The Lord’s Prayer
Having just returned from the Society for the Study of Theology’s annual conference 2024, at which the conference theme was Prayer, this seemed an appropriate subject for the next blog. My conference paper is available at academia.edu (accessible via this website under “Store” on the top menu and then “Free Resources”); be aware that the content is different from today’s blog.
There are two versions of what we call The Lord’s Prayer. The shorter version is in Luke 11 and the longer (more familiar) one is in Matthew 6; we will focus on the latter.
Perhaps the first question is whether the Prayer was intended by Jesus—and/or in the mind of Matthew, the Gospel writer who memorializes it for us—as a prayer to be recited verbatim (as part of a formal liturgy) or as a prayer model (an outline, or structure, to guide us in the elements of prayer). It could, of course, be both. The Church has treated it both ways, and it seems to me there is no need to be prescriptive about that. For our purposes we will focus on the latter, though what we say can equally inform either. It may be notable that in verse 6 Jesus frames the Prayer within a context of personal prayer at home. Either way, pausing and reflecting on each phrase and its meaning for us will be beneficial, though that will obviously not normally be possible when it is prayed collectively as part of a liturgy.
For the sake of brevity, I will not copy and paste the passage but leave it to the reader to follow along, with these notes alongside.
Jesus introduces the Prayer with some comments on the practice of prayer more generally (verses 5 through 8). Three particular themes appear to come through here. The first is its framing in personal intimacy and quietness, in a space free of distractions: “Go into your room, close the door” (v.6), with an accompanying warning to not make a show of it (platform performers take note!). The second follows on: prayer is about quality, not quantity (still less, formulae), especially needless repetition, as if that in itself will somehow make it more efficacious: “Do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do; for they think that they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them . . .” (vv.7-8). The emphasis seems to be that prayer is relational, not transactional. And thirdly, rather fascinatingly, the reason there is no need for that repetition is because “Your Father knows what you need before you ask him.” This last thought is profoundly important and perhaps doesn’t get the attention it deserves when prayer is discussed.
The Prayer itself, which begins in verse 9, continues this relational framing, focusing on praying to “Our Father.” The imagery is that of a parent and child; we are invited to characterize our relationship with God in those terms. While we do see other images of God in Scripture—King, Lord, Almighty, Judge, etc.—when it comes to approaching him in prayer, God as heavenly Father would seem to be the primary idea with which Jesus is inviting us to identify (along with being adopted into God’s family). Lest anyone think I may be overstating things based on that one introductory verse, we see Jesus referencing “your Father” three times before that—also in the context of prayer—in the three preceding verses.
Next comes “Hallowed be your name.” It’s common for preachers to interpret this as “start your prayer time with praise and worship”—not launching straight into petition, by which prayer can too easily become dominated—and there’s certainly something helpful in that. However, I think there’s a little more to it; or perhaps, the emphasis is slightly different. I like Tom Wright’s translation (in The New Testament For Everyone, or NTE): “May your name be honoured.” It’s good for us to reflect on what ways—in the things we do—might we be bringing honour and respect to God’s name, and in what ways might we be bringing dishonour and shame to his name? Scripture speaks of us as a people “called by his name” (sharing in the family name, you could say) so we want to be bringing honour to it, not discrediting it (which is what happens when Christians behave badly in his name).
The next stanza is very important. The more word-for-word-style translations render verse 10 as “Your kingdom come. Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” (NIV, ESV, NASB), but this tends to come across more as a command than a request. Hence, again, I prefer the NTE’s more petitional, “May your kingdom come. May your will be done, as in heaven, so on earth.”
What, then, is the kingdom? It’s not “heaven,” and it’s not the church (which will seem fairly obvious to those with experience of the church!). The kingdom of God is seen and experienced in any place and situation where the ruling and reigning of God is visible and active in some way. When we pray for change in a situation, we are inviting the Holy Spirit to bring a foretaste of God’s future kingdom into the present—a future in which God will make all things right that are presently wrong in life; when God will “wipe every tear from their eyes, where there will be no more death, or mourning, or crying, or pain” (Revelation 21, esp. v.4). The gospel is, in fact, the “gospel of the kingdom” (Matthew 4:23; 9:35; Luke 16:16) and it’s central to Jesus’ ministry. The kingdom of God, or the kingdom of heaven in Matthew (same thing) is the subject about which he told most parables. Unsurprisingly, it holds a central place in the Prayer. I would argue that the whole Prayer pivots on the kingdom.
