OUR FATHER 1

Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Matt. 6:9–10.

When we set out to pray, there are two things we must seek above all: first, that we may have access to God, and secondly, that we may rest in him with full and solid confidence, knowing his Fatherly love for us and his unbounded kindness; that he is ready to hear our prayers; and above all that he is spontaneously ready to come to our help. Christ calls him Father, and with this title, gives us sufficient ground for confidence in him. But because we trust God only in part because of his goodness, he next commends to us God’s power. When Scripture says that God is in heaven, it means that God is sovereign over all things; that he holds the world and all that is in it in his hand; that his power sustains all and his providence orders all. So, David himself says in Ps. 2:4, “He who dwells in the heavens, shall laugh at them”; and in Ps. 115:3, “Our God is in heaven; whatever he wills, he does.”

In other words, when God is said to be in heaven, it is not meant that he is inside it; we must remember the words, “Heaven of heavens do not contain him” (2 Chron. 2:6). This expression sets him apart from all creatures, and warns us that no mean and earthy thoughts about him should enter our minds, because he is higher than the whole world. So, Christ, above all, wanted to establish the disciples’ trust in God’s goodness and power; because unless our prayers are rooted in such faith, they do us no good. What stupidity and mad arrogance it would be to invoke God as Father, unless we are accepted as his children in the Body of Christ! It follows that we pray rightly only when we come to God trusting in the Mediator.

Hallowed be thy name. Now what I have said becomes clearer. In the first three petitions we are bid to subordinate our self-regard to the glory of God; not because the glory of God has no bearing upon our salvation, but because the majesty of God deserves to come before all other considerations. It is well for us that God reigns and that all honor is his due; for no man is aflame with the desire to glorify God, unless, forgetting himself, he elevates his mind to seek God who is high and lofty. Moreover, there is a close connection and likeness among these three petitions. Where God’s name is hallowed, there is his Kingdom; and the principal mark of his Kingdom is that his will be done. When we consider how cold we are, and how slow to choose the greatest goods for which we are here commanded to pray, we see how needful and useful it is that these three petitions be thus distinguished one from another.

To hallow the name of God is simply to honor him as is his due, so that men shall not think or speak of him without the highest homage. The opposite of to hallow is to profane, which happens when men forget his majesty, or fail to render him the reverence and honor he deserves as God. Now, the glory by which God is hallowed [among men] emanates from and depends upon men’s common knowledge of his wisdom, goodness, righteousness, power, and every other excellency of God. Of course, God is never without his holiness; but men do obscure it with their ill will and wickedness, and violate and corrupt it with their unholy contempt. The sum of this petition, therefore, is that the glory of God may shine in the world and be duly celebrated among men. Religion is most alive and vigorous when men confess that all God’s works are right and worthy of praise, full of wisdom and altogether righteous. For, so it is that men embrace his Word with the obedience of faith, and approve of his pleasure and his works. But the faith by which we yield to God’s Word is as it were our signature by which we acknowledge that God is faithful (John 3:33); whereas, unbelief and contempt of his Word is the greatest possible dishonor to God.¹

9 After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name.

Not always in these words, but always to this sense, and in this manner. None ever thought Christians obliged to use no other words than these in prayer, though none must deny the lawfulness of using those words which Christ hath sanctified. After this manner; first seeking the kingdom of God, and begging those things which more immediately concern God’s glory, and then those things which more immediately concern yourselves. Or, After this manner, praying only in particular for such things as are more generally couched in the following petitions. Our Father which art in heaven: a compellation speaking our faith both in the power and in the goodness of God; our eyeing him as in heaven speaketh his power, Psal. 115:3, our considering him as our Father speaks our faith in his goodness, Matt. 7:11. Hallowed be thy name. God’s name is whatsoever he hath made himself known by: Let the Lord be glorified in every thing whereby he hath made himself known.²

The beauty of this prayer, called the Lord’s Prayer, has been honored in both spoken word and in music. Across the lines of culture and language, the Lord’s Prayer has served as the model for Christians to approach God. No liturgy is complete without it and no prayer can surpass the scope of meaning contained in its simplicity. Placed here at the center of the Sermon on the Mount, it is a focus of faith. It is a liberating expression before God. It is faith in action, focused on the future rather than on a restoration of the past. His kingdom is to come now, His will is to be done now, for piety is not our works but is God working in and through us.

