Question 107

For thine is the kingdom—The conjunction for grounds the whole prayer on the fact that the kingdom prayed for in the second petition is God’s kingdom, and the power put forth in it, and petitioned to be put forth in this prayer is God’s power, as is and will be all the glory. All this is put forward as a sufficient and final reason why the petitioner should be heard. The full and final New Testament ground of a Christian prayer is the name and merits and mediation of Jesus Christ; but this prayer was taught by our Lord before the time had come to ask in His name. But no Christian can now offer this or any prayer without putting forward the Lord Jesus as his alone ground and argument with the Father.

to take our encouragement in prayer from God only—“The knowledge of our own unworthiness is not without belief in the merits of Christ. With that true fear which the one causeth there is coupled true boldness, and encouragement drawn from the other. The very silence that our unworthiness putteth us into, doth itself make request for us, and that in the confidence of His grace. Looking inward we are stricken dumb; looking upward we speak and prevail” (Hooker).

in our prayers to praise him—“Faith, self-denial, a holy life, patient endurance of the cross, are all sacrifices which please God. But as prayer is the offering of faith, and uniformly accompanied with patience and mortification of sin, while praise, while it is genuine, indicates holiness of heart, we need not wonder that these two points of worship should here be employed to represent the whole” (Calvin). “Thanksgiving is a nobler and more divinely generous duty than prayer, for self-love puts us upon praying for benefits; but thanks is a more free, defecate, and pure act” (Goodwin).

There was a rabbinical saying to the effect that in the days of the Messiah all prayer shall cease, but thanksgiving shall not cease; all oblations shall cease, but the eucharistical oblation shall not cease.

in testimony of our desire, and assurance to be heard, we say, Amen. The Hebrew idiom rendered literally in the margin of Jas. v. 17, brings out finely the force of the prophet’s desire. And it suggests to us to inquire whether we pray in our prayers. Desire is the life and power of prayer. The assurance of this passage is not the assurance of Answer 36. There it is the assurance of our personal acceptance and adoption, here it is the assurance that what we ask we shall receive, because God has so promised. This is “the full assurance of faith” set forth in Heb. x. 22. And Amen correctly understood and rightly used, expresses, as the text teaches, both our desire to be heard, and our assurance that we shall be heard.

“The short word with which the person spoken to answered all adjurations, was the familiar amén, a little word which properly corresponds only to our yes! and which subsequently found the most diverse applications, but which, in the use here explained, goes back to the earliest times of the community” (Ewald).

Amen is a Hebrew word transliterated and naturalized into English, which when translated means true, faithful, trustworthy. It was transliterated also into the language spoken by our Lord, and we find Him constantly using the word as a formula for introducing His more weighty and solemn utterances. Amen, Amen; verily, verily, I say unto you. In the Epistle to Laodicea, our Lord takes to Himself the name of Amen, the faithful and true Witness; and in the Second Epistle to the Corinthians, the apostle says that all the promises of God are in His Son Jesus Christ, Yea, and Amen. Augustine says that when this word is found on the lips of the faithful, it is their seal and consent and adstipulation to all that has been spoken. And Jerome says, “It is the seal of our consent.” “Faith has its silence to lend an ear to the word of God. It has afterwards its turn to speak and answer Amen, according to that passage, Hos. ii. 23” (Calvin). Sometimes the word is used among ourselves in a secondary and conventional sense, as if it meant a conclusion, but this is a loose use of the word, which is never so employed in Scripture.

Questions

1. Give examples from Scripture of men taking their encouragement in prayer from God only.
2. Amen is sometimes used in Scripture in an interjectional sense, as a final word of devout acclamation; sometimes in a confirmatory sense, reaffirming what has just been said; sometimes in an adverbial sense, asserting the truth of what is to be immediately spoken; and sometimes in a substantive and appellative sense. Explain, and supply illustrations.