The Baptist Catechism

    A Commentary on the Shorter Catechism (1883), Alexander Whyte

    Question 99

    The whole word of God—It is a most interesting and instructive study to trace how one psalm or prayer is incorporated with another, and how the matter and language of prayer thus grow as Scripture and the life of the Church grow. Our Lord Himself, in this lesson He taught His disciples, only gathers into a short and memorable form certain petitions that are scattered up and down the whole of the Old Testament. The whole word of God is of use to direct us in prayer, and the better that any man knows the word of God, the less will he need to depend on any special rule of direction. “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly.”

    the special rule of direction—“How is the Lord’s Prayer to be used? The Lord’s Prayer is not only for direction, as a pattern, according to which we are to make other prayers; but may also be used as a prayer, so that it be done with understanding, faith, reverence, and other graces necessary to the right performance of the duty of prayer.” The student of Church history will trace in this statement an echo of the Puritan contendings against the abuse of liturgical forms in public worship.

    which Christ taught his disciples—“One of His disciples said unto Him, Lord, teach us to pray, as John also taught his disciples. And He said unto them, When ye pray, say, Our Father,” etc. “The disciples of John the Baptist, and the disciples of Christ, waited on their respective masters for instructions how to pray. It was in vain that the duty of repentance was preached to the one, and of faith to the other; they knew the truth, but they could not use it. So different a thing is it to be instructed in religion, and to have so mastered it in practice that it is altogether our own” (Newman, i. 257).

    commonly called The Lord’s Prayer. Commonly, but somewhat improperly. This is properly the disciples’ prayer. The prayer recorded in the seventeenth of John is with more propriety called The Lord’s Prayer. (See Robert Traill on The Lord’s Prayer, p. 1.)

    Uses

    1. 1 Cor. xiv. 15.
    2. “Its end is answered, not when we repeat it once or often, but when we conform the feeling and expression of our prayer to its model; when they have the same fulness of meaning; the same sobriety of utterance, the same distinction of conceptions, the same conformity to the spirit of the Divine revelations” (Edward Irving On the Lord’s Prayer).
    3. “It is a lesson for children, for spiritual minors, for Christians in the crude stage of the divine life, afflicted with confusion of mind, dumbness, dejection, unable to pray for want of clear thought, apt words, and above all of faith” (Dr. Bruce’s Training of the Twelve, chap. vi. See the whole admirable passage).