Applying the Gospel

This is the most mundane petition of the Lord’s Prayer. As such, it teaches us that there is no aspect of our earthly lives too basic to bother God about. Even the bare necessities for life are opportunities for us to relate to God in prayer. This is not presumptuous on our part; it is his idea, his command, his invitation to pray and to ask him for everything we need, because he wants us to live, and he wants us to live with him. Implicit here is the acknowledgement that the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is the only one who can truly provide for our life—we are absolutely dependent on him and thankful to him. “What do you have that you did not receive?” (1 Corinthians 4:7).

We understand that many things essential to human life are assumed into this petition: food to eat, water to drink, air to breathe, clothing, shelter, some wealth, physical and emotional health, stable relationships, safe socio-political conditions, and so forth. Since we are asking our Father for our bread, it isn’t just a selfish request but one that is good for all those who pray in the name of Jesus Christ. We are not told to ask for our daily hunter-gatherer findings such as fish or berries, but for food that is a cultural product, a product of our labor together. We ask for the ability for all to work together to provide for the needs of all. “It is [God] who gives you power to get wealth” (Deuteronomy 8:18). “If anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat” (2 Thessalonians 3:10). This is not contradictory to the idea of receiving our bread as a gift from God; it is the privilege of participating in the life and image of the God who is the Creator and Provider and Giver of all good gifts.

Ultimately, then, we’re asking to participate in the divine life as God intended for humanity. When Jesus said, “I am the Bread of Life” (John 6), he was announcing the reality of God’s gracious provision of everything we need for our life together with him as his people (2 Peter 1:3). As we pray this petition in Christ, then, and in its place in the Lord’s Prayer, we pray not merely for moment-by-moment survival but for eternal life in God’s presence so that we may always live to hallow God’s name, seek his kingdom, and desire his will to be done in and through us.

Relative to the rest of the Lord’s Prayer, is this the most frequent kind of request you make of God? Do you feel guilty or grateful when you pray this petition, and why? Do you pray this petition in light of the fuller instruction of Jesus on prayer? How might your prayers for daily bread change if they were shaped more by the first half of the Lord’s Prayer? Do you usually pray this prayer by yourself for yourself, or with others and on their behalf? What does it mean when God’s people pray for their daily bread and actually go hungry for lack of food? Does it mean that God doesn’t hear us, doesn’t love us, or can’t do anything to help us? Are you thankful for Christ as the Bread of Life?

As a phrase that refines the previous petitions, and not itself a petition, it can be easy to overlook the significance of these few words. But they make a considerable contribution to the substance of the Lord’s Prayer. In fact, they express something important of the whole shape of our hope for salvation. In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth, he saw it all, “and behold, it was very good” (Genesis 1:31). But, since sin and death entered the world, the earth is no longer like heaven, not the way it’s supposed to be. The main way this is true is with regard to our relationships with God and each other, though the whole earth suffers the effects of sin and “waits with eager longing” for things to be set back right and perfected once and for all (Romans 8:19).

Heaven is the “place” in God’s creation where the presence of God is the defining reality. God makes it clear that the same should be true also of the earth. This is what he wants and is working toward (and this is the very thing sinners reject). Christians aren’t escapists, thinking a disembodied heaven is the ultimate ideal, wishing we could be free from the shackles of this material realm. Following God’s lead, we want earth to be like heaven. Our hope is that this material world will be perfected in God’s presence, characterized by what characterizes heaven. The Gospel guarantees this hope. Heaven came to earth in the person of Jesus Christ. He himself is God with humanity, in the flesh. After his death and resurrection, he ascended into heaven, where his continuing presence means that God and humanity live in communion, which is the way all God’s creation is supposed to be. One day Jesus will return, bringing all of heaven with him. Heaven and earth will become one, and everything that’s right with heaven will also be right with the earth, forever.

Until then, what characterizes heaven may characterize the earth wherever God is with his people. God’s name may be hallowed, his kingdom may come, and his will may be done on earth wherever his presence is the defining reality, where we have communion with the Father in the name of Jesus Christ, where the Holy Spirit bears his fruit in us. In other words, the church filled with the love of God is where the earth is most like heaven.

