The most well-known prayer of all, the Lord’s Prayer (from Matthew 6:9-13), has been such an inspiration to me over the years. John Dickson writes on his Facebook page:
One of the most universal and consistent Christian practices — from the first century until five minutes ago — was the daily saying of the Lord’s Prayer.
Our earliest post-New Testament guide to the Jesus tradition, the Didache (written in the AD 90s), insists that believers recite the Lord’s Prayer every day (Did. 8).
The first Christians took Jesus at his word. When he said, “Therefore, you should pray thus: ‘Our Father in heaven…’” (Matt 6:9), they heard an actual prayer, not just an exemplar. The word is “thus” (οὕτως), not “like / similar to” (ὅμοιος).
Luke drives it home even more plainly: “When you pray, say …” (Luke 11:2). Not riff, not vibe—say (λέγετε).
And then there’s the fourth petition of the prayer itself: “Give us today our daily bread.” To the earliest students of Jesus, the idea of going more than a day without asking for something meant for “today” just didn’t make sense.
But maybe they were wrong — and we stumbled on the truth only five minutes ago! 😀
As I’ve prayed this renown prayer each day1, I finally decided to compile a few of my reflections here. Nothing technical or complicated. Just a few thoughts and musings. I hope (and pray) you find them helpful.
First, some context.
Leading into “Our Father” Matthew records Jesus’s warnings on prayer, which are equally important (Matthew 6:5-8). Why is this so? Seems to me that any shamming or self-deception in prayer must first be identified and cast out if we are to lay bare our souls before God and manifest full sincerity. Observations on Jesus’s warnings include:
- The reward for pretentious prayer is the same as the intent. Compare “they have received their reward in full” with “to be seen by others” (NIV). We should not downplay this kind of pretension Jesus is getting at. Drawing attention to our self in prayer (or in any religious activity) is to take attention away from God, which is tantamount to idolatry. It is a form of identity theft!
- The posture in prayer or the place of prayer is not crucial; it is the motive in prayer that Jesus addresses (“to be seen by others”). People prayed prostrate (Numbers 16:22; Matthew 26:39); kneeling (Daniel 6:10; Luke 22:41; Acts 9:40; 21:5); sitting (2 Samuel 7:18; 1 Kings 19:4); standing (1 Samuel 1:26; Mark 11:25; Luke 18:11).
- Jesus does not forbid all public prayer, but stresses the private side of devotion to God in prayer. When right motives are in place, public prayer is appropriate. Nevertheless those who pray in public must always check their hearts before doing so. Before. Always.
And now, the Prayer proper.
It begins “Our Father in heaven” or THE PATERNITY OF GOD. What can be observed here? First, addressing God as “Father” indicates intimacy in relationship. Our Father’s love for us and his image in us go hand-in-hand. We are God’s children, not in name only, but in reality (1 John 3:1)!
Second, the fact that God is “our Father” necessarily means we are his children. This is not a relationship among equals. Keeping this in mind properly aligns the relationship and enables the remaining elements to unfold in the Prayer.
Finally, that God is “in heaven” underscores not only his greatness but also his otherness. God is both near to us as Father but also far from us as Creator. Quite simply, children are not the same as their Father. God’s essential being transcends us (Isaiah 66:1-2; Acts 7:48). Still, our Father is not a static sovereign, but a relationally loving, feeling being who answers prayer. He is “our Father in heaven.”
Next, we move on to THE PRIORITY OF GOD: “hallowed be your name.” What’s the first thing in your prayers? Is it what you want or something else? Here, Jesus teaches us what must come first from our lips when praying. To “hallow” someone is to revere or honor them. When we are eager to make God’s name holy we effectively are asking that the value of his moral excellencies relative to all else is preeminent in our lives. This is what it means to glorify God. Since all humans are made after the image of God, we are designed to reflect his glory. When we sin, we fall short of God’s glory (moral excellencies) and fail to honor his name (Romans 3:23; on which see my post here). When we ask that God’s name be honored, we are placing our honor, our desires, and our expectations second to his. When we do so, we are being what we were made to be—God’s image bearers reflecting God’s great honor.
