MATTHEW 6:9
The Lord’s Prayer reminds us that none other than Jesus himself taught his people to pray—a remarkable truth. The Lord Jesus, because he is fully God and fully man, is the only one truly qualified to teach us how to pray. As the second member of the Trinity, Jesus gives us God’s perspective on prayer. In Jesus Christ, God himself is teaching his people how he wants us to approach him. But as one who is fully man, Jesus is also able to instruct us in how we as humans are to approach prayer. Jesus engaged in and experienced a life of prayer. Because he is fully human without any taint of sin, Jesus led a life of perfect prayer. Jesus knows what it is to pray because he shares our nature and even now is interceding for us at the right hand of God (Heb. 7:25). We must never forget, then, the tremendous opportunity we have when we read the Lord’s Prayer. In Matthew 6, Jesus teaches his disciples to pray—words from God himself about the prayer that he desires.
As mentioned in chapter 1, our prayers reveal our deepest convictions about God, about ourselves, and about the world around us. Every word we utter in prayer, every idea and concept that we form as we pray, and every emotion that flows out of our heart is a reflection of what we believe about God and about the gospel of Christ. The well-known Christian formula “As we believe, so we pray” underlies this very reality. Nothing uncovers the true state of our souls, both to ourselves and to others, as does prayer.
As we approach Jesus’ teachings on prayer, we should ask ourselves: How do Jesus’ words correct any bad prayer habits I have developed? How is Jesus challenging my prayer life and inviting me to enter into a more God-glorifying pattern of prayer?
As the Old Testament makes clear over and over again, God does not take the worship of himself lightly (see for instance Lev. 10:1–2). God regulates and sets the parameters for our worship, not us. Just consider the scrupulous detail God gave to Moses about how the tabernacle was to be constructed and how the priests were to conduct themselves during sacrifice and worship. The implication was clear: God was warning Israel not to lean on her own creativity when it came to approaching the Lord God in worship.
This raises one of the most fundamental issues about prayer: Where do we start? Every prayer has to begin somewhere. How do we enter the heavenly court and speak to almighty God? Beginning in Matthew 6:9, Jesus provides us with an answer, saying, “Pray then like this.”
THERE IS NO “I” IN PRAYER: COMBATING INDIVIDUALISM IN OUR PRAYERS
Over the past several decades I have noticed that many Christians tend to begin their prayers by presenting their needs. Of course, in some sense, I understand why we naturally turn to petition almost immediately upon entering into prayer. After all, prayer reminds us of our deep need for God to sanctify us in our circumstances and save us from our trials. Additionally, our circumstances and trials are often the very things that drive us to pray in the first place. Thus the tyranny of the urgent has a remarkable way of consuming our intellectual life and our thought patterns. As a result, our prayers, from beginning to end, are often marked by petition.
But the Lord’s Prayer begins in a very different place. Petitions certainly are a part (a major part, in fact) of the Lord’s Prayer, but Jesus does not begin with requests. He begins, instead, by identifying the character of the God to whom he prays while at the same time challenging our individualism in prayer. Jesus does all this in the first two words, “Our Father.”
The word our, at first glance, seems like an insignificant little pronoun. But Jesus is making a tremendously powerful theological point by beginning his prayer with the word our. Jesus is reminding us that when we enter into a relationship with God, we enter into a relationship with his people. When we are saved by Christ, we are saved into his body, the church. In fact, this emphasis on our place in the corporate identity of the church is reiterated throughout the prayer. One way to notice this emphasis is simply to read through the prayer and stress each first-person personal pronoun: “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, 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.”
Do you notice what is stunningly absent? There is no first-person singular pronoun in the entire prayer! Jesus did not teach us to pray, “My Father who is heaven. . . . Give me this day my daily bread and forgive me my debts as I also have forgiven my debtors. And lead me not into temptation but deliver me from evil.” The point is not to deny our own sins or our own needs, but to never leave the focus solely on ourselves.
