In the Name of Christ
"Whatsoever ye shall ask _in My Name_, that will I do. If ye shall
ask anything _in My Name_, I will do it. I have appointed you, that
whatsoever ye shall ask of the Father _in My Name_, He may give it
you. Verily, verily I say unto you, whatsoever ye shall ask the
Father _in My Name_, He will give it you. Hitherto have ye asked
nothing _in My Name_; ask, and ye shall receive, that your joy may
be full. At that day ye shall ask _in My Name_."--JOHN xiv. 13, 14,
xv. 16, xvi. 23, 24, 26.
In my name--repeated six times over. Our Lord knew how slow our hearts
would be to take it in, and He so longed that we should really believe
that His Name is the power in which every knee should bow, and in which
every prayer could be heard, that He did not weary of saying it over and
over: _In My Name!_ Between the wonderful _whatsoever ye shall ask_, and
the Divine _I will do it, the Father will give it_, this one word is
the simple link: _In My Name._ Our asking and the Father's giving are to
be equally in the Name of Christ. Everything in prayer depends upon our
apprehending this--_In My Name._
We know what a name is: a word by which we call up to our mind the whole
being and nature of an object. When I speak of a lamb or a lion, the
name at once suggests the different nature peculiar to each. The Name of
God is meant to express His whole Divine nature and glory. And so the
Name of Christ means His whole nature, His person and work, His
disposition and Spirit. To ask in the Name of Christ is to pray in union
with Him. When first a sinner believes in Christ, he only knows and
thinks of His merit and intercession. And to the very end that is the
one foundation of our confidence. And yet, as the believer grows in
grace and enters more deeply and truly into union with Christ--that is,
as he abides in Him--he learns that to pray in the Name of Christ also
means in His Spirit, and in the possession of His nature, as the Holy
Spirit imparts it to us. As we grasp the meaning of the words, "_At that
day_ ye shall ask in My Name"--the day when in the Holy Spirit Christ
came to live in His disciples--we shall no longer be staggered at the
greatness of the promise: "_Whatsoever_ ye shall ask in My Name, I will
do it." We shall get some insight into the unchangeable necessity and
certainty of the law: what is asked in the Name of Christ, in union with
Him, out of His nature and Spirit, must be given. As Christ's
prayer-nature lives in us, His prayer-power becomes ours too. Not that
the measure of our attainment or experience is the ground of our
confidence, but the honesty and whole-heartedness of our surrender to
all that we see that Christ seeks to be in us, will be the measure of
our spiritual fitness and power to pray in His Name. "If ye abide in
Me," He says, "ye shall ask what ye will." As we live in Him, we get the
spiritual power to avail ourselves of His Name. As the branch wholly
given up to the life and service of the Vine can count upon all its sap
and strength for its fruit, so the believer, who in faith has accepted
the fulness of the Spirit to possess his whole life, can indeed avail
himself of all the power of Christ's Name.
Here on earth Christ as man came to reveal what prayer is. To pray in
the Name of Christ we must pray as He prayed on earth; as He taught us
to pray; in union with Him, as He now prays in heaven. We must in love
study, and in faith accept, Him as our Example, our Teacher, our
Intercessor.
CHRIST OUR EXAMPLE.
Prayer in Christ on earth and in us cannot be two different things. Just
as there is but one God, who is a Spirit, who hears prayer, there is but
one spirit of acceptable prayer. When we realise what time Christ spent
in prayer, and how the great events of His life were all connected with
special prayer, we learn the necessity of absolute dependence on and
unceasing direct communication with the heavenly world, if we are to
live a heavenly life, or to exercise heavenly power around us. We see
how foolish and fruitless the attempt must be to do work for God and
heaven, without in the first place in prayer getting the life and the
power of heaven to possess us. Unless this truth lives in us, we cannot
avail ourselves aright of the mighty power of the Name of Christ. His
example must teach us the meaning of His Name.
Of His baptism we read, "Jesus having been baptized, _and praying_, the
heaven was opened." It was in prayer heaven was opened to Him, that
heaven came down to Him with the Spirit and the voice of the Father. In
the power of these He was led into the wilderness, in fasting and prayer
to have them tested and fully appropriated. Early in His ministry Mark
records (i. 35), "And in the morning, a great while before day, He rose
and departed into a desert place, _and there prayed_." And somewhat
later Luke tells (v. 16), "Multitudes came together to hear and to be
healed. _But He withdrew Himself into the desert, and prayed._" He knew
how the holiest service, preaching and healing, can exhaust the spirit;
how too much intercourse with men could cloud the fellowship with God;
how time, time, full time, is needed if the spirit is to rest and root
in Him; how no pressure of duty among men can free from the absolute
need of much prayer. If anyone could have been satisfied with always
living and working in the spirit of prayer, it would have been our
Master. But He could not; He needed to have His supplies replenished by
continual and long-continued seasons of prayer. To use Christ's Name in
prayer surely includes this, to follow His example and to pray as He
did.
