My apologies that there was no blog post last week – I was away at a church conference with very limited access to the Internet.
We’ll continue our study of Jesus’ teachings in Matthew 6. Last time we looked at his instructions on how not to pray. To be a Christian, however, you need to know how to do something just as much as how not to do it. Fortunately, that’s exactly what Jesus went on to teach next.
Let’s read Matthew 6:9-15
This, then, is how you should pray:
‘Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name,
your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us today 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 the evil one.’
For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.
This is, of course, traditionally known as the Lord’s Prayer. Jesus gave it to us as a model or a template for how to pray to God. He didn’t necessarily intend for us to use this exact prayer word for word, although there is nothing wrong with doing so if you are struggling to formulate a prayer in your own words.
There is so much that could be said about this prayer and it’s quite remarkable just how much Jesus managed to pack into a few short sentences. As such I’m going to break it down into a number of blog posts, and today we’ll look only at the first line: Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.
What does it mean to begin a prayer by addressing God in this way? Let’s look at the significance of each element.
Our Father
Have you ever stopped to think about just how incredible it is that God, a being of unlimited power and knowledge, the creator of the universe and everything in it, allows us to call him ‘Father’?
This is something we can easily take for granted, and that is a trap we should avoid falling into at all costs.
Those who lived in Old Testament times did not have this privilege. Even the most faithful people such as David, Moses or Esther did not get to address God as ‘Father’. It’s only through Jesus that this is possible for us.
How does this work?
In our natural state, humans are what the Bible calls “slaves to sin” – in other words we follow only our animal instincts for survival and pleasure. What may seem like the freedom to do whatever we please is really just a form of slavery to our own lusts and desires, which can never truly be satisfied no matter what we do.
Paul the apostle explains in Romans 6:17-19
But thanks be to God that you, having once been slaves of sin, have become obedient from the heart to the form of teaching to which you were entrusted, and that you, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness. I am speaking in human terms because of your natural limitations. For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and to greater and greater iniquity, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness for sanctification.
But it’s even better than that, as Paul teaches in Galatians 4:4-7
But when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, in order to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as children. And because you are children, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!”. So you are no longer a slave but a child, and if a child then also an heir, through God.
Not only have we been rescued from slavery to a master that can never be satisfied and only leads us to death, and not only have we been taken into God’s household to serve a master who is compassionate and merciful, we’ve even been adopted as God’s children, as younger brothers and sisters of his only true Son, Jesus Christ.
That’s what it means to call God your Father. Whenever you begin a prayer by addressing God as “Father”, these are the things you should have in your mind. You should always approach him with the gratitude and humility that comes from remembering how it was that you became his child and what he and Jesus had to sacrifice in order to make it possible. Never, ever take any of it for granted!
In heaven
While God allows us to address him as ‘Father’, this does not mean we can be overly familiar or flippant when we speak to him. He is not merely our Father, he is our Father in heaven. By his very nature he is higher above us than we are above the lowliest insect or bacterium.
While the Bible often teaches us that we should “fear” God, this does not mean we should approach him in a state of terror or anxiety, expecting imminent wrath, petrified that a single wrong word might spell our doom. For people who have endured an abusive or toxic relationship with their human father, it can be incredibly difficult to shake off the idea that God is just a more powerful version of that.
The “fear” that God wants you to experience is more in the sense of respect or awe, both for what God is, but also for who he is and what he has done for you.
He loves you and he wants you to spend eternity with him. He will always give you what you need (note that this will not necessarily always be the same as what you want).
This does not mean he will always prevent difficulty and suffering from coming into your life. Hebrews 12:5-8 teaches
And you have forgotten the exhortation that addresses you as children —
‘My child, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, or lose heart when you are punished by him; for the Lord disciplines those whom he loves, and chastises every child whom he accepts.’
Endure trials for the sake of discipline. God is treating you as children; for what child is there whom a parent does not discipline? If you do not have that discipline in which all children share, then you are illegitimate and not his children
Even Jesus, who never did anything wrong, “learned obedience through what he suffered” according to Hebrews 5:8.
Just as a good human father gives his children everything that they need to be able to grow into functioning, moral adults – including discipline and correction – God gives us everything we need, not for happiness now, but to be ready to join him in his eternal Kingdom in the life to come.
Again, this is what we should have in mind every time we speak to God: respect and awe for a loving Father who has the authority to discipline and correct us for our own good because he wants us to be in his Kingdom.
If you’ve ever read ‘The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe’ by CS Lewis (or seen a TV/film adaptation) you may remember the line that “Aslan is not a tame lion”. While Aslan was intended to be an allegory of Jesus Christ, the same is true for God as well.
You cannot come to God with a feeling of safety because he’s harmless or because he’s required to help you. He’s neither of those things.
So many sceptics misunderstand this when they suggest that God can’t be real because there is suffering in the world. They don’t realise that God isn’t obliged to help human beings or to keep us alive. We are not the moral centre of the universe. He is. He may choose to do those things because he loves us, but he isn’t required to do any of them.
The real problem many sceptics appear to have is that they can’t trust anyone other than themselves to have control of their lives. But if you are a Christian, then you can trust God, and you can approach him with a feeling of safety, not because he’s unable to harm you or forbidden to do so, but because he loves you, he has adopted you as his child, and has promised you life.
Hallowed be your name
The phrase “hallowed be your name” really just means “may your name be honoured”. It’s not so much concerned about God’s actual name. We don’t know what his name is or if he even has one as we understand the concept. The term “YHWH” or “Yahweh”, by which God allows himself to be referred in the Old Testament, isn’t really a name in the same way as “John” or “Mary”, it’s more of a way for God to describe himself as the one who is eternally self-existent, in contrast to human beings who are contingent and mortal creatures.
The reference to God’s “name” being hallowed or honoured in the Lord’s Prayer is probably more along the lines of his reputation or his prestige. We should want other people to have a high opinion of God and to respect and honour him even if they aren’t among his children.
When we tell God that we want his name to be honoured, we are telling him that he is worthy of all praise and adoration that human beings can express.
Yet does that also include a promise on our part to do what we can to make it so? People will naturally judge a religion or a movement by the character and the behaviour of the people who follow it. If we can live our lives in a way that’s consistent with God’s own character and teachings, then people who are not Christians will learn what he’s like and hopefully see him as worthy of honour.
Do you live that way? Will people see in you a good impression of what God is like and respect him as a result? Do your attitude and behaviour give God the praise and adoration he deserves?
What it means
These opening words of the Lord’s Prayer are not simply a mantra that we repeat in order to initiate a conversation with God. They’re not just the equivalent of opening with “Hi, nice to see you, how are you?” before moving on to what we really want to say.
They are an expression of gratitude for what God has done in order to adopt us as his children.
They are a recognition that God is supremely high above us and he shows his love to us because he chooses to rather than because he is obliged to do so.
They are a promise to live our lives in a way that enhances God’s reputation among those who don’t yet know him well.
That’s where your mind should be whenever you start a prayer, whether it’s the Lord’s Prayer or any other prayer you wish to offer. Even if you don’t use those exact words to begin your prayer, the thoughts they express should describe the attitude in your heart, to act as an introduction and a frame for everything else you wish to say to God.
Next time we’ll consider the second section of Jesus’ prayer.
Nihilist to Christian 