Luke 11:4 And forgive us our sins; for we also forgive every one that is indebted to us. And lead us not into temptation… We must admit that it is an evil world. Look, first, at the physical world. How many accidents there are in it! How many diseases and deformities and agonies and deaths! What a world of sick-rooms and infirmaries and graves! Is not that an evil world in which death is the inexorable issue of life? Again, look at Nature itself. Nature as a machine is perfect. But among the products which the working of that perfect machine turns out are the volcano and the earthquake, the morass and the desert, the flood and the drought, the famine and the pestilence, deadly beasts and loath some vermin, painful accidents and misshapen forms, agonies and death. Again, look at the intellectual world. See how partial, unsymmetrical, are many of its judgmental With what sidelong, tortuous course does it approach truth, careening toward it under preponderant stress of self-bias. Again, look at the emotional world. What cares and apprehensions and silent griefs chafe and corrode and shrivel up the world's soul. How envy stings it, avarice cankers it, passion scorches it, hate chars it with coals of hell. How often purest affections are misplaced, most loving confidences betrayed. But it is when we enter the region of the distinctively spiritual world that the signs of evil are thickest and darkest. Man, although the son of God, is evidently, conspicuously, out of harmony with Him. He who is the all-pure and all-holy One is manifestly the object of human distrust and aversion. And the world's ceaseless prayer, whether consciously expressed or not, is this, "Deliver us from evil!" So, too, does the pagan stammer our prayer. Behold his pilgrimages and sacrifices and self-lacerations! Oh, what a cry for deliverance is that which goes up from the writhing dances and flaming suttees and gory Juggernauts of the heathen world! So, too, does the Christian articulate our prayer, oh, how distinctly and frequently and fervently! And now a momentous question comes up: Will the prayer be answered? Most certainly it will. For, first, it is the Son of God Himself who bids us offer it. Again: this prayer is to be offered to a Father — a Father, too, who is heavenly. And so did He once for all appear that He might put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself. And therefore, when He, the Son of God, was about to be born into the world, an angel bade Joseph call the name of the coming child Jesus, i.e., Saviour; for His Saviourship would consist in this very thing, namely, He would save His people from their sins. And salvation from sins is salvation from sin's consequences as well as from sin itself, from grief as well as from guilt, from the evil of circumstances without as well as from the evil of character within. And this leads us to our last point, the completeness of the deliverance which the heavenly Father will give those who approach Him filially, in the name of His Son, our Divine next-of-kin or Elder Brother. It is a threefold deliverance. And, first, it is a deliverance of the spirit: that august part or side of man's threefold nature, which links him with Deity, which can know Him intuitively, by sense of kinship, which can commune with Him who Himself is Spirit and the Father of Spirits. And the deliverance He offers is a full, complete, everlasting deliverance: the deliverance of the spirit from sin, from sin's penalty, from sin's dominion, from sin's guilt; in one word, from evil. Secondly, it is a deliverance of the Psyche, or soul, that mysterious principle within us which seems to be the centre and seat of our personality; that subtile bond of union which unites spirit and body; that inscrutable, undiscoverable pivot on which are suspended the conditions of life — life bodily and life spiritual; that seat of sensibility and thought and emotion; that mysterious thing which is life itself. And this life or soul, sharing as it does in the fortunes of the fallen spirit, operates and is operated on at every disadvantage. And the deliverance which the Son of God offers is a deliverance of the life and all its faculties from these unfavourable conditions: a deliverance of the judgment from all prejudice and perversion and blindness, of the imagination from all that is impure and untrue, of the memory from all unholy or bitter reminiscences, of the instincts from all sinful drifts, of the affections from all that is unheavenly or sorrowful; in short, from all evil. And, thirdly, it is a deliverance of the body: that wonderful structure in which life finds alike its home, its carriage, and its avenues. Sharing in the fortunes of the fallen spirit, the body shares its curse, and so is amenable to disease and anguish and death. And the deliverance which the Son of God offers is a deliverance of the body; its deliverance from imperfection and weakness and disease and mortality; in one word, from evil In fine, the deliverance from evil for which the Son of God bids us pray is the repeal of the Eden curse. (G. D. Boardman, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: And forgive us our sins; for we also forgive every one that is indebted to us. And lead us not into temptation; but deliver us from evil. |
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