Luke 11:13

Luke 11:13

I. Whilst prayer is described in the Bible as a positive duty, man's inability to pray acceptably of himself is stated in the strongest and most unequivocal terms. But if such be the nature of prayer he alone who has the Spirit can really pray. It would seem to follow that the gift of the Holy Spirit must precede all effectual asking for that gift, and that consequently there may be but little worth in such promises as that of our text. It is amongst the most frequent of pulpit addresses, that the unconverted must seek the aid of God's Spirit by prayer, and that moved by fear of the wrath on which the preacher has poured all the energy of his descriptions, they shall go straightway to their closets and entreat forgiveness of the Almighty. But what becomes of all this if the unconverted have no power of praying if they are not in a condition to ask for God's Spirit, inasmuch as the asking presupposes them to have it already? There is a difficulty here, but one which may be readily overcome; for long before the Spirit is possessed, as a renewing agent, He may be dwelling in man's breast as a striving agent. He does so probably in every man, certainly in every man who has been baptized into Christ. If the Spirit strive, as He often does, by exciting a desire after conversion, and by urging the duty of praying for conversion; and if the man on whom the agency works, cherish the desire and fall down on his knees; shall we not have the offering of acceptable petition, and that by an unrenewed man, and nevertheless through the operations of the Holy Ghost?

II There seems nothing wanting in this argument but a fuller demonstration that the Holy Ghost does indeed strive with unconverted men. We will fetch this fuller demonstration from the power and the agency of conscience. There is something in every man which tells him of the rightness of virtue and of the wrongness of vice, which spreads over the whole soul a feeling of satisfaction when he does what it directs, and a feeling of remorse and uneasiness whenever there is the hardihood to thwart its decisions. If you took away conscience and introduced the striving agency of God's Spirit, there would practically be the same circumstances in human condition; so that the man who has a conscience, a conscience which warns him back when he would overstep the boundary line of virtue, is situated as another would be, who, without a conscience, was striven with by the Spirit. It is, therefore, in perfect consistency with all those doctrines of Scripture, which represent man as himself incapable of supplication that we press on the unconverted the duty of praying for conversion, and encourage them by the declaration of the text.

H. Melvill, Penny Pulpit,No. 2,018.

References: Luke 11:13. A. Murray, With Christ in the School of Prayer,p. 48; Christian World Pulpit,vol. i., p. 210; Ibid.,vol. xxi., p. 362; Ibid.,vol. xii., pp. 94, 193; Homilist,vol. i., p. 370; new series, vol. iv., p. 120.