Of the night before choosing His apostles we read (Luke vi. 12), "He
went out into the mountain _to pray, and continued all night in prayer
to God_." The first step towards the constitution of the Church, and the
separation of men to be His witnesses and successors, called Him to
special long-continued prayer. All had to be done according to the
pattern on the mount. "The Son can do nothing of Himself: the Father
showeth Him all things that Himself doeth." It was in the night of
prayer it was shown Him.
In the night between the feeding of the five thousand, when Jesus knew
that they wanted to take Him by force and make Him King, and the walking
on the sea, "He withdrew again into the mountain, Himself alone, _to
pray_" (Matt. xiv. 23; Mark vi. 46; John vi. 15). It was God's will He
was come to do, and God's power He was to show forth. He had it not as a
possession of His own; it had to be prayed for and received from above.
The first announcement of His approaching death, after He had elicited
from Peter the confession that He was the Christ, is introduced by the
words (Luke ix. 15), "And it came to pass that _He was praying alone_."
The introduction to the story of the Transfiguration is (Luke ix. 28),
"He went up into the mountain _to pray_." The request of the disciples,
"Lord, teach us to pray" (Luke xi. 1), follows on, "It came to pass _as
He was praying_ in a certain place." In His own personal life, in His
intercourse with the Father, in all He is and does for men, the Christ
whose name we are to use is a Man of prayer. It is prayer gives Him His
power of blessing, and transfigures His very body with the glory of
heaven. It is His own prayer-life makes Him the teacher of others how to
pray. How much more must it be prayer, prayer alone, much prayer, that
can fit us to share His glory of a transfigured life, or make us the
channel of heavenly blessing and teaching to others. To pray in the Name
of Christ is to pray as He prays.
As the end approaches, it is still more prayer. When the Greeks asked to
see Him, and He spoke of His approaching death, He prayed. At Lazarus'
grave He prayed. In the last night He prayed His prayer as our
High-Priest, that we might know what His sacrifice would win, and what
His everlasting intercession on the throne would be. In Gethsemane He
prayed His prayer as Victim, the Lamb giving itself to the slaughter. On
the Cross it is still all prayer--the prayer of compassion for His
murderers; the prayer of atoning suffering in the thick darkness; the
prayer in death of confiding resignation of His spirit to the Father.
(Note E.)
Christ's life and work, His suffering and death--it was all prayer, all
dependence on God, trust in God, receiving from God, surrender to God.
Thy redemption, O believer, is a redemption wrought out by prayer and
intercession: thy Christ is a praying Christ: the life He lived for
thee, the life He lives in thee, is a praying life, that delights to
wait on God and receive all from Him. To pray in His Name is to pray as
He prayed. Christ is only our example because He is our Head, our
Saviour, and our Life. In virtue of His Deity and of His Spirit He can
live in us: we can pray in His Name, because we abide in Him and He in
us.
CHRIST OUR TEACHER.
Christ was what He taught. All His teaching was just the revelation of
how He lived, and--praise God--of the life He was to live in us. His
teaching of the disciples was first to awaken desire, and so prepare
them for what He would by the Holy Spirit be and work in them. Let us
believe very confidently: all He was in prayer, and all He taught, He
Himself will give. He came to fulfil the law; much more will He fulfil
the gospel in all He taught us, as to what to pray, and how.
_What to pray._--It has sometimes been said that direct petitions, as
compared with the exercise of fellowship with God, are but a subordinate
part of prayer, and that "in the prayer of those who pray best and most,
they occupy but an inconsiderable place." If we carefully study all that
our Lord spoke of prayer, we shall see that this is not His teaching. In
the Lord's Prayer, in the parables on prayer, in the illustration of a
child asking bread, of our seeking and knocking, in the central thought
of the prayer of faith, "Whatsoever ye pray, believe that ye have
received," in the oft-repeated "_whatsoever_" of the last
evening--everywhere our Lord urges and encourages us to offer definite
petitions, and to expect definite answers. It is only because we have
too much confined prayer to our own needs, that it has been thought
needful to free it from the appearance of selfishness, by giving the
petitions a subordinate place. If once believers were to awake to the
glory of the work of intercession, and to see that in it, and the
definite pleading for definite gifts on definite spheres and persons,
lie our highest fellowship with our glorified Lord, and our only real
power to bless men, it would be seen that there can be no truer
fellowship with God than these definite petitions and their answers, by
which we become the channel of His grace and life to men. Then our
fellowship with the Father is even such as the Son has in His
intercession.