One of the besetting sins of evangelicalism is our obsession with individualism. The first-person singular pronoun reigns in our thinking. We tend to think about nearly everything (including the truths of God’s Word) only as they relate to me. Yet when Jesus teaches his disciples to pray, he emphasizes from the very outset that we are part of a corporate people called the church. God is not merely “my Father.” He is “our Father”—the Father of my brothers and sisters in the faith with whom I identify and with whom I pray.
If we are honest, even many of our prayer meetings fail to take into account Jesus’ emphasis on the corporate character of prayer. Yet we must never lose sight of the fact that even when we pray by ourselves (Matt. 6:6), we must pray with an eye toward and with love for Christ’s church. We must remember the pattern of our Lord’s speech in the model prayer and recall not only the words he used but the words he didn’t use. The first-person singular (I, me, my, mine) is completely absent from the Lord’s Prayer. Evidently, prayer should not center on you or me.
The problem of overemphasizing ourselves in our prayers reminds me of G. K. Chesterton’s famous answer to a question put forth by a major newspaper, “What is the problem with the world?” This question was sent to many public intellectuals in Victorian England, many of whom sent back long essays delineating the complexities of everything wrong with the world. Reputedly, Chesterton responded with a simple handwritten note that read, “I am. Sincerely yours, Chesterton.”
What is the biggest problem with our prayers? Perhaps the most fundamental answer mirrors Chesterton’s: “I am.” One of our greatest problems and deficiencies in prayer is that we begin with our own concerns and our own petitions without regard for our brothers and sisters. Many of us falter in prayer because we begin with the wrong word: I instead of our. Jesus reminds us that we are part of a family, even when we pray. Thus the first word of Jesus’ model prayer is the word our. We are in this together.
To be a Christian is to be a part of the church of the Lord Jesus Christ. By God’s grace we are incorporated into the body of Christ so that our most fundamental spiritual identity is not an “I” but a “we.” This runs against the grain of our fallen state. This also runs against the grain of American individualism—an individualism that has seeped into many sections of evangelicalism. But we must be normed by Scripture. Jesus teaches us to drop the “I” and start with “our.”
A FATHER IN HEAVEN: OUR IMMINENT AND TRANSCENDENT GOD
A Father
God is identified by many titles throughout Scripture. He is called “Lord,” “Most High,” “Almighty,” “King,” even “the judge of all the earth.” Yet in the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus does not refer to God by any of these titles. Instead, he refers to him as “Father.” By using this word, Jesus reminds us that God is not some anonymous deity or impersonal force. We pray to the God of Scripture, the one who has revealed himself in the Old and New Testaments. Yet we come to this God by the work of Christ, and we have a unique relationship with him. As our Father, the one who hears our prayers is imminent—that is intimately near—to his people.
The term Father is not merely a title for God. In fact, we must use great care in how we define the “fatherhood of God.” Jesus is here affirming a filial relationship that exists between the Creator and those who have been saved through faith in Jesus Christ and adopted into God’s family. But beginning in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the term “fatherhood of God” has often been used to imply that God is a father to all people, without distinction and without regard for a person’s faith in Christ.
Of course, there is a sense in which God is fatherly toward all his creation. But Scripture affirms that we only come to know God as our Father personally when through faith in Christ we are adopted into God’s family. The 2000 Baptist Faith and Message, the Southern Baptist Convention’s statement of faith, summarizes this quite well:
God as Father reigns with providential care over His universe, His creatures, and the flow of the stream of human history according to the purposes of His grace. He is all powerful, all knowing, all loving, and all wise. God is Father in truth to those who become children of God through faith in Jesus Christ. He is fatherly in His attitude toward all men.1
Indeed, God is fatherly toward all his creation. God exercises a “providential care” over the works of his hands. He is fatherly in relationship to everything he has made and everyone he has made. The fact that any human being anywhere exists and lives and breathes is a testimony to a paternal and benevolent relationship between the Creator and his creation. But as the confession of faith points out, God is properly Father only to those who know him through the Son.
