Page:The Lord's Prayer (Saphir).djvu/17

Rh pray, but He teaches prayer. He is the revelation of prayer. The mystery of prayer is made manifest in Him, who is our Mediator and interceding High Priest, who from all eternity was appointed by His Father to be the beginning of the creation, the redeemer of sinners, and the heir of all things. When we understand the mystery of mediation, manifested in the incarnate and now glorified Son, but existing in the purpose of God from all eternity, prayer loses its enigmatic and isolated character; it no longer appears as an after-thought, there is no longer any discord between it and the unchangeableness of God; but it is seen as having its root and beginning in the blessed Trinity, its fountain in the eternal counsel of salvation.

The Messiah says, in one of the prophetic psalms: I am prayer. During His pilgrimage on earth, His whole life was communion with God; and now, in His glory, He is continually making intercession for us. But this does not exhaust the idea, "I am prayer." He not merely prayed and is now praying. He not merely teaches and influences us to pray, but He is prayer, the fountain and source of all prayer as well as the foundation and basis of all answers to our petitions. He is the Word in this sense also. From all eternity His Father heard him, heard Him as interceding for that world which, created through Him, He represented, and in which, through Him, divine glory was to be revealed. In the same sense,