_How to pray._--Our Lord taught us to pray in secret, in simplicity,
with the eye on God alone, in humility, in the spirit of forgiving love.
But the chief truth He reiterated was ever this: to pray in faith. And
He defined that faith, not only as a trust in God's goodness or power,
but as the definite assurance that we have received the very thing we
ask. And then, in view of the delay in the answer, He insisted on
perseverance and urgency. We must be followers of those "who through
faith and patience inherit the promises"--the faith that accepts the
promise, and knows it has what it has asked--the patience that obtains
the promise and inherits the blessing. We shall then learn to understand
why God, who promises to avenge His elect speedily, bears with them in
seeming delay. It is that their faith may be purified from all that is
of the flesh, and tested and strengthened to become that spiritual power
that can do all things--can even cast mountains into the heart of the
sea.
CHRIST AS OUR INTERCESSOR.
We have gazed on Christ in His prayers; we have listened to His teaching
as to how we must pray; to know fully what it is to pray in His Name, we
must know Him too in His heavenly intercession.
Just think what it means: that all His saving work wrought from heaven
is still carried on, just as on earth, in unceasing communication with,
and direct intercession to the Father, who worketh all in all, who is
All in All. Every act of grace in Christ has been preceded by, and owes
its power to, intercession. God has been honoured and acknowledged as
its Author. On the throne of God, Christ's highest fellowship with the
Father, and His partnership in His rule of the world, is in
intercession. Every blessing that comes down to us from above bears upon
it the stamp from God: through Christ's intercession. His intercession
is nothing but the fruit and the glory of His atonement. When He gave
Himself a sacrifice to God for men, He proved that His whole heart had
the one object: the glory of God, in the salvation of men. In His
intercession this great purpose is realised: He glorifies the Father by
asking and receiving all of Him; He saves men by bestowing what He has
obtained from the Father. Christ's intercession is the Father's glory,
His own glory, our glory.
And now, this Christ, the Intercessor, is our life; He is our Head, and
we are His body; His Spirit and life breathe in us. As in heaven so on
earth, intercession is God's chosen, God's only channel of blessing. Let
us learn from Christ what glory there is in it; what the way to exercise
this wondrous power; what the part it is to take in work for God.
_The glory of it._--By it, beyond anything, we glorify God. By it we
glorify Christ. By it we bring blessing to the Church and the world. By
it we obtain our highest nobility--the Godlike power of saving men.
_The way to it._--Paul writes, "Walk in love, even as Christ loved us,
and gave Himself a sacrifice to God for us." If we live as Christ
lived, we will, as He did, give ourselves, for our whole life, to God,
to be used by Him for men. When once we have done this, given ourselves,
no more to seek anything for ourselves, but for men, and that to God,
for Him to use us, and to impart to us what we can bestow on others,
intercession will become to us, as it is in Christ in heaven, the great
work of our life. And if ever the thought comes that the call is too
high, or the work too great, the faith in Christ, the Interceding
Christ, who lives in us, will give us the victory. We will listen to Him
who said, "The works that I do, shall ye do; and greater works shall ye
do." We shall remember that we are not under the law, with its
impotence, but under grace with its omnipotence, working all in us. We
shall believe again in Him who said to us, Rise and walk, and gave
us--and we received it--His life as our strength. We shall claim afresh
the fulness of God's Spirit as His sufficient provision for our need,
and count Him to be in us the Spirit of Intercession, who makes us one
with Christ in His. Oh! let us only keep our place--giving up ourselves,
like Him, in Him, to God for men.
Then we shall understand the part intercession is to take in God's work
through us. We shall no longer try to work for God, and ask Him to
follow it with His blessing. We shall do what the friend at midnight
did, what Christ did on earth, and ever does in heaven--we shall first
get from God, and then turn to men to give what He gave us. As with
Christ, we shall make our chief work, we shall count no time or trouble
too great, to receive from the Father; giving to men will then be in
power.
Servants of Christ! children of God! be of good courage. Let no fear of
feebleness or poverty make you afraid--ask in the Name of Christ. His
Name is Himself, in all His perfection and power. He is the living
Christ, and will Himself make His Name a power in you. Fear not to plead
the Name; His promise is a threefold cord that cannot be broken:
_Whatsoever ye ask--in My Name_--IT SHALL BE DONE UNTO YOU.
A PLEA FOR MORE PRAYER