Matthew 7:11

If you then, being evil,

Know how to give good gifts to your children,

How much more will your Father who is in heaven,

Give good things to those who ask him?

And thus they are to recognise that if they, with all their imperfections, can behave so faithfully towards their sons, how much more certain it is that their heavenly Father will give the good things of the Messianic age to those who are truly His sons when they ask Him persistently, seek Him earnestly, and knock confidently and continually on His door because they are so eager to meet with Him. And by this means they will be provided with all the strength and ability that they will need in order to successfully ‘seek first the Kingly Rule of God', and to ‘seek His righteousness', and in order to be able to fulfil His commandments in the way that Jesus has outlined, for in Matthew 7:12 He summarises all those commandments in one sentence.

‘If you then being evil.' We must neither overstate the meaning of this, nor underestimate it. The strict intention is to stress man's sinfulness over against God's perfection. The point is that if weak and failing sinful man can behave well towards his son, how much more will a perfect and loving heavenly Father Who has infinite power behave well towards His sons. Thus once again the purpose is to accentuate that they are now dealing with their heavenly Father.

However, in saying this we should note that the Old Testament does clearly depict the sinfulness of man as being so from his very beginning. David could say, ‘I was shaped in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me' (Psalms 51:5), and while it is true that this may have been because he was suffering under deep conviction of sin because of his adulterous and murderous behaviour, it cannot be denied that it demonstrated a sense of his having been in some way connected with sin from birth. We can also compare the words of Psalms 58:3, ‘the wicked are estranged from the womb, they go astray as soon as they are born, speaking lies'. There too wrongdoing is clearly traced right back to the beginning of life. Thus the sense is clearly given in both cases that how we behave now, can be traced back to the womb. And that is why in Psalms 14:1 (repeated in Psalms 53:1) we have an all inclusive statement concerning man's sinfulness, ‘There is none who does good. YHWH looked down from heaven on the children of men, to see if there were any who understood (or ‘dealt wisely'), who sought after God, they are all gone aside, they are together become defiled, there is none who does good, no not one'. Compare also, ‘there is not a righteous man on earth who does good, and does not sin' (Ecclesiastes 7:20). The universality of both these statements reveals that in all cases it must go back to the condition in which a man was born, for otherwise it would not apply to all.

‘Your Father in heaven.' Note the ‘your'. As we have noted previously Jesus depicts Him as the Father of those who have come under the Kingly Rule of Heaven and have responded to Jesus, and are thus, as His ‘sons', seeking to be peacemakers and to be perfect like He is in the loving of their enemies (Matthew 5:9; Matthew 5:44). It is those who are like that, and those alone, who can with confidence pray these prayers for the Messianic Rule to triumph, and can come confidently into His presence.

‘Good things.' As we have already seen this includes the Holy Spirit at work through them, and all that is offered in the beatitudes and the Lord's Prayer and the remainder of the Sermon. And along with these come many other spiritual blessings, as spoken of, for example, in Romans 8:28, where it includes all that contributes to their salvation; Romans 10:15, where it is the ‘good things' of salvation; Matthew 12:6, where a number of good things are described; Hebrews 9:11, where Christ as High Priest will minister to them ‘good things'; Hebrews 10:1, where the old offerings were shadows of the ‘good things' to come, and so on. There is no limit to the heavenly blessings that God can bring to us.

Thus as we come to the end of the main section of the Sermon we can now do so on a high note. For because they can live in the presence of their heavenly Father, living in continual communion with Him (‘pray without ceasing'), and because of the ‘good things' with which He has blessed them, including the Holy Spirit, they can now go forward to live to please Him (compare Galatians 2:20). And ‘therefore' they will be able to do what Matthew 7:12 says.