Does the church strike you as a taste of heaven on earth? Why or why not? How do you pray for the church? Do you look forward to heaven because God’s presence defines it, even though it means separation from your earthly life (2 Corinthians 5:8)? Or do you look forward to heaven for some other reason? Do you look forward to the New Heavens and the New Earth as perfected in God’s presence? In what ways do you long for the earth to become more like heaven now?

“‘Thy will be done.’ But a great deal of it is to be done by God’s creatures; including me. The petition, then, is not merely that I may patiently suffer God’s will but also that I may vigorously do it. I must be an agent as well as a patient. I am asking that I may be enabled to do it.” (C. S. Lewis)

Lewis sees a helpful distinction between two kinds of obedience: active and passive. These two kinds of obedience correspond to two expressions of God’s will. One actively (responsively) obeys God’s revealed will (a.k.a., his moral or declarative will). For example, when God commands us to love one another, then our love is the active obedience to his command. On the other hand, one passively (receptively) obeys God’s secret will (a.k.a., his providential or decretal will). For example, when it is God’s will that we suffer hardship for the sake of discipline, then our submissive acceptance of our circumstances is passive obedience. Jesus alone is perfect in both active and passive obedience; he has always and fully kept all his Father’s commandments, and he submitted himself entirely to his Father’s will even when it meant his death on the cross.

When we pray, “Your will be done,” it is both a submission of our own wills to God (passive obedience) and a request for our further sanctification (active obedience). In this petition is an implicit confession: we do not want what God wants. We are not, by sinful nature, given to obeying God. We pray this way because, somehow, at some level, we want to want what God’s wants. Somehow, we’re acknowledging that his will is better than ours. We don’t do his will, but we want to do it, because we trust that it is good. We don’t just want to do his will reluctantly, but happily, vigorously. If we are to delight in doing God’s will, he is going to have to grant it as an answer to this prayer. He is going to have to realign our wills with his own. So we look for those points where his will feels like a contradiction to our wills, and we pray for him to enable us to submit to him at those points. We are praying against our own nature as sinners opposed to his will. The fact that we would pray this way at all is a miraculous work of God’s Spirit—and a bit paradoxical!

How is this petition connected to Jesus’ prayer in Gethsemane, “Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me; nevertheless, not my will, but yours, be done” (Luke 22:42)? How is this petition connected to our repentance? Do you believe that God’s moral will is good? His providential will? Always better than your own? Why should you believe that God’s will is good? Why would we think God’s will is good, and ask for it to be done, yet still struggle to submit to it? What are some particular points in your own life where you wrestle with God’s moral or providential will, and need God to answer this petition? Are you discouraged or encouraged by the reality of this struggle in your life, and why?

“The kingdom of God is a matter of righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit” (Romans 14:17). God’s kingdom exists where he is present in peace. In eternity, before the creation, this kingdom was the Persons of the Triune God himself dwelling in interpersonal harmony: God’s Being, in perfect accord with his true reality, in peace. His rule is characterized by divine love and mutual service. The kingdom exists where God rules through his Word and is present in his Spirit, where relationship with God in accordance with his reality has centrality in and supremacy over all things.

At the creation, on the seventh day, God was present in peace in all his creation, both in heaven and on earth. And humanity, created in his image, was invited to join him, to be present in peace with him, to rule with him in his kingdom with his own rule of love and service. But humanity came to doubt the goodness of God’s rule and rejected his presence. We corrupted the very nature of rule, grabbing for self-centered power and autonomy from God. We upset the peaceful kingdom of God in his creation, tearing heaven and earth apart. Now, heaven is the “place” in his creation where his kingdom is; earth is where his kingdom is coming.

