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1. This prayer bears that peculiar triune stamp which we often meet, and which cannot be satisfactorily accounted for save on the theory of a Trinity in all Christian supplication. The Holy Ghost is always to be regarded as referred to when a Third Person joins the Father and the Son.

2. The prayer is one of those terse sentences which exhibit all religion in a symmetrical pair of counterparts, the precise relation of which is shown by the context.

(1) The promise (ver. 3) pledges the faithfulness of the Lord, i.e., Christ, to their confirmation in grace and the restraint of the evil one, the two kinds of guardianship being alike necessary and mutually supplementary. By confirming our inward stability, the Lord often keeps the tempter from us, and when he comes, the blessing of the Lord on our resistance tends to confirm our steadfastness. But —

(2) The apostle does not leave all to the Lord's fidelity. He rejoices in the confidence that the Lord's protected ones will protect themselves (ver. 4) by fortifying their own minds with truth and their lives by obedience. The Divine and human are balanced in our protection. "The Lord is faithful if you may be trusted."(3) But as God must have, in all things, the preeminence, the prayer follows which gives to the Spirit the prerogative of directing the soul into the love of God which confirms the soul, and into the patience of Christ which will endure and survive the enemy's attacks.

I. THE LOVE OF GOD is exhibited under two aspects in the New Testament.

1. Our love to God; but that is not here meant. When the Apostle makes that the object of prayer, he asks it as a benediction of God.

2. It means here God's love to us.

(1) That love beams through Christ upon all the world; but those only rejoice in it who are brought into a state of mind from which every impediment is removed.

(2) It is not the heart as the sphere of the affections that is here meant, but the whole man. In the strength of the love of God there is no duty past performance, and no difficulty that may not be overcome.

(3) No higher prayer can be offered than this, that by the influence of the Spirit we may be drawn from every lower affection and have an entire being open to the unhindered operation of the love of God.

II. THE PATIENCE OF CHRIST.

1. The Apostle prays literally for the steadfastness of patience of which Christ is at once the source, example, and reward. "Patient waiting for" or "patience for the sake of" Christ would have required different words, although both meanings are included and are appropriate. The Divine Spirit does direct the souls of believers into tranquil and earnest expectation of Christ's coming, and into the patient endurance of trials for His sake. But the specific meaning here is, that it may please the Lord to remove every hindrance to our perfect union with Christ in His example of obedience unto death.

2. Our way is directed into this patience when we are led into self-renouncing submission, when all things that minister to earthly mindedness are put away, and when we are brought into fellowship with His mind, who "endured the cross" for the joy that was set before Him.

3. We can offer no more important prayer than that we may have our self-will bound, and be girded and led by Another into the way of our Saviour's self-sacrifice.

III. THE FULL FORCE OF THE PRAYER IS NOT FELT UNLESS WE UNITE ITS TWO BRANCHES. Love and patience are here for the first and last time joined.

1. In our salvation their union has its most impressive exhibition. The mercy of the Father reaches us only through the endurance of the Son: at the Cross the love of God and the patience of Christ are blended in the mystery of their redeeming unity; and only that union saved the world.

2. The mercy of God waits on the free will of man with a patience that owes its long-suffering to the intercession of Christ.

3. The economy of grace provides the full power of the love of God for the progressive salvation of the saints, waiting for their full conformity to holy law with a patience that is the most precious fruit of the Redeemer's passion.

4. Eternal glory will be the last demonstration of the love of God and the crowning victory of the patience of Christ.

IV. WE MUST REGARD THIS COMBINATION AS THE OBJECT OF OUR PRAYER. With St. Paul, all that the Christian needs for the struggle and victory of life is the love of God in the heart as an active principle, and the patience of Christ as a passive grace. But the form of the prayer shows that he did not separate the two as much as we do. All duty and resistance find their strength in the love of God, and must be perfected in the patience of Christ In due time the patience of Christ shall be lost in the "partaking of Christ," and the great surviving grace, the love of God in us, will abide forever.

(W. B. Pope, D. D.)

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KJV: And the Lord direct your hearts into the love of God, and into the patient waiting for Christ.

WEB: May the Lord direct your hearts into the love of God, and into the patience of Christ.