Daily Bread, Daily Pardon

We add this as well, and say, “Your will be done, as in heaven so on earth.” We do not say it so that God may do what he wills — who resists God, so that he cannot do what he wills? — but so that we may be able to do what God wills. Since the devil keeps us from obeying God’s will in everything we think and everything we do, we pray and ask that God’s will may be done in us; and for it to be done in us we need God’s good will toward us, that is, his help and his protection. No one is strong by his own strength; a man is safe by the grace and the mercy of God. Then the Lord himself, showing the weakness of the human nature he carried, says: “Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me.” And to give his disciples an example that they should do not their own will but God’s, he went on to say: “Yet not as I will, but as you will.” In another place he says: “I came down from heaven not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me.” Now if the Son obeyed and did his Father’s will, how much more ought a servant to obey and do his Master’s will. John urges and teaches us the same thing in his letter, that we should do the will of God: “Do not love the world, or the things that are in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For everything in the world is the craving of the flesh, and the craving of the eyes, and the ambition of this life, which is not from the Father but from the craving of the world. And the world will pass away, and its craving with it; but the one who does the will of God remains forever, just as God also remains forever.” We who want to remain forever should do the will of God, who lasts forever. [a]

And God’s will is what Christ both did and taught. Humility in the way we live. Steadiness in faith. Modesty in what we say. Doing right in what we do. Mercy in our work. Discipline in our habits. Not to be able to do anyone a wrong, and to be able to bear a wrong when it is done to us. To keep peace with the brothers. To love God with the whole heart — to love him because he is a Father and to fear him because he is God. To prefer nothing at all to Christ, because he preferred nothing to us. To hold to his love and never be pulled away from it. To stand by his cross bravely and faithfully. And when there is a fight on for his name and his honor, to show in what we say the steadiness with which we confess him, under torture the confidence with which we do battle, and in dying the endurance for which we are crowned. This is what it means to want to be a fellow heir with Christ. This is to do the command of God. This is to fulfill the will of the Father. [e]

Further, we ask that God’s will may be done in heaven and on earth alike, and both of them belong to the working out of our safety and our salvation. We have our body from the earth and our spirit from heaven, so we ourselves are earth and heaven, and we pray that God’s will may be done in both of them — in body and in spirit. For between the flesh and the spirit there is a struggle. They disagree, and the fight goes on every day, so that we cannot do the very things we want to do: the spirit reaches for what is heavenly and divine, while the flesh craves what is earthly and passing. So we ask that by God’s help and support these two natures may be brought into agreement, so that while God’s will is done in the spirit and in the flesh together, the soul that has been born new through him may be kept safe. Paul the apostle states this openly and plainly in his own words: “The flesh craves against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh; these two are set against each other, so that you cannot do the things you want. Now the works of the flesh are out in the open: adultery, sexual immorality, impurity, indecency, idolatry, spells and potions, murders, hatred, quarreling, rivalry, fits of anger, strife, factions, divisions, parties, envy, drunkenness, wild parties, and things like these. I tell you beforehand, as I have told you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. But the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, faith, gentleness, self-control, chastity.” And so we make it our prayer, in daily — no, in unbroken — pleading, that God’s will for us should be done in heaven and on earth. For this is God’s will: that earthly things give way to heavenly ones, and that what is spiritual and divine should win out. [f]

Dear brothers, it can also be understood this way. The Lord commands and warns us to love even our enemies and to pray even for those who persecute us; so we should ask also for those who are still earth and have not yet begun to be heavenly, that God’s will may be done in them too — the will Christ carried out in keeping and remaking the human race. He no longer calls his disciples earth; he calls them the salt of the earth. And the apostle speaks of the first man as being out of the dust of the earth and of the second as being from heaven. It makes good sense, then, that we, who ought to be like God our Father, who makes his sun rise on the good and the bad and sends rain on the just and the unjust, should pray as Christ tells us to and ask for the salvation of everyone. As in heaven — that is, in us, by our faith, so that we belong to heaven — God’s will has been done, so on earth as well — that is, in those who do not believe — may God’s will be done, so that people who so far are of the earth by their first birth may, being born of water and of the Spirit, begin to be of heaven. [h]

