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A closer look at the Lord's Prayer
A sister in Christ brought this old post of mine to my attention today. She told me she thought it worth reposting.
It was originally prompted by some strange intepretations of the Lord's Prayer that I had read. So I thought I would undertake a brief exegesis of this prayer and the very important lessons Jesus was teaching in it. IT IS WORTH STUDYING.
First of all Jesus taught this prayer to His disciples as a model for how to pray. He said, "Pray in this manner" not "in these words". Thus our Lord intended it as a pattern not as a ritualistic prayer to be slavishly repeated. He was teaching His disciples the proper order, manner and method of petitioning the Father.
Let's look at the prayer:
"Our Father who art in Heaven" ... addresses the One to whom prayer is to be offered and states the ground upon which we can approach Him— He is our Father, Abba, Daddy. Any other approach is presumptuous sin.
"Hallowed be Thy name" ... speaks of the petitioner's desire to see that God's name be kept holy and sanctified, high and lifted up.
"Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven" ... is not a request for the Kingdom to be restored to Israel but rather a desire of the petitioner to see God's Kingdom established on earth, every knee bowing and worshiping Christ as is done in Heaven. It is a desire to see the fulfillment of time when ALL things are brought under the Lordship of Jesus Christ and nothing exists which is not in perfect accord with the will of God. That is the greatest desire of my heart. Being with Christ is just part of that great promise of eternal perfection and peace to come.
"Give us this day our daily bread" ... is an acknowledgment that all that we need to sustain us, both physically and spiritually, comes from the hand of God. Yes, we are to work for our food, but it is from God's hand that the bounty comes, not from our own efforts. We can work hard to obtain what we need to live but God can blow on it and make it evaporate. How often have we labored hard and found not enough at the end? That, beloved, is the hand of God touching our lives to bring us into obedience to Him. As He said to those who were more concerned with their own desires than God's: "I have brought a drought on the labor of your hands." (Haggai 1:11)
"Now therefore, thus says the LORD of hosts, 'Consider your ways! You have sown much, but harvest little; you eat, but there is not enough to be satisfied; you drink, but there is not enough to become drunk; you put on clothing, but no one is warm enough; and he who earns, earns wages to put into a purse with holes. Thus says the LORD of hosts, 'Consider your ways! Go up to the mountains, bring wood and rebuild the temple, that I may be pleased with it and be glorified,' says the LORD. 'You look for much, but behold, it comes to little; when you bring it home, I blow it away. Why?' declares the LORD of hosts, 'Because of My house which lies desolate, while each of you runs to his own house. Therefore, because of you the sky has withheld its dew and the earth has withheld its produce. I called for a drought on the land, on the mountains, on the grain, on the new wine, on the oil, on what the ground produces, on men, on cattle, and on all the labor of your hands.'" (Haggai 1:5-10) Thus let us consider our ways when misfortune strikes and then trust completely in God who supplies our needs.
"Forgive us our trespasses (sins/debts/offenses) as we forgive them that trespass against us" ... speaks of the law of forgiveness that is operative in God's economy. It is a reminder to us that the lesson of the unjust servant is a key one in God's eyes. Remember the servant owed a debt to the Master that he could not pay. In fact it was a veritable "king's ransom". The amount Jesus said it was—10,000 talents—equaled the total taxes gathered in Galilee for 50 years and King Herod's entire income for a dozen years. There was no way on earth the servant could EVER pay it. Just like us with our debt of sin. The man would have rotted in prison until he died without having even made a dent in what he owed. Yet the Master forgave him all he owed.
In turn the servant spied another man who owed him a small sum (100 denarii, or about 4 to 5 month's wages). He demanded HE be paid back and when the poor servant could not, he had the man thrown into prison until he could pay it back.
When the Master found out what the one he had forgiven did, he "moved with anger, handed him over to the torturers until he should repay all that was owed him." Then Jesus added: "My heavenly Father will also do the same to you, if each of you does not forgive his brother from your heart.” (Matthew 18:34-35) I do not think that is a warning we would be wise to ignore or think to mitigate in some way.