Scripture attests to the unique fatherly relationship God has with his people on numerous occasions:
In love he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will. (Eph. 1:4–5)
But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. (Gal. 4:4–5)
For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!” The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him. (Rom. 8:14–17)
These passages make very clear that our sonship and our ability to relate to God as Father come only through redemption. Ephesians 1:5 indicates that we are predestined to adoption “through Jesus Christ”—that is, according to and on the basis of Christ’s work on the cross. Galatians 4:4–5 emphasizes this same point by showing that our redemption from the law results in sonship. Finally, Paul made clear in Romans 8:14–17, only those who have the Spirit of God (called the “Spirit of adoption”) can call out to God as “Abba! Father!”
Scripture is thus unambiguous. We can only relate to God as Father because we have received the Spirit of adoption as sons and daughters through the objective, atoning work of Jesus Christ. In other words, we can call God “Father” not because we are his children by virtue of being his creation, but because we are his children by virtue of adoption. Our Father has adopted us through his Son, in his Son, to his own glory.
We see, then, that Jesus teaches us to begin our prayers according to gospel realities. When we pray, we are praying from within the context of an established relationship that Christ himself has enacted, effected, and achieved. Only by virtue of Jesus’ work on the cross can we truly say, “Our Father in heaven.”
These truths also remind us that we do not approach God’s throne in prayer because we have the right in and of ourselves to do so. Our ability to come into God’s presence ended in Genesis 3. Only by God’s grace and mercy through the atoning work of Christ do we now have the right to stand before the God of all creation and speak the words “Our Father in heaven.”
The theologian Gary Millar has observed that the Lord’s Prayer is necessary precisely because the unbroken communion Adam and Eve experienced with God in the garden of Eden ended with their sin and expulsion from the garden.2 Adam conversed with God in the garden in the cool of the day. We are no longer in the garden of Eden. However, because we have been adopted as sons and daughters of God, those who are in Christ can truly pray to God as “our Father.”
Furthermore, the word Father also says something about God’s disposition toward us. Whereas we were once God’s enemies, now, in Christ, God loves us no less than he loves his own Son. This gospel relationship tells us that God, our Father, is pleased and even glad to receive the prayers of his children. Thus, in these two small introductory words, Jesus reminds us of the gospel and the gracious disposition God has toward us. The God who has delivered us from our sins is also the Father who loves us and welcomes us. The God who saved us by the work of Christ on the cross is the same God who invites us to become part of his family. The God who so graciously spoke to us in and through his Son now remarkably invites us to come speak to him. He is both transcendent and imminent—in Christ he is close to us.
A Father in Heaven
Jesus’ address emphasizes not only God’s immanence in calling him Father but also his transcendence by referring to him as the “Father in heaven.” God is not merely a benevolent force in the universe or some tribal deity. This is the God who rules and reigns from on high. This is the God enthroned over all creation who enjoys the unending worship of the angelic host. This is our high and holy God. Our Father is in heaven; he is transcendent.
This mention of God’s transcendence is a reminder that God is distinct from his creation. Even though we have a precious relationship with God made possible by the work of Christ, we should not therefore think that God is simply a grandfatherly figure in the sky or worse, “the man upstairs.” Jesus shows us that even as we can come to God as his children and approach a loving Father, we must not forget that the Father to whom we come is none other than the almighty God of the universe.
The transcendence of God is emphasized time and again throughout the Old Testament.
Know therefore today, and lay it to your heart, that the LORD is God in heaven above and on the earth beneath; there is no other. (Deut. 4:39)
There is none like God, O Jeshurun, who rides through the heavens to your help, through the skies in his majesty. (Deut. 33:26)
For you, O LORD, are most high over all the earth; you are exalted far above all gods. (Ps. 97:9)
In Ecclesiastes 5:2, Solomon connected our understanding of the transcendence of God to the proper practice of prayer. He wrote, “Be not rash with your mouth, nor let your heart be hasty to utter a word before God, for God is in heaven and you are on earth. Therefore let your words be few.” Our knowledge of God’s transcendence should shape our prayers by reminding us that prayer is a humble and reverent enterprise. This is why I believe that one of the most helpful things to do in prayer is to pray the Scriptures. In this way, we can make sure that God’s words are many and that our words are comparatively few.
THE GRACE OF DIVINE DISCLOSURE
Before leaving the words “Our Father in heaven,” we should note one last important feature of this passage: we do not name God; he names himself. This may seem like an odd observation, but it has enormous theological implications. When Jesus appropriates Old Testament language to address God instead of opting for newer, more “creative” ways to address him, he is reminding us that we must only speak about God as he has revealed himself.