As the prayer goes on we ask and say, “Give us today our daily bread.” This can be taken both in a spiritual sense and in a plain everyday one, and either way of taking it is rich in God’s usefulness toward our salvation. For Christ is the bread of life, and this bread does not belong to everyone — it is ours. Just as we say “Our Father,” because he is the Father of those who understand and believe, so we call it “our bread,” because Christ is the bread of those who are joined to his body. And we ask that this bread be given us daily, so that we who are in Christ and receive the thanksgiving every day as the food of our salvation may not be cut off from Christ’s body by some serious sin coming in between, held back and kept from sharing in the heavenly bread. He foretells it himself and warns us: “I am the bread of life that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of my bread, he will live forever; and the bread that I will give is my flesh, for the life of the world.” So when he says that whoever eats of his bread will live forever, it is clear that those who share in his body and receive the thanksgiving by right of communion are alive. And on the other side, we have to be afraid, and to pray, that no one who is held back from communion and so separated from Christ’s body should stay far away from salvation. He threatens it himself: “Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you will have no life in you.” And so we ask that our bread — that is, Christ — may be given to us daily, so that we who stay and live in Christ may not depart from his holiness and his body. [j]

But it can also be understood this way. We have given up the world and thrown away its riches and its display in the faith of spiritual grace, and so we should ask for ourselves nothing more than food and support, since the Lord instructs us: “Whoever does not give up everything he has cannot be my disciple.” A man who has begun to be Christ’s disciple, giving up everything at his Master’s word, ought to ask for his food for the day and not stretch what he asks for out over a long span of time, as the Lord lays down again: “Do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious about itself. Each day has trouble enough of its own.” With good reason, then, Christ’s disciple asks for food for himself for one day, since he is forbidden to think about tomorrow. It would be a contradiction, and out of keeping with ourselves, to want a long life in this world when we are asking that the kingdom of God come quickly. The blessed apostle warns us the same way, giving substance and strength to the steadiness of our hope and faith: “We brought nothing into this world, and we can carry nothing out. So if we have food and clothing, let us be content with that. But those who want to be rich fall into temptation and a trap and into many harmful cravings, which drown people in ruin and destruction. For the love of money is the root of all evils; some have hungered after it and have made shipwreck of the faith and run themselves through with many sorrows.” [n]

He teaches us that riches are not only to be looked down on but are full of danger — that the root of evils that lead men astray is in them, cheating the blind human mind by a hidden trick. That is why God rebukes the rich fool, who is thinking about his earthly wealth and boasting about his overflowing harvests: “Fool, this very night your soul will be demanded of you. Then whose will those things be that you have stored up?” The fool who was to die that very night was congratulating himself on his stores; life was already failing him, and he was thinking about the size of his food supply. But on the other side, the Lord tells us that the man who becomes perfect and complete is the one who sells all his goods and hands them out for the use of the poor, and so stores up treasure for himself in heaven. He says that the man who can follow him and imitate the glory of the Lord’s suffering is the one with nothing holding him back, his belt fastened, tangled in no worldly estate — the man who is loose and free himself and goes along with his goods, which he has already sent on ahead to God. So that every one of us may be able to get himself ready for this, let him learn to pray this way, and let him know from the character of the prayer what kind of man he ought to be. [o]

Daily bread cannot run short for a righteous man, since it is written, “The Lord will not let the soul of the righteous starve,” and again, “I have been young, and now I am old, yet I have not seen the righteous man abandoned, or his children begging bread.” And the Lord promises as well: “Do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat, or what shall we drink, or what shall we wear?’ For the nations chase after all these things. And your Father knows that you need every one of them. Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.” To those who seek God’s kingdom and his righteousness he promises that everything else will be added. Since everything belongs to God, nothing will run short for the man who has God — as long as God himself does not run short for him. This is how a meal was provided for Daniel by God’s own doing. He had been shut up at the king’s order in the lions’ den, in the middle of wild animals that were hungry and yet spared him, and there the man of God was fed. This is how Elijah on the run was kept alive: ravens waited on him in his loneliness, birds brought him food while he was hunted. And — what hateful cruelty there is in the malice of men! — the wild beasts spare, the birds feed, while men set traps and rage. [p]