Because he is “our Father in heaven,” the first request we bring to him in every prayer is that his name be honored above all else, no matter what we want or desire. This is precisely what is exemplified in Jesus’s prayer of agony before his crucifixion, “yet not my will but yours be done” (Luke 22:42). To honor and revere God’s name is to want what God wants and reflect what God is. Such privilege!
Just as the priority in our prayers should be that our Father’s name be hallowed, so also we long to see THE PLAN OF GOD unfold as we pray “your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”
Quite simply, the kingdom of God is not so much “out there” as it is “in here.” It is the rule and reign of God in our hearts. Too often we turn this inside out and expect that advancing God’s kingdom here on earth is dependent on us as active contenders. When we recognize that God shapes us by circumstances, we’re less likely to find ourselves always fighting to change them.
God’s will right here, right now is paramount, but keeping in mind that change wrought by God is what we must strive for. We could say: The advance of the kingdom is not brought about by us for God; it is brought about by God for us. As I said previously, we must want what God wants. If we’re not willing to live like this, then should we pray like this? “Your kingdom come, your will be done,” I believe, is the hardest prayer we could pray, but also the most important.
In addition, “your kingdom come, your will be done” is a prayer for continuity, not only between our desires and God’s, but between heaven and earth. Seeking God’s will above our own spans all of reality. At the expense of stating the obvious, God’s will is clearly not always done here on earth as it is in heaven, which is why we must pray for it. In fact, heaven and earth are not two separate realms of existence, but two distinct aspects of one interconnected reality. Indeed, the culmination of all things entails this convergence as one integrated “new heaven and new earth” (Revelation 21:1). C. S. Lewis makes an important point along these lines.
“Aim at Heaven and you will get earth ‘thrown in’; aim at earth and you will get neither.”
Mere Christianity, Book III, Chapter 10
Meanwhile there remains a thin, invisible veil separating our vision of the two aspects, and thus we pray God’s will be done ‘”on earth as it is in heaven.” Rest assured, however, someday the veil will be removed. Maranatha!
The progression of the Lord’s Prayer should not go unnoticed and is a model for our prayers. Already I’ve noted that Jesus begins by 1) embracing the paternity of God as “our Father in heaven,” 2) the priority of God, “hallowed be your name,” and 3) the plan of God, “your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” Only then does he turn to THE PROVISION OF GOD saying, “give us this day our daily bread.”
Long-term provision is not in scope here; it is our day-to-day dependence on God that is in focus. Where resources and food-chain supplies seem endless, day-by-day dependence upon God is hardly on anyone’s radar. Then, a pandemic hits and changes everything. Hoarders stock up to ensure that they are the ones meeting their needs, even above others. Stores limit the number of customers, shelves once fully stocked are now empty, and our daily needs are legitimately brought into question. The irony here is shockingly clear: in an age of plenty, we fail to see that our daily needs never change! Whether we live in plenty or in want, whether rich or poor, our daily needs remain the same. It is this reality we must never lose sight of, not only acknowledging it, but petitioning God in it. We shouldn’t need a pandemic to teach us this!!
“Bread” is not limited to food that nourishes our bodies (note how Jesus uses “bread” in Matthew 4:4). God’s nourishment for life goes well beyond physical sustenance. Food is merely symbolic of all our needs.
This petition is also a kind of admission that everything we have comes from God. Nowhere in Scripture is this clearer than in Deuteronomy 8:11-18. We would do well to read it and even better to heed it.
And so, every day and everything we have that is necessary for life comes from God. We beseech him to “give us this day our daily bread.” Amen.
As we continue praying for our personal needs, we move from the material (primarily) to the spiritual. Jesus teaches us about THE PARDON OF GOD: “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.” Here we find that God takes our relationships with one another very seriously.