Moses’ encounter with God at the burning bush makes this point abundantly clear. God commissioned Moses to speak to Pharaoh and demand that he let the Israelites go. Moses understood the importance of knowing the name of the God who sent him and thus asked, “Whom shall I say has sent me? What is your name?” (Ex. 3:13, author’s paraphrase). The book of Exodus does not shy away from portraying the full breadth of Moses’ imperfections. Yet one thing Moses does understand is that he has no right to name God. Only God has that right. As Carl Henry stated, when God reveals himself he is forfeiting “his own personal privacy that his creatures might know him.”3 Therefore, we must take note of what God says about himself and speak about him and to him according to those truths.
When we pray, therefore, we must follow Jesus’ model of only ascribing attributes and names to God that God himself has employed. We are not free to call him what we want. This point is particularly important in our day since feminist theologians and others promoting inclusive language proposals have posited that gender-specific designations for God are archaic and patriarchal. In light of this, many theologians have asserted that we should use feminine attributions for God as well as masculine, such as “heavenly Mother.” Others have asserted that because human fathers often so poorly exercise their parental responsibilities and abusively employ their authority, the very language of fatherhood may turn people away from God.
How should evangelicals who affirm the inerrancy of Scripture respond? First, we must recognize that Scripture is very clear that God is neither male nor female. Instead God is spirit (John 4:24); he has no biological features. Second, we must also assert that according to Scripture God is rightly understood as a Father to his children. Theologians often categorize this type of language in Scripture as “analogical” language. In other words, God’s descriptions of himself to us are accommodated for our creaturely understanding. This does not mean that these descriptions are in any way untrue or false. Rather, God speaks in a way that communicates reality but in a way our minds can understand. Thus, altering God’s self-designation in any way changes his intended analogy and thus destroys the truth of his Word.
Ultimately, God has not revealed himself as a heavenly mother. God prescribes the vocabulary we ought to use when addressing him. If we wish to honor our transcendent Father, we will follow the example of Jesus and speak in accord with what God has revealed of himself in Scripture. When we pray “our Father,” we are rejecting every misrepresentation of God’s character, every lie of the Devil, every heresy of idolatry, and praying to the one, true, and loving God—our Father.
HALLOWED BE THY NAME: JESUS’ FIRST REQUEST
After Jesus identifies the character of God, showing us how we are to address him, he moves to the first petition, “hallowed be your name.” Many Christians mistakenly believe that this phrase is yet another exclamation of praise. But this phrase is actually an appeal. Jesus is not merely saying that God’s name is hallowed; rather, he is asking God to make his name hallowed. In order to understand this petition, we must first consider the meaning of two crucial words: hallowed and name.
First, what does the word hallowed mean? Hallow and hallowed are archaic words that have largely dropped out of our modern vocabulary and have not been replaced by anything else (a fact that reveals something about the secularization of our culture). For many, the word hallow may even seem a bit ghoulish since the only time modern Americans use this word is with regard to Halloween. The verb hallow, however, simply means to “make holy” or “consider as holy.” Thus, when Jesus petitions God to hallow his name, he is asking that God act in such a way that he visibly demonstrates his holiness and his glory. We will explore just how this happens later.
Second, what does it mean for God to hallow his name? The first thing to recognize about this request is that God’s “name” is essentially shorthand for God himself. The Old Testament regularly refers to God simply by referring to God’s “name.” But it is also the case that God’s name often refers to his public reputation. Just as we speak of “having a good name” as a way to refer to a good reputation, the Old Testament uses the same idiom to refer to God’s reputation. Herman Bavinck, the prolific nineteenth-century Dutch theologian, beautifully explained this point in his Reformed Dogmatics:
All we can learn about God from his revelation is designated his Name in Scripture. . . . A name is something personal and very different from a number or a member of a species. It always feels more or less unpleasant when others misspell or garble our name: it stands for our honor, our worth, our person, and individuality. . . . There is an intimate link between God and his name. According to Scripture, this link is not accidental or arbitrary but forged by God himself. We do not name God; he names himself. . . . Summed up in his name, therefore, is his honor, his fame, his excellencies, his entire revelation, his very being.4
This explains why God is so concerned with his name throughout Scripture. For instance, God repeatedly indicates that when he acts he does so for the sake of his name, that is for his own glory.
