SOTM 24—THE Prayer

For additional notes and resources check out Douglas’ website.

"Pray then like this: Our Father in heaven,   hallowed be your name.Your kingdom comes, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil" (Matthew 6:9-13).

 Introductory thoughts

• The Lord’s Prayer may be understood as a summary of the gospel itself.
• Notice, there is no mention of doctrine or specific commandments.
• The faith has been distilled to its essence: the relationship of child to father.
•  This prayer is the opposite of repetitious babbling.
• It is not wrong to pray the prayer verbatim—Jesus seems to be encouraging us to do so. Didache: “Do not pray as the hypocrites. Rather, as the Lord commanded in His gospel… Pray in this manner three times daily during the day.” Didache 1.379

Observations

• “Father”—we approach God as our Father, through the work of the Son, by the power of the Spirit. When this is our understanding, then we are praying “in Jesus’ name.” (Note: The original Christians did not “sign off” their prayers with the formula “in Jesus name,” since they understood that their prayer was intrinsically in Jesus’ name.
• “Our” Father—Christianity was not intended to be individualistic.
• “Hallowed be your name”: To hallow means to make holy, or to sanctify. Cyprian: “It is not that we wish for God to be hallowed by our prayers. Rather we beseech of Him that His name may be hallowed in us. For by whom could God be sanctified, since He Himself sanctifies? It is He who says, ‘Be holy, even as I am holy’ [1 Pet. 1:15]. So we ask and entreat that we who were sanctified in baptism may continue in that state in which we have begun. And we pray daily for this because we need sanctification on a daily basis.” On the Lord’s Prayer 12 (ANF 5.450)
• God does not have a name in the sense that created beings do. He simply is. (Exod 3:14; 34:5-7). The early church agreed: Aristides (ANF 10.264); Justin Martyr (ANF 1.165); Irenaeus (ANF 1.412-413; Clement of Alexandria (ANF 2.464); Mark Minucius Felix (ANF 4.183); Novatian (ANF 5.615); and Cyprian (ANF 5.467). Justin Martyr: “To the Father of all, who is unbegotten, there is no name given. ...These words—Father, God, Creator, Lord, and Master—are not names. Rather, they are descriptions derived from His good deeds and functions.” ANF 1.190
• “Your kingdom come”: the kingdom continues to “come”—not a one-time event at Pentecost, as some of us may have been taught. Christ is already on the throne. Of course, his realm is one thing, but his rule (reign) in the hearts of willing subjects is another. 
• Further, we pray for his will to be done in our lives. “Your will be done” is directly parallel to “Your kingdom come.”
• God’s will is obeyed in heaven (angels and spiritual beings), as well as on earth among those who honor him as king.
• “Daily bread”—not just physical nourishment, but spiritual food (John 6:35).
• “Forgive us our debts”—in the shorter prayer of Luke 11, the word is “sins” (trespasses). The two are closely related.
• “Lead us not into temptation”—This was understood by the ancient Christians as meaning “do not allow us to be led into temptation,” since James 1:13 states that God tempts no one.
• “But deliver us from evil”—or from the evil one. The Greek can be translated either way.
• “Thine is the kingdom…”—the extra line is found in some ancient sources (e.g. Didache 8, Tatian’s Diatessaron, Sec.9, and in Chrysostom), but not in others (e.g. the oldest Greek manuscripts, quotations by Latin church fathers, Tertullian, Origen, and Cyprian).

Yet even if we pray the Lord’s Prayer, we will not be pleasing to God if our disposition towards our fellow man is wrong. That is the topic of our next devotional.

Next Up: Forgive