The Lord’s Prayer In contrast with ostentatious and repetitive prayers, Jesus now gives his disciples a model of what real prayer should be (vv. 9–13). We call it the Lord’s Prayer, but it is actually the disciples’ prayer, since Jesus could never have prayed for the forgiveness of sins as he instructs us to do in verse 12. The true “Lord’s Prayer” is in John 17. I have called this a model prayer, for that is what it is. It is not a prayer to be memorized and repeated mechanically, though it is not wrong to repeat these words thoughtfully in a liturgical service. Jesus did not say, “This is what you should pray.” He said, “This is how you should pray,” meaning that our requests should be along these lines. The prayer is a brief prayer; Jesus has told us to avoid vain repetitions, after all. But more than this, it is a pointed summary of what we should pray for. There are six petitions, following the initial address to God as Father. The first three concern God’s honor, God’s kingdom, and God’s will; the last three concern human needs. This places God’s concerns first, just as with the Ten Commandments the first table concerns the duties we owe to God and the second table concerns the duties we owe to our neighbors. In our day the order is usually reversed. We begin with human needs and unfortunately often never even get around to God and God’s glory at all. 1. “Hallowed be your name.” The first petition of the Lord’s Prayer is that the name of God might be honored. God’s name (actually names) stands for God himself, as he is revealed in nature and Scripture. Hence, to honor the name is to honor God, to hold him in the highest reverence and exalt him above all others. What is the “name” of God we should honor? There are many names for God. He is Elohim, the creator of the heavens and the earth (Gen. 1:1). He is El Elyon, the Most High God (Gen. 14:18–19). He is Jehovah, “I AM WHO I AM,” the name by which he revealed himself to Moses at the burning bush (Exod. 3:14). He is Jehovah Jireh, the God who provides (Gen. 22:14). He is Adonai, the Lord. In this prayer, Jesus introduces God as “Our Father in heaven” (v. 9). It is a nearly unbelievable privilege for us to call God Father. Before the coming of Jesus Christ, this was an unknown name in most prayers. Pagans did not pray this way. Even in the Old Testament the word father appears in reference to God only fourteen times, and never once does any individual Israelite address God directly as “my Father.” It would have been considered much too intimate. In fact, the Jews of Jesus’ day did not even like to use the name “God.” They spoke of “heaven” or “the Most High” or merely “Lord” instead. All this was completely overturned by Jesus. Jesus always referred to God as his Father, and here in the Sermon on the Mount he authorizes his followers to do likewise. But what a delicate balance of truth. On the one hand, we are permitted to call God Father, even using the most personal of all words, abba, the best translation of which is “daddy.” It is the word Jesus seemed to have used in all his prayers (see Matt. 11:25; 26:39, 42; Mark 14:36; Luke 23:34; John 11:41; 12:27; 17:1, 5, 11, 21, 24, 25). The God to whom we pray is personal (no mere being) and caring (“our Father”). But he is also the holy and sovereign God, who is “in heaven.” Moreover, his name must be honored by everyone (“hallowed be your name”) and his rule acknowledged (“your kingdom come”). The God to whom we pray must never be treated lightly. 2. “Your kingdom come.” We have already given some thought to the meaning of God’s kingdom (in studying Matthew 3:1), and we will come back to it again (particularly in the parables of the kingdom in chapter 13). It has to do with God’s reign or rule, which, in one sense, involves God’s sovereign ordering of all things at all times, but, in another sense, concerns his direction of the lives of his people. Here the prayer is for God’s rule in two senses. First, may you rule increasingly in the lives of your people; and second, may your final messianic kingdom come soon. 3. “Your will be done.” In this petition, much like the previous one, the disciple asks that he and others might live in growing obedience to God’s declared desires as they are found in Scripture, and that the day may quickly come when sin will be judged and the whole universe be willingly subject to God’s will, even as believers desire to be subject now (Rom. 12:2). This should be our desire, and we should always be careful to examine the attitudes of our hearts and our day-by-day actions in accordance with it. As D. A. Carson says, “These first three petitions, though they focus on God’s name, God’s kingdom, and God’s will, are nevertheless prayers that he may act in such a way that his people will hallow his name, submit to his reign, and do his will. It is therefore impossible to pray this prayer in sincerity without humbly committing oneself to such a course.” 