For your name’s sake, O LORD, pardon my guilt, for it is great. (Ps. 25:11)
Bring my sons from afar and my daughters from the end of the earth, everyone who is called by my name, whom I created for my glory. (Isa. 43:6–7)
For my name’s sake I defer my anger; for the sake of my praise I restrain it for you, that I may not cut you off. Behold, I have refined you, but not as silver; I have tried you in the furnace of affliction. For my own sake, for my own sake, I do it, for how should my name be profaned? My glory I will not give to another. (Isa. 48:9–11)
I acted for the sake of my name, that it should not be profaned in the sight of the nations, in whose sight I had brought them out. (Ezek. 20:14)
Therefore say to the house of Israel, Thus says the Lord GOD: It is not for your sake, O house of Israel, that I am about to act, but for the sake of my holy name. (Ezek. 36:22)
The petition “hallowed be your name” is essentially a summary of these Old Testament passages. By asking that the name of God be “hallowed,” Jesus is asking God to so move and act in the world that people value his glory, esteem his holiness, and treasure his character above all else. We must not miss this: Jesus’ first request is not that his personal needs be met, but that God’s glory and holiness be known and loved as it deserves. What a remarkably God-centered prayer.
How then does God “hallow his name” in the world? First, “hallowed be your name” is a request that the church be sanctified. The church is the steward of God’s name. One of the most important ecclesial responsibilities is to bear the name of God faithfully. Every single Christian who comes to know the Lord Jesus Christ as Savior and is adopted as a son or daughter of God bears this responsibility. This is a remarkable task—a task for which we are not sufficient. This is, of course, why we must pray this request like Jesus. We must petition God to “hallow his name” in our discipleship, in our prayer, in our preaching, in our witnessing, in our work, and in eternity. Our ultimate concern is not that our lives be comfortable, but that God be glorified, and that our lives, even our prayers, put God’s glory on display.
Of course, God’s inherent glory does not wax and wane. We cannot add to or take away anything from God’s inherent majesty. But his visible and observable glory can be made more or less apparent depending on our faithfulness. Faithfulness in the Christian life makes the glory of God go public. The church must therefore remember that the degree to which God’s glory is manifested on earth depends on how we conduct ourselves as his redeemed image bearers. Even in our prayer we are to begin in the right place by understanding that our central aim is to be a holy people set apart unto the one who has created, saved, and redeemed us. In this way, when the world looks to those who are in Christ, the holiness of God is amplified and made invariably visible.
Second, “hallowed be your name” is also an evangelistic petition. This opening line of the Lord’s Prayer is a clear reminder to us that when any sinner comes to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and his or her sins are forgiven, God’s holy name is shown to be evermore holy in the eyes of the church and of the world. And the more people there are who come to know Christ, the more people exist who revere God’s character and hallow his name. Thus, God’s saving of a sinner shows God’s glory and, in turn, the saved sinner proclaims to the world the excellencies of the God who saved him. God’s name is thus hallowed in the world.
The first line of Jesus’ prayer focuses our attention on God and not on ourselves. Jesus teaches us that God is our imminent Father. He is the transcendent one in heaven. He is the one who reveals and names himself. And our chief concern in prayer is not our own comfort but God’s glory. If we do not truly know the God to whom we speak, our prayers will remain impotent, facile, and devoid of life. Only by coming to know the God that Jesus describes in the first line of the Lord’s Prayer will we be moved to come before the throne of grace. As J. I. Packer noted:
Men who know their God are before anything else men who pray, and the first point where their zeal and energy for God’s glory come to expression is in their prayers . . . If there is little energy for such prayer, and little consequent practice of it, this is a sure sign that as yet we scarcely know our God.5
Indeed, a paltry understanding of God leads to paltry prayers. If we come to know and love the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, we will be motivated to pray and to pray as Jesus taught us.