In his coming to earth, Jesus taught that the kingdom had come near (Mark 1:15). He is the very Word through which God rules, become flesh through the Spirit. Jesus embodies the kingdom that has come from God and is returning to God (1 Corinthians 15:24). Jesus is where God is present in peace as a human, in one Person both restoring God’s rule in the world and fulfilling humanity’s calling to rule with God’s own rule. In Jesus we see the divine rule of love and service; he has authority to lay down his life and to take it up again on behalf of his people (John 10:18). Jesus reunites God and humanity in peace, and he has come to dwell in his people through the presence of the Spirit, increasing the rule of God’s kingdom on earth. One day his kingdom will come in fullness, and the heavens and earth will be made new, ruled by the power of his Word and restored to peace in his presence. Relationship with God in accordance with his reality will have centrality in and supremacy over all things, and his people will rule with him in his kingdom with his own rule, forever.

Jesus teaches us that we should want this kingdom to come, that it is good and desirable. He teaches us to ask it of the Father, which means that God wants to give us his kingdom and that there is no other way to have it than as an answer to Jesus’ prayer here. Our autonomy broke the world, so we cannot fix it through more autonomy. We must submit ourselves to the rule of God through his Word, through his Christ. Apart from Jesus, this prayer would not be answered, nor would we even pray it. The first thing we’re asking with this petition, then, is for our own submission to his rule. Thankfully, when we look at Jesus, we know that God is the kind of king who makes us want to pray, “Your kingdom come!”

Why is God’s kingdom better than our autonomy? Are you suspicious of God’s rule as your king? Why or why not? In what ways are you prone to project your fallen/earthly ideas of kingdom and authority on to God and his kingdom? Can you believe that God has invited you to rule with him over his own kingdom with his own rule? What do you think that is supposed to look like? When you pray, “Your kingdom come,” what do you imagine the answer to that prayer to be like in your life? What did Jesus mean by saying his kingdom was not of this world (John 18:36)? What does it mean that, at the end, Christ will deliver the kingdom to God the Father (1 Corinthians 15:24)?

The first petition of the Lord’s Prayer, the primary request made by those who are familiar with God, the chief thing we ask of the one who has made us to know him as Father through our Lord Jesus Christ, is: “Hallowed be your name.” This is the foundational petition of Jesus’ and our prayer; all following petitions are properly interpreted only in light of this one. If you would ask anything of God outside the scope of this petition, it is not, strictly speaking, prayer as Jesus teaches it.

A name is for personal identification and knowing. When you give your name to others, you give something of yourself to them, you invite them to know you in relationship. God’s name is his introduction of himself to others. It’s how we know him. It’s the true disclosure of his identity and character to us for a real relationship with him. God opens himself up to us in his self-revelation. In asking God to hallow his name, we are asking God to make us to know him and love him as he truly is, as he has revealed himself to us. We are asking God to change us and others, so that we would regard him as holy, in accord with reality. We are asking God to make holy to us the knowledge of him in all his fullness. With this petition we are asking God’s help to be able to keep the first three of his Ten Commandments (Exodus 20:1-7). We pray this way because we recognize in ourselves and others that we don’t trust God, we don’t know him, we don’t love him with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength—but we want to. This is our first prayer because this is most important to our life. This is our prayer because only God can make himself known and make us able to respond appropriately.

God has given us his name in the Scriptures, through the history of his relationship with his people: Yahweh (“I Am Who I Am”), Immanuel (“God With Us”), Jesus (“Yahweh Saves”). He has made himself known as the God whose eternal being is love, who has bound himself to us forever in his Incarnation, who opens his own life to us. He has made himself known especially in the Cross, in the love of Christ who was willing to die to forgive our sins. We have God’s name proclaimed to us in the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and we come to love his name by the work of his Spirit in us. To pray, “Hallowed be your name,” is to ask that the Gospel would be clearly proclaimed and that we would hear it with faith. It is a prayer against unbelief, against any conception of God contrary to his self-revelation in Jesus. It is to ask God for the help of his Word and his Spirit in knowing him and relating to him. It is to ask God to introduce himself to others for relationship in ways that cause them to hold his name as sacred. It is to ask God for the privilege of participating in making him known in the world, and it is to rest confidently in the trust that, ultimately, he is the one who will hallow his name.

Why is this a petition and not a declaration of intent? Is this petition related to prayer “in Jesus’ name”? If so, how? Can you