After this we plead about our sins as well, saying, “And forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors.” After the supply of food, pardon for sin is asked for too, so that the man who is fed by God may live in God, and so that not only this present passing life may be provided for, but the everlasting one as well, which we can reach if our sins are forgiven. The Lord calls sins debts, as he says in his Gospel: “I forgave you that whole debt, because you begged me.” And how necessary it is, how far-sighted and how healthy for us, that we are reminded we are sinners, since we are made to plead about our sins, and, while pardon is being asked from God, the soul is brought back to its own awareness of its sin. In case anyone flatters himself that he is innocent, and by thinking well of himself perishes all the deeper, he is instructed and taught that he sins daily, in being told to plead daily about his sins. John warns us of it in his letter as well: “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us; but if we confess our sins, the Lord is faithful and just to forgive us our sins.” In his letter he has put both things together — that we should plead about our sins, and that we get pardon when we ask. That is why he said the Lord is faithful to forgive sins: he keeps faith with his own promise, because the one who taught us to pray about our debts and our sins has promised that his fatherly mercy and pardon will follow. [r]

He has plainly joined a law to it, and tied us down by a definite condition and agreement: that we should ask for our debts to be forgiven us in the same way as we forgive our own debtors, knowing that what we are asking for our sins cannot be had unless we have done the same thing ourselves toward the people in debt to us. That is why he says in another place, “With the measure you use it will be measured back to you.” And the servant who would not forgive his fellow servant after his master had forgiven him his whole debt is thrown back into prison: because he would not forgive his fellow servant, he lost the leniency his master had shown him. Christ presses this even harder in his commands, with a still stronger rebuke: “When you stand praying, forgive if you have anything against anyone, so that your Father in heaven may also forgive you your offenses. But if you do not forgive, neither will your Father in heaven forgive you your offenses.” No ground for an excuse is left on the day of judgment, when you will be judged by the sentence you passed yourself, and whatever you have done to others you will undergo as well. For God commands us to be peacemakers, in agreement, of one mind in his house; and what he makes us by our second birth he wants us to stay, now that we are newborn, so that we who have begun to be sons of God may remain in God’s peace, and, having one spirit, may also have one heart and one mind. This is why God does not accept the sacrifice of a man who is at odds with someone else, but sends him back from the altar to be reconciled with his brother first, so that God may then be won over by the prayers of a peacemaker. Our peace and our agreement as brothers is the greater sacrifice to God — a people made one in the unity of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. [u]

Even in the sacrifices that Abel and Cain were the first to offer, God did not look at their gifts but at their hearts, so that the man whose heart was acceptable was acceptable in his gift as well. Abel, peaceable and righteous, sacrificing to God in innocence, taught others too to come to the altar with their gift this way: with the fear of God, with a straightforward heart, with the law of righteousness, with the peace of agreement. It makes good sense that a man who was like this in the matter of God’s sacrifice should afterwards become a sacrifice to God himself — that the man who was first to display martyrdom, and who began the Lord’s suffering by the glory of his blood, should have had the Lord’s righteousness and the Lord’s peace both. In the end men like that are crowned by the Lord; men like that will be avenged along with the Lord on the day of judgment. But the quarrelsome man, the man who splits from the rest and keeps no peace with his brothers, cannot get clear of the crime of setting himself against his own brothers, even if he has been killed for the name of Christ — as the blessed apostle and the Holy Scripture bear witness. For it is written, “Whoever hates his brother is a murderer,” and no murderer arrives at the kingdom of heaven, and no murderer lives with God. A man cannot be with Christ if he would rather imitate Judas than Christ. How great a sin it is that cannot even be washed away by a baptism of blood! How serious a crime, that cannot be paid for by martyrdom! [w]

Then, as he had to, the Lord warns us to say in our prayer, “And do not allow us to be led into temptation.” These words show that our adversary can do nothing against us unless God has permitted it first, so that all our fear and devotion and obedience may be turned toward God, since in our temptations evil is allowed nothing unless the power for it is given by him. Divine Scripture proves it, where it says, “Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came to Jerusalem and besieged it, and the Lord handed it over into his hand.” But power is given to evil against us in proportion to our sins, as it is written: “Who gave Jacob up for plunder, and Israel to those who prey on him? Was it not the Lord, against whom they sinned, and would not walk in his ways or listen to his law? And he has brought the anger of his fury on them.” And again, when Solomon sinned and turned away from the Lord’s commands and ways, it is recorded: “And the Lord stirred up Satan against Solomon himself.” [x]