Prayer, Forgiveness And Fasting
PRAYER, FORGIVENESS AND FASTING
MATTHEW 6:9-18
Jesus gives us a pattern of prayer to follow.
The Lord’s Prayer, given to the disciples as a pattern to follow, summarizes as in a nutshell Jesus’ teaching about the kingdom of God. It “can be repeated in less than half a minute, contains petitions which range from the common bread-and-butter needs of our breakfast tables to the ultimate achievement of the age-long purposes of God; puts God’s glory first, our needs second, does not rule out material matters as too trifling to pray about, yet insists on the supremacy of the spiritual, and emphasizes the basic condition of the disciples’ enjoyment of the Father’s forgiveness” (C.F. Hogg and J.B. Watson). The clauses “Hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done” are probably three forms of what is basically the same petition; to each the words “on earth as it is in heaven” are applicable. Whether we render “our daily bread” or “our bread for the morrow” (margin), the petition of 6:11 is content with “rations” for one day at a time. In Aramaic “debts” and “debtors” (6:12) are idiomatic terms for “sins” and “sinners”; the reminder that only the forgiving can ask for forgiveness is reinforced in 6:14-15 (cf. 18:23-35). “Lead us not into temptation” (6:13) may mean “grant that we may not fail in the test”—the supreme crisis which puts one’s faith and loyalty to the crucial test (cf. 26:41). The “evil” from which we should pray to be delivered is probably the “evil one” whose aim is to destroy faith in the people of God. The doxology which follows the prayer in KJV does not belong to the original text but preserves very early church practice: a few decades after the publication of this Gospel it is appended to the prayer in the Didache (“Teaching of the Twelve Apostles”).
This document, the Didache, has a significant gloss on the next paragraph, on fasting (6:16-18), which shows how easy it was then, as now, to miss the point of our Lord’s teaching: “Let not your fasts be with the hypocrites, for they fast on Mondays and Thursdays (cf. Luke 18:12), but do you fast on Wednesdays and Fridays.” Fasting, like almsgiving and prayer, should be a private and voluntary undertaking between the worshiper and God, not a means of acquiring credit with men.
When we read our Lord’s criticisms of the scribes of his day, we should consider whether we are not prone to treat his words with the same wooden legalism as they manifested in their application of the Old Testament law. Is it not possible for Christians today to fulfill their religious exercises as if they were so many rules to be kept, and to regard the fulfillment of them as constituting a stronger title to God’s approval than is available for others who are deplorably lax in these matters? In what way are such Christians better than the “play-actors” who incur our Lord’s censure?