The prayer includes an invocation that is threefold, with three petitions in the body of the prayer. Numerous scholars hold the belief that the doxology was added in the early part of the second century. But with the Matthean account we include the doxology as an essential part of the prayer. It may be divided into three sections of emphasis: (1) the honor that worship accords to God; (2) the humility that recognizes our dependence upon God; and (3) the hope which the rule of God creates. As a model prayer, it calls for more attention than this suggested outline offers.

The use of “our Father” means that we are members of a community. “Father” is a designation that witnesses to personal concern, and the phrase “which art in heaven” (kjv) is a Jewish expression found twenty times in Matthew as a title for the Father-God. To reverence His name is to worship. For His kingdom to come means to experience the full reign of God now, a desire for the fulfillment of divine purpose. For His will to be done is a response of the disciple confessing that it will be done in us. The request for bread focuses on that which will sustain us for the coming day. The confession of debts is in relation to our sins or debts owed to God. To forgive, as we forgive, is to recognize that God cannot renew those who stubbornly cling to grudges, thus defying His extension of grace. The prayer to be delivered from the evil one is a recognition that we will not totally escape temptation, nor delight in temptation, but we will ask God to deliver us when we are being tempted. The kingdom is His, and has priority for us; the power is His and sustains our trust and respect, for it is ultimately in His power that we serve; and the glory is His forever, and is the ultimate end or meaning of our creation and purpose. It is of interest here that the second petition of the Jewish Kaddish reads, “May He establish His Kingdom in your lifetime and in your days and in all the ages of the whole house of Israel soon and in the near future.”

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Notice that this so–called Lord’s Prayer could not be the prayer of the Lord Jesus. He couldn’t pray this prayer. He couldn’t join with you and me and say, “Our Father” because the relationship between the Father and the Son is the relationship in deity. It is a position, not a begetting. I became a son of God only through faith in Christ; therefore Christ couldn’t join with me in saying, “Our Father.”

“Which art in heaven.” God is not a prisoner in this universe—He is beyond and above it. He is in the air spaces, in the stellar spaces, but He is far removed from His universe today. He is more than creation! He is the One sitting upon the throne of the universe, and He has it under His control!

“Hallowed be thy name,” more correctly translated, would read, “Let thy name be made holy.” The name of God stands for God, for all that God is. In what way can you and I make God’s name holy? It is my conviction that by our lives we are to make God’s name holy. When Abraham went into Canaan, a Canaanite passing by observed that they had a new neighbor, for he had seen Abraham’s altar. Everywhere Abraham went he built an altar to God. And when Abraham began to do business with the Canaanites, they found him to be honest. They found that everything Abraham said invited their confidence. Finally, they reached the conclusion that the God whom Abraham worshiped was a holy God, and Abimelech said to Abraham, “… God is with thee in all that thou doest” (Gen. 21:22). The children of Heth said, “… thou art a mighty prince among us …” (Gen. 23:6). The entire life of Abraham revealed the reverence he felt for God. Surely the name of God was made holy in Canaan because of Abraham.⁴

We must pray in God’s will (vv. 9–13). This prayer is known familiarly as “The Lord’s Prayer,” but “The Disciples’ Prayer” would be a more accurate title. Jesus did not give this prayer to us to be memorized and recited a given number of times. In fact, He gave this prayer to keep us from using vain repetitions. Jesus did not say, “Pray in these words.” He said, “Pray after this manner”; that is, “Use this prayer as a pattern, not as a substitute.”

The purpose of prayer is to glorify God’s name, and to ask for help to accomplish His will on earth. This prayer begins with God’s interests, not ours: God’s name, God’s kingdom, and God’s will. Robert Law has said, “Prayer is a mighty instrument, not for getting man’s will done in heaven, but for getting God’s will done in earth.” We have no right to ask God for anything that will dishonor His name, delay His kingdom, or disturb His will on earth.

It is worth noting that there are no singular pronouns in this prayer; they are all plural. It begins with “OUR Father.” When we pray, we must remember that we are part of God’s worldwide family of believers. We have no right to ask for ourselves anything that would harm another member of the family. If we are praying in the will of God, the answer will be a blessing to all of God’s people in one way or another.

If we put God’s concerns first, then we can bring our own needs. God is concerned about our needs and knows them even before we mention them (Matt. 6:8). If this is the case, then why pray? Because prayer is the God-appointed way to have these needs met (see James 4:1–3). Prayer prepares us for the proper use of the answer. If we know our need, and if we voice it to God, trusting Him for His provision, then we will make better use of the answer than if God forced it on us without our asking.

