
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Blessed Father! Thou art Love, and
only he that abideth in love abideth in Thee and in fellowship with Thee.
The Blessed Son hath this day again taught me how deeply true this is of
my fellowship with Thee in prayer. O my God! let Thy love, shed abroad in
my heart by the Holy Spirit, be in me a fountain of love to all around me, that
out of a life in love may spring the power of believing prayer. O my
Father! grant by the Holy Spirit that this may be my experience, that a life in
love to all around me is the gate to a life in the love of my God. And
give me especially to find in the joy with which I forgive day by day whoever
might offend me, the proof that Thy forgiveness to me is a power and a
life.
Lord Jesus! my Blessed Teacher! teach Thou me to
forgive and to love. Let the power of Thy blood make the pardon of my sins
such a reality, that forgiveness, as shown by Thee to me, and by me to others,
may be the very joy of heaven. Show me whatever in my intercourse with
fellowmen might hinder my fellowship with God, so that my daily life in my own
home and in society may be the school in which strength and confidence are
gathered for the prayer of faith. Amen.