Even if we suppose Luke’s reference to the Father giving the Holy Spirit to those who ask (Luke 11:13), to owe something to the editor’s hand—­it was an editor with some Christian experience—­it is clear that Jesus steadily implies that the heavenly Father has better things than food and clothing for his children.  How much of a human father is available for his children?  Then will not the heavenly Father, Jesus suggests, give on a larger scale, and give Himself; in short, be available for the least significant of His own children in all His fullness and all His Fatherhood?  And even if they do not ask, because they do not know their need, will he not answer the prayers that others, who do know, make for them?  Jesus at all events made a practice of intercession—­“I prayed for thee,” he said to Peter (Luke 22:32)—­and the writers of the New Testament feel that it is only natural for Jesus, Risen, Ascended, and Glorified, to make intercession for us still (Rom. 8:34; Heb. 7:25).

We have again to think out what God’s Fatherhood implies and carries with it for Jesus.

“The recurrence of the sweet and deep name, Father, unveils the secret of his being.  His heart is at rest in God."[23] Rest in God is the very note of all his being, of all his teaching—­the keynote of all prayer in his thought.  “Our Father, who art in heaven,” our prayers are to begin—­and perhaps they are not to go on till we realize what we are saying in that great form of speech.  It is certain that as these words grow for us into the full stature of their meaning for Jesus, we shall understand in a more intimate way what the whole Gospel is in reality.

The writer to the Hebrews has here an interesting suggestion for us.  Using the symbolism of the Hebrew religion and its tabernacle, he compares Jesus to the High Priest, but Jesus, he says, does not enter into the holiest alone.  “Having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way, which he hath consecrated for us ... let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith” (Heb. 10:19).  In the previous chapter he discards the symbol and “speaks things”—­“Christ is not entered into the holy places made with hands, which are the figures of the true; but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us” (Heb. 9:24).  There he touches what has been the faith of the Church throughout—­that in Christ we reach the presence of God.  Without saying so much in so many words, Jesus implies this in all his attitude to prayer.  God is there, and God loves you, and loves to have you speak with him.  No one has ever believed this very much outside the radius of Christ’s person and influence.  It is, when we give the words full weight, an essentially Christian faith, and it depends on our relation to Jesus Christ.