Pictured: Caricature of Kuyper’s opening speech at the 1891 Social Congress.
Note: Excerpt from “Commentary on Lord’s Day 50 of the Heidelberg Catechism,” in On Business and Economics (Lexham 2021), part of the 12-volume Abraham Kuyper Collected Works in Public Theology. Reprinted by permission of the publisher. Citations have been omitted.
This work has not previously been translated into English. In fact, virtually all of the 12-volume series – approximately 2 million (!) words – appears in English for the first time. This is the result of a decade of labor by the Abraham Kuyper Translation Society.
Translation by Ed M. van der Maas.
Question 125: What is the fourth petition?
Answer: “Give us this day our daily bread”; that is, be pleased to provide for all our bodily need, so that we may thereby acknowledge that Thou art the only fountain of all good, and that without Thy blessing neither our care and labor, nor Thy gifts, can profit us; that we may therefore withdraw our trust from all creatures and place it alone in Thee.
The petition asks for bread – for nothing more, for nothing to go with that bread. In paradise, fallen humanity was told, “By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread” [Genesis 3:19]. It is this ordinary, dry bread that every human being has to ask from his God every day.
If We Have More than Just Bread, We Are Living in God’s Abundance
The fact that it pleases God often to give us more than bread is beside the point. If need be, bread and water are sufficient to sustain life. But we cannot do without bread. Our body has been created by God so that it digests and metabolizes the substances it takes in. Eating is therefore in fact nothing but replenishing the digested intake with new intake, to renew what has been used. But strictly speaking bread and water are sufficient for this purpose. The reason why only bread is mentioned here is that, especially in the mountainous regions where Jesus walked, brooks of fresh and delicious water gurgled everywhere, so that water was always present. It was not the water but only the bread that required time and effort. Nowadays we have, in addition to bread, all kinds of other foods and side dishes at our disposal, and in addition to water all kinds of other means to quench our thirst. This is the consequence of the superabundant goodness of God, who let all kinds of fruit grow, ordained meat for us to eat, and made the grape vine, the coffee tree and the tea bush grow. But we do not have a right to anything, and by limiting all petitions concerning physical needs in the Lord’s Prayer to the single petition for bread, Jesus wants to evoke a twofold attitude in our praying soul.
First, that we shall not claim anything more than bread; and second, that we realize daily what great goodness we experience when God the Lord gives us something else in addition. There is an old Dutch saying about people being “unable to bear prosperity well,” meaning that they have all manner of pretensions to lead a comfortable life, while looking down on precious bread with a measure of disdain as being beneath them. This is the height of ungodliness. We should rather honor the wonderful food God has given us in bread. Bread is actually a food entirely intended for and suited to man, which, together with water, contains almost everything we need for the sustenance of our body. Everybody needs bread – our body cannot do with less, and it is therefore harsh and merciless to withhold bread from any human being. But bread as such is sufficient. The many people among us who sit down at the table and look discontented when they see that there is nothing but bread, and nothing to accompany the bread, or to use on the bread, are guilty of ingratitude. As long as God gives us each day sufficient bread to feed our body, we have nothing to complain about. For anything we receive in addition we should be doubly grateful. We must remember that everything additional is surplus goodness of our God toward us. We may therefore use and enjoy this surplus if God gives it to us. But we must banish any thought that, should God give us nothing but bread, he would actually do us an injustice. Parents also would do well not to foster any false notions in this regard in their children. It is a splendid preparation for a better understanding of the Lord’s Prayer to eat nothing but bread and drink nothing but water for a day while abstaining from anything else.
If You Have Bread, You Are the “Rich Man” – and Must Remember the Poor
Jesus teaches us to pray for bread, whether we be poor or rich. But it goes without saying that those who are poor learn to pray this petition much more readily and earnestly than those who are better off. Those who live amid rich abundance, who always have more than enough bread in their pantries and even consider bread a secondary concern among all their other foods, do not easily arrive at an attitude in which they pray for bread from the inner urging of their soul, for bread for this one day, and for nothing but bread. Those who are poor, by contrast, and especially those who are truly poverty stricken, who have no bread in the house for themselves and their children when they wake up in the morning, and who do not know where they might find it, such people automatically come to this prayer. What is more natural than that they pray, “Father, give me our bread for today”? But those who are rich and have a well-filled pantry and cellar, and who let anything they might want to eat be bought for them, who get anything they want delivered at their house each morning by the baker and the butcher, such people will never spontaneously come to this prayer. They must first be enabled by the Holy Spirit to pray this prayer.
