“After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father which art in heaven…” (Matthew 6:9).
A Brief Introduction
This brief excerpt was taken from Christopher Blackwood’s larger Expositions and Sermons Upon the Ten First Chapters of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, According to Matthew. Christopher Blackwood (1605-1670) was an early Particular Baptist who ministered and labored in Ireland. A graduate from Cambridge (1624), Blackwood served in the 1650s as a chaplain in Ireland during the civil war and made Dublin his home and place of ministry until his death in 1670. He was a learned Baptist author and wrote extensively on the importance of religious liberty. His writings exhibit a peculiar emphasis on Christ and the cross.
The Purpose and Significance of “Our” in the Lord’s Prayer
Blackwood argues that the Lord’s Prayer is a “rule according to which our petitions are to be directed.” We are not limited to these words only he argues, but should see the prayer “as a pattern without which we might have wandered in our requests.” Blackwood outlines eight brief lessons that may be drawn from Christ’s use of the word “our” in his model for prayer. Why do we pray “our Father,” and not simply “Father” or “my Father?”
1. This word “Our” teaches us that however we believe (i.e. pray) for ourselves, Charity teaches us to pray for others.
2. To denote unto us a Communion of Saints, how they are so joined together; as if the want (i.e. need) of one were the want of all. “If one member suffers, all the members suffer with it,” (I Cor. 12:26).
3. That we may not disdain the meanest (i.e. least) Christian from being our Brother in Christ, if God has adopted him for his, (Eph. 2:5). Yet may the Christian in private say, “My Father,” (Matt. 26:39; 27:46).
4. To keep us from arrogating (i.e. assuming) ourselves above others, remembering we are of the company of sons. On earth, some saints have more noble fathers than others, but to the Father in Heaven all believers are alike related.
5. To encourage the weak, that they may believe that God is no less their Father than the Father of Peter and Paul.
6. That we should not only pray for our own necessities, but also for the necessities of others (James 5:16), applying in private prayer that common Fatherhood to ourselves. And this Father we call upon we may look upon sometimes personally (Eph. 3:14, I Cor. 8:6) sometimes essentially, for Father, Son, and Spirit; so Christ is called the everlasting Father (Isaiah 9:6).
7. To teach us mutual sympathy: “If one member suffers, all the members suffer with it,” (I Cor. 12:26; Heb. 13:3).
8. To teach us unity and agreement with our brethren, as members of the same body, hence before we bring our gifts we are to “agree with our brother” (Matt. 5:24).1