It is right to pray for daily physical needs, for forgiveness, and for guidance and protection from evil. “Lead us not into temptation” does not mean that God tempts His children (James 1:13–17). In this petition we are asking God to guide us so that we will not get out of His will and get involved in a situation of temptation (1 John 5:18), or even in a situation of tempting God so that He must miraculously rescue us (Matt. 4:5–7).⁵

8. Many have questioned the meaning of the statement your Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask him. “Then why should we pray?” they ask. Prayer is not man’s attempt to change the will of God. God’s method of changing our will is to bring it into conformity with His will. More than changing things, prayer changes people. Prayer is not conquering God’s reluctance to answer, but laying hold of His willingness to help! Prayer, in the life of the true believer, is an act of total confidence and assurance in the plan and purpose of God. It is not an expression of panic and desperation.

The following sample prayer is given to the disciples as an example of a suitable prayer. It is neither lengthy nor irreverent. It contains a depth of piety and a pinnacle of power. This prayer, often called the “Lord’s Prayer,” is in reality a disciple’s prayer, for Jesus gave it to His disciples as a sample of the true principle of spiritual prayer. In no way does the prayer itself embody all of His teaching about prayer and certainly, having just warned against vain repetition, He did not intend for this particular prayer to be merely recited with empty meaninglessness. This does not mean, however, that this prayer may not be recited as an act of public worship. There are those who feel such recitation is too liturgical, while there are others who feel that the omission of ever repeating this prayer is a failure to grasp its true significance. Certainly if we are to follow its example properly we may benefit from repeating it as it was given by the Lord Himself. To place this prayer under law and eliminate it from Christian usage is to deny the great essence of what the prayer is all about.

9. The very beginning phrase, Our Father, is completely uncommon to the prayers of the Old Testament. Martyn Lloyd-Jones (Vol. II, p. 54) has commented: “So when our Lord says, ‘Our Father,’ He is obviously thinking of Christian people, and that is why I say that this is a Christian prayer.” By contrast see the ultra-dispensational approach of Gaebelein who refers to the Lord’s Prayer as one of the rags of popery Luther brought with him from the Catholic church. He evaluates the Lord’s Prayer as “decidedly unchristian!” (A. C. Gaebelein The Gospel of Matthew, p. 139). The two major elements of the prayer are adoration and petition. Hallowed be thy name addresses the attention of the prayer toward God and reverence for His name and His person. Hallowed (Gr hagiazō) means to be held in reverence and awe of holiness. God’s name was so sacred to the Old Testament Jew that it was never pronounced by human lips. Thus His name is the expression of His very essence. The biblical usage of the concept of a name is a characteristic description of the basic character of the person to whom the name is applied. Since the prayer is directed to our spiritual Father, only a child of God who has been born again can rightly pray this prayer.⁶

There are many today who say with assurance that the universe in which we live came into being out of nothing. That statement is not based on scientific fact. If you have an upset stomach and go to the doctor, the doctor is going to ask you questions and do an examination to try to find out the reason for your ailment. He considers all the possibilities before coming up with a diagnosis. When we consider the possibilities of anything, we first must eliminate the impossibilities. Once we have done that, we can examine the possibilities to see which one has the most evidence.

If we ask why are we here and why the world is here, we can eliminate the possibility that anything can ever come from nothing. The most fundamental principle of science is ex nihilo nihil fit, which means out of nothing, nothing comes. It is impossible for something to come out of nothing. Even God cannot bring Himself out of nothing. Therefore, anything or anyone in existence today has come from something that has always existed. If there ever was a time in which there was nothing—no God, no matter, no energy—then nothing could be in existence now. The fact that there is something now proves indisputably that there has always been something.

The naturalists say that such reasoning is philosophical or theological and not scientific. However, formal proof always trumps material proof. If you want me to prove that I use glasses, I can show them to you. You can then see them and are thereby given material proof. Conversely, formal proof is rational proof; it is logical and mathematical: 2 + 2 = 4. So which is a higher form of proof? Formal proof always trumps material proof. Logic always beats physical evidence. When the logic of a question is clear—in this case, that nothing can come from nothing—all the so-called mountain of evidence produced against that is always trumped by the formal principle.

Of First Importance

I mention all that because there is a certain logic in the Lord’s Prayer. There is an interconnectedness to all the elements that Jesus taught us to pray in this prayer. The first petition is “Hallowed be Your name” (v. 9). When Jesus’ disciples asked about how they should pray, Jesus tells them first to pray that the name of God would be regarded as holy, because God is holy. This means that God is other and different from anything that we experience or find in the material universe. That God, the Creator, differs from all creatures, and God differs from all creatures in that He is uncreated and eternal. Each of us has been created; we have a measurable age. We are not eternal; we are temporal. The Creator is separated from the creature by that high, transcendent element of God’s own being. He is so majestic that He is worthy of the adoration of every creature.