Jesus delivered this parable to further illustrate His response to Peter who wondered just how often he had to forgive his brother who sinned against him. Jesus wanted to make clear to His disciples that the people of God should display God's character in their lives, thus as they are forgiven so too they are to forgive. A failure to forgive is a lack of love for one's brother and the apostle John, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, said that the person who professes Christ but does not love his brother is a liar and shows he does not love God. (1 John 4:20) Indeed, Jesus said "By this shall all men know that you are my disciples: that you have love one for another." One who demands grace for himself but justice for another shows that he does not have the nature of God within him.
Some say that such things smack of legalism, and so they attempt to explain them away in some fashion. These things are not legalism, but the answer of a good conscience toward God, an evidence that we HAVE been changed, that we ARE new creatures in Christ, that the Spirit of God Himself dwells within us. Obedience to God is not legalism. Legalism is following laws and rules in order to gain salvation. Grace is accepting the free gift of God by faith in the complete and all-sufficient once-for-all sacrifice of the pure and spotless Lamb of God on the Cross. Obeying Him—or, at least, where the flesh is weak, desiring to obey Him—is the evidence that you indeed repented and have come to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ. Obedience is not legalism.
This particular clause in the Lord's Prayer is asking for the free forgiveness of God for all those things we have done that have offended Him ... on the grounds that we are His, as is evidenced by the fact that we in turn are forgiving—or are willing to forgive—all those who have offended us. How else can we respond to God's great forgiveness of our unpayable sin debt? As Gloria Gaither wrote in her great hymn I Then Shall Live— "So, greatly pardoned, I'll forgive my brother; the law of love I gladly will obey."
"Lead us not into temptation" ... is similar to David's prayer "Do not incline my heart to any evil thing, to practice deeds of wickedness with men who do iniquity; and do not let me eat of their delicacies." (Psalm 141:4) The Greek translated "temptation" is πειρασμός (pierasmos, pronounced peer-as-MOSS) which means a "trial" of various natures ... either good or bad ... or a test of some kind. This word appears with this meaning only in the NT (and writings based on the NT) except in one ancient papyrus from the first century AD. The physician Dioscerides of Anarzabus used the word in a report describing the use of drugs in various "trials" to see the result of their use on various diseases.
Certainly praying to not be tested or tried is scriptural. Did not Jesus Himself in Gethsemane pray "Father, if You are willing, remove this cup from Me; yet not My will, but Yours be done." (Luke 22:42) And in accordance with that example, we must remember that when we pray to be preserved from testing, we must always acknowledge that we want His will above our will.
"But deliver us from evil" ... indeed can speak of the Evil One, as some claim, for the Greek places the definite article before the noun which speaks not of "any" evil but a specific evil. We know that it is Satan who tempts us and is permitted to do so by God at times in order to bring the dross to the surface in us so that it might be surrendered and removed. Jesus told Peter that Satan sought to "sift" him as wheat is sifted; but rather than say "I will not permit it" He said instead that He prayed Peter's faith would not fail and that when he was turned back to the right path again he should strengthen the others. As we can see in Scripture, this was necessary to break Peter's reliance on himself. (Which, not incidentally, is what God does with us as well.) However, there is nothing wrong with our asking that we be protected from such trials unless in God's perfect knowledge he knows that the trial will work a far more exceeding weight of glory, as Paul puts it.
"For thine is the Kingdom, the Power and the Glory, for ever and ever" ... speaks of the absolute power of God, his consequent ability to exceedingly abundantly supply all that we can ask or even think (Ephesians 3:20), and that ALL things are done for His glory. (Ephesians 1:14) It rightly places in our minds the fact of WHO God is. We may approach Him in the beginning as "Our Father" but we must remember when all is said and done that He is Almighty God!
"Amen" ... in other words: "May it be, just as I have prayed."
I pray this simple exegesis (though by no means a complete or even a scholarly one) opens up the Lord's Prayer a bit more in order to bless you in your knowledge of Him and help you in your approach to Him in prayer.
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