Verse 11 says, “Give us this day our daily bread,” which begins a move away from the focus on God and his kingdom towards ourselves and our needs. The word “bread” here is both literal and metaphorical. The NLT helpfully renders it “Give us today the food we need” (literal) but “bread” here can just as easily be thought of in the Sixties’ hippy culture slang sense of money (figurative). The two key ideas here are firstly, “today,” and secondly, “need.”
“Today” is a reminder of how God fed the Israelites in the wilderness after the Exodus, through “manna from heaven” (a bread-like food—see Exodus 16 and Numbers 11) that miraculously appeared on the ground each morning but would not be edible the following day. It speaks to the need for us to recognise our ongoing dependency on him, and also, to be constantly giving away and sharing his blessings, not hoarding them.
“Need” is perhaps self-evident: it’s not the same as “want.” Must we make a harsh distinction between needs and wants? I don’t think so. On the one hand, to be greedy and consumerist is clearly incompatible with Jesus and his kingdom, but on the other hand we have a God who “loves to give good gifts to his children” (Matthew 7:11; Luke 11:13), so we need not be excessively ascetic about things, and especially if we have a heart to be givers as well as receivers. Right at the beginning of the biblical story we see God promising to bless Abraham so that he might be a blessing to others (Genesis 12:2-3). This, I suggest, is timelessly true of God’s ways: if we are not willing to be a blessing with our blessings, we ought not to be surprised if God chooses to bless others instead, who will be. And equally, why would God not delight in giving to those whom he knows to be generous givers?
The next verse is perhaps one of the most misunderstood and misapplied by preachers in the entire New Testament; it concerns the apparently simple but actually very complex subject of forgiveness: “Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.” Virtually all translations render the Greek word as “debts,” though the old King James has “trespasses” (some have “sins”). This has often been preached along the lines of “If you refuse to forgive someone who has sinned against you, then God will not forgive you.” This is a very harsh interpretation for those severely wronged against. It has resulted in victims of domestic abuse and sexual assault being told they “must” now forgive their abuser, because he’s “said sorry.” This wrongful application is entirely disproportionate in favour of the perpetrator and ends up further oppressing the victim.
This is often conjoined with the equally flawed idea that “saying sorry” means it’s now “just as if I’d never sinned”—which is a caricature of justification, not a definition. While a perpetrator may like to think that (“I said sorry, didn’t I? The onus is now on her to forgive me and move on”), it is certainly not the case for the victim. It is very much not just as if they’d never been sinned against. We need to have a victim-sensitive doctrine of sin and forgiveness, as much or more than the perpetrator-focused one that evangelicalism can at times naïvely present.
I suggest this verse should be thought of in the sense of striving towards a forgiveness to others—a trajectory towards forgiveness—which reflects the quality of forgiveness that God has given to us. Forgiving others is healthy and beneficial for the one forgiving, if and as they are able to pursue that; it’s releasing to be letting go of bitterness and anger. But we must not demand it (or demand that it happens immediately or even, quickly). Jesus did say that all commandments (including one that appears to command us to forgive) are summed up in loving God and loving people—they all “hang on” those two. A commandment to forgive should never be interpreted and applied in a way where the outcome would be incompatible with the second of those two objectives.
That said, a word or two is appropriate on verses 14-15: “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.” What are we to do with that? Does that not undermine what I’ve just said? I don’t think so. The Greek word for “sin” here has a broad range of meaning which includes lapses (both unintentional and deliberate), misdeeds, and failings. Forgiving other people’s shortcomings is in view here. The naïve evangelical misapplication to which I referred is to treat all sins the same way, without regard to whether and how others have been harmed (all have sinned, but not all have sinned equally). Perhaps the best way to understand the kind of thing that Jesus has in mind in verses 14-15 is reflected in his parable of the unforgiving servant in Matthew 18 (where financial debts are being pictured).
Finally, verse 13. This is traditionally rendered as “Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil” (KJV). A number of versions have “deliver us from the evil one,” which echoes Jesus’ experience of being “led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil” following his baptism. Rather than “tempted,” some versions have “tested,” which I think is helpful—in other words, spare us from being tested by temptation. It’s a mysterious verse, though; why would such a prayer be necessary? Why would God be minded to “lead us into” testing through temptation in the first place? Perhaps because (a) testing and temptation comes with the territory of life anyway, and (b) our faith and closeness to God are often enhanced through experiencing victories over testing and temptation (cf. Hebrews 5:8). In any event, it’s saying “God be with me—be close to me—when I do experience times of testing.” The reality is that life frequently tests our faith, whether we characterize it as God “leading us into it” or not.