Rich people may be capable of giving thanks spontaneously when they think of all their riches and wealth and may then say to themselves, “What makes me so different that I am Dives and not poor Lazarus?” But praying for bread, which they barely value and which lies abundantly on their table and will later mostly be taken from the table again without having been used – this they can learn only through the Holy Spirit. Indeed, even those who are not rich but nevertheless enjoy a measure of prosperity and who, while not disdaining bread, still always put butter and even toppings on it, and who enjoy a hot meal every day, never come spontaneously to an attitude in which they pray to God from a sense of need for a piece of bread for this particular day. They may feel anxious when their business does not generate enough profit, or when they have difficulty paying their bills, and therefore they pray to God for help in their temporal concerns. But what Jesus puts on our lips here, to pray every day for a piece of bread from a gracious God, does not occur to them spontaneously. Rather, they must be taught to pray this through the Word, by its light and under the influence of the Holy Spirit. There are therefore few people who pray the Lord’s Prayer, and therefore also this petition, each day anew from an ardent need of their soul.
In this context, also pay attention to the word us: give us this day our daily bread. Let that little word set the rich and the more well-to-do at least on the right path. Even though they themselves have bread in abundance, they know that there are thousands living in their surroundings who face each new day with distress, in part for lack of bread. Even though they themselves have everything their heart desires, let them begin by allowing their thoughts in this prayer to also go out to the many who live in worry and distress and barely know how they can get from one day to the next. Then at least they will immediately sense that the prayer “Give us this day our daily bread” reflects a reality rather than a fiction. And if they then, rising from prayer, look at their own abundance and think of the terrible need in which others find themselves, and if they are then cut to the heart by the fearful word “hunger,” which they never knew themselves, then after such a prayer they may perhaps have a better sense of their calling to be stewards of their possessions on God’s behalf.
Remain Dependent upon the Lord in Your Abundance
They may also then be more willing than they might otherwise have been to stretch out their hand as servants of God in distributing daily bread to those who have no bread.
Beware lest you say in your heart, “My power and the might of my hand have gotten me this wealth.” You shall remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you power to get wealth.
Deuteronomy 8:17-18
The petition for simply a morsel of bread contains the affirmation of our absolute dependency, and as such embodies the root of all true piety. It is not that there is piety in asking bread from God because you are really hungry and there is nothing but an empty breadbasket on your table, but rather because most human beings do not find themselves in this kind of emergency situation. Sadly, even in Christian countries there are still a few families who upon waking face the unanswered question whether they will see any bread that day, and if so, where this bread will come from. But that is not the situation in which Jesus puts the petition for daily bread on the lips of his disciples. The disciples were not that poor! Jesus’ intention is that this prayer for the fulfillment of our daily needs would spring from our heart, even when we at least have bread. And since this petition confines itself to the present, that is, to the bread for this one day, it is also clear that it is Jesus’ intention that this petition shall not spring from acute lack of bread but shall be prayed by all of us, even though we can very well get by this day with what we have on hand.
We emphasize this because even among God’s children the petition for daily bread so easily flags as long as the need is not urgent. We notice this most clearly in meetings of Christian organizations. As long as the treasurer has money on hand, we rarely hear in such meetings petitions for the daily bread of the organization. This petition begins to cross our lips only when the Lord God makes us face disturbing deficits. It is true: need teaches us to pray. We even concede that need exists in order that we may learn to pray. But he who just learns to pray does not yet know how to pray as he should.
Where prayer is as it should be, the petition “Give us this day our daily bread” is not inspired by fear that we will otherwise die of hunger, but is meant to give God the glory.
Abraham Kuyper