Jesus is saying that, at the beginning of your prayer, you must distinguish the One to whom you are praying. The two things we must always remember when we pray are who God is and who we are. Doing so sets the structure and atmosphere of our conversation. So, Jesus says, when you pray, the first thing to do is identify the One to whom you are praying. The form of address that Jesus taught in this prayer is this: “Our Father in heaven” (v. 9).

With the rise of European continental liberalism in the nineteenth century, the effort, particularly in Germany, was to reduce Christianity and all world religions to a primary core. Along with this came the effort to reduce the essence of Christianity to its core. People such as Adolf von Harnack said that the essential message of Christianity is the universal fatherhood of God and the universal brotherhood of man. That concept is utterly alien to biblical Christianity, because the Bible does not teach the universal fatherhood of God. The Bible teaches that God is the universal Creator. It also teaches the universal neighborhood of man, that we are all neighbors and have been made by the same Creator. The language of family, however, has a narrow and special meaning in the Scripture.

Our Father

The German New Testament scholar Joachim Jeremias wrote a book several years ago in which he made the startling assertion that at no time in Jewish history and in no extant Jewish literature until the tenth century in Italy do we find a Jew addressing God as Father. The notable exception, he said, is found in Jesus’ prayers in the New Testament. In all His prayers except one, Jesus addressed God directly as Father, and whenever He did it, His contemporaries picked up stones to kill Him, accusing Him of blasphemy. The point I am trying to make is that we use the opening statement of this prayer so routinely that we completely miss its radical significance. In biblical categories God has one Son, His only begotten Son. Therefore, the only person in history who ever had a legitimate right to call God “Father” was Jesus. Yet Jesus, when He tells His disciples how to pray, instructs them to address God as “our Father.”

How can we legitimately address God as our Father when, by nature, we are the children of Satan? According to Scripture, we are children of wrath, and God is not our Father. We can call upon Him as our Father only because He has adopted us. The Scriptures tell us that it is only by the Holy Spirit, who has linked us to Christ and brought about our adoption into the family of God, that we can now say, “Abba, Father.” Every time we pray the Lord’s Prayer, we ought to be reminded that we are praying as God’s adopted children and that our elder brother Jesus is the only natural child of God.

There is another sense in which the Old Testament speaks about the son of God. Metaphorically, Israel the nation was referred to as God’s son. Earlier in Matthew’s Gospel we read that Joseph was warned in a dream to flee from the wrath of King Herod. We are told, “When he arose, he took the young Child and His mother by night and departed for Egypt, and was there until the death of Herod, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the Lord through the prophet, saying, ‘Out of Egypt I called My Son’ ” (Matt. 2:14–15). This refers to the exodus, when Israel, as God’s child, was put into bondage in Egypt until God delivered them.

The Lord’s Supper, which is rooted in the Old Testament Passover, was instituted by Jesus in His celebration of the Passover on the night before He was killed. During the Passover, the angel of death came at the bidding of God to bring the worst of all plagues against Pharaoh and Egypt. He came to slay the firstborn son in every Egyptian household, including Pharaoh’s. God was saying to the most powerful ruler of the planet, “Pharaoh, since you will not respect my son, I am going to kill yours.” The kings of this world have no respect for the son of God—His metaphorical son, Israel, or His perfect Son, Christ, or His adopted sons and daughters, us.⁷

1 Haroutunian, J., & Smith, L. P. (1958). Calvin: Commentaries (pp. 285–287). Philadelphia: Westminster Press.

2 Poole, M. (1853). Annotations upon the Holy Bible (Vol. 3, p. 27). New York: Robert Carter and Brothers.

3 Augsburger, M. S., & Ogilvie, L. J. (1982). Matthew (Vol. 24, p. 18). Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Inc.

4 McGee, J. V. (1991). Thru the Bible commentary: The Gospels (Matthew 1-13) (electronic ed., Vol. 34, pp. 91–92). Nashville: Thomas Nelson.

5 Wiersbe, W. W. (1996). The Bible exposition commentary (Vol. 1, p. 26). Wheaton, IL: Victor Books.

6 Hindson, E. E., & Kroll, W. M. (Eds.). (1994). KJV Bible Commentary (pp. 1894–1895). Nashville: Thomas Nelson.

7 Sproul, R. C. (2013). Matthew (pp. 145–148). Wheaton, IL: Crossway.