4. “Give us today our daily bread.” Halfway through the prayer, as we come to the fourth of these representative petitions, we turn from prayer for the advancement of God’s name, God’s kingdom, and God’s will to prayer for our personal needs: (1) life’s necessities, (2) forgiveness of sins, and (3) deliverance from temptation and the devil. It should be obvious that prayer for “daily bread” is not for mere bread alone, still less the bread of the Lord’s Supper, which is what Jerome suggested. It is prayer for real food and for whatever else we need to sustain ourselves physically. There has been much uncertainty about the word translated “daily,” as in “daily bread,” since until very recently the word it translates (epiousios) was unknown in any ancient text except for the two versions of this prayer in Matthew and Luke. What did it mean? Origen was aware of this uncertainty and suggested that Matthew made the word up. However, as Barclay reports in his commentary on Matthew, not long ago a papyrus was uncovered in which epiousios appeared on a woman’s shopping list, as an obvious reminder to buy a necessary food item for the next day. Therefore, the meaning of the fourth petition is what has been assumed by most people all along, namely, give us the necessities of life for this day (or the day immediately ahead). We need to pray this day by day, of course. But then, when we receive what we need for our daily living, we also need to thank God from whom these and all other good gifts come (James 1:17). 5. “Forgive us our debts.” It is not only provision for daily living that we need, of course. We are not only creatures, we are sinful creatures. Hence, we also need forgiveness for our many sins, which God provides on the basis of the substitutionary death of Jesus Christ. It is why Jesus came. This petition of the Lord’s Prayer says, “Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors” (v. 12). What is the connection between the two parts of this petition? We do not earn God’s forgiveness by forgiving others. We know that because of the Bible’s teaching elsewhere. But if that is not the right interpretation, what does the verse mean? Some have explained it by distinguishing between forgiveness for our sins on the basis of Christ’s death, which gives us a permanent right standing before God, and forgiveness for sins committed day by day, which break our fellowship with God and for which we need to make constant confession and seek cleansing (see 1 John 1:9). But that involves a secondary and dependent experience of forgiveness that seems out of place here. This prayer is so brief that the prayer “forgive us our debts” should embrace the forgiveness of all sin in all relationships, and it is this that is somehow linked to our own forgiving attitude or lack of it. A better explanation of the connection between these two parts of the petition is that we must have a profound change of heart, expressing itself, among other ways, in a willingness to forgive others if we have experienced God’s forgiveness ourselves. It is similar to having saving faith. We are not saved by our faith; salvation is by grace. But faith must be present if we are to be saved. In the same way, forgiveness in us must be present if we are to receive forgiveness. Moreover, both the power to believe and the ability to forgive are from God. H. N. Ridderbos rightly asserts, “By forgiving his debtors the believer shows himself to be a child of God.” R. T. France expressed the same idea when he wrote, “The point is not so much that forgiving is a prior condition of being forgiven, but that forgiveness cannot be a one-way process.”7 This is not something to be taken lightly, for we cannot help but notice that this is the only one of the six petitions in this prayer that is picked up again and amplified by Jesus (in vv. 14–15). “If you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their sins, your heavenly Father will not forgive your sins.” This should impress us with the importance—even more, the necessity—of forgiving others. This point is also made strongly in Christ’s parable of the unforgiving steward (in Matt. 18:21–35). 6. “Lead us not into temptation.” Last of all, we should pray for deliverance: first, that we might be kept from trials or temptation (“lead us not into temptation”) and second, that we might be delivered from the devil (“but deliver us from the evil one”). The last three petitions are joined by the word and, showing that they are three constant needs of God’s people: provision for our daily needs and forgiveness of sins and deliverance from evil. The petitions for deliverance from temptation and from the evil one are not linked by and, which means that they belong together as parts of one request, that is, deliverance from temptation and from the evil (or evil one) that stands behind it. The word for “evil one” can be translated as “evil” only because the Greek word is either masculine or neuter, but the difference is slight. Obviously we need God’s deliverance from evil from any source or in any form. Boice, J. M. (2001). The Gospel of Matthew (pp. 98–101). Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books.
Posted on: Sat, 10 Jan 2015 01:03:20 +0000
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