Sin is always personal. It is a posture of being “against” another person, opposing someone, or violating some personal boundary (hence “trespass”). It entails a kind of moral indebtedness (see Colossians 2:13-14). Consequently, it is our “debtors,” not their debts, that we forgive. We have no right to expect forgiveness from above when we’re unwilling to grant it to others. In some sense, mending horizontal relationships takes precedence over our vertical relationship with God (see especially, what comes on the heels of this Prayer, Matthew 6:14-15; also, Matthew 5:23- 24).
Why is this so? Why must we first extend forgiveness to others before receiving God’s forgiveness? As I’ve noted elsewhere, “the faculty we have for receiving forgiveness and the faculty we have for granting forgiveness are one and the same thing. If we open the one we shall open the other. If we slam the door on the one, we slam the door on the other” (N. T. Wright). God’s children must be a forgiving people. Freely we have received forgiveness and freely we must offer it. Failing to do the later hinders the former.
The good news is that because God leans forward in the cross of Christ offering forgiveness, we can do the same with those who have “trespassed against us.”
The final petition appeals to THE PROTECTION OF GOD: “lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil.” The prayer of a genuine worshipper knows his/her own weaknesses and acknowledges their utter dependence upon God to avoid temptation into sin.
This is a prayer to avoid sin, not necessarily temptation. While sin always weakens us, temptation can strengthen us. It’s important not to conflate temptation and evil. They are not the same. Consider Jesus’s temptations in Matthew 4. Clearly, no evil was committed on his part and surely he was “tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin” (Hebrews 4:15). The request here is that God would not lead us into temptation that would result in our sinning. God tempts no one to sin (James 1:13-15), so this request is to “deliver us from evil,” which is the goal of temptation (cf., 1 Corinthians 10:13).
Moreover, we must remember behind every attempt to lead us into evil is the “evil one,” who, like a predator, is “looking for someone to devour” (1 Peter 5:8). Therefore, we pray for God’s protection and his deliverance. It should not be missed that part of the whole armor of God in defense against the “schemes of the devil” is “praying at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication” (Ephesians 6:10, 18).
In conclusion
Matthew’s account affirms THE PROGRAM OF GOD, “for thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever and ever. Amen.” God’s rule and reign over God’s kingdom by God’s power for God’s glory will forever be present in the hearts of those who believe on the Son of God.
Jesus’s model prayer shows us THE PATERNITY OF GOD as “our Father who art in heaven,” the priority of God, “hallowed be thy name,” THE PLAN OF GOD, “thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven,” THE PROVISION OF GOD, “give us this day our daily bread,” THE PARDON OF GOD, “and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us,” THE PROTECTION OF GOD, “and lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil” and THE PROGRAM OF GOD “for thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever and ever. Amen.”
May this prayer be our daily prayer, through Jesus Christ our Lord,
who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, forever and ever. Amen
(Note: This alliterated outline, with some modification, comes from another source. However, all comments are my own.)
- John Dickson, again on Facebook, keenly notes these historical details regarding the frequency of saying the Lord’s Prayer:
“Augustine of Hippo (AD 400), the intellectual fountainhead of western Christianity, referred to the Lord’s Prayer as oratio cotidiana, “the daily prayer.” He was a bit of a slacker in the history of Christianity. Leaders before him had urged the faithful to pray the Lord’s Prayer three times a day (Didache 8.2-3, 1st century), or even five times a day (Cyprian, Dom. Or. 35, third century). Augustine was the cool cat of ancient Christianity: he reckoned saying the Lord’s Prayer just once a day was fine!
“The daily prayer which Jesus Himself taught us, and which we therefore call the Lord’s Prayer, does indeed cancel out our daily sins when we say each day, ‘Forgive us our trespasses’ … Now He was teaching a daily prayer; and, clearly, the disciples to whom He spoke were already justified. What, then, does He mean by ‘your trespasses’ but those sins from which not even those who are justified and sanctified can be free?” (Augustine, City of God, 21.27)….
Any Anglican clergy reading this might be interested to note that the great English reformer Thomas Cranmer – in his Book of Common Prayer (1549, reiterated 1662) – mandated that ministers would say the Lord’s Prayer four times every day! (I’m sticking with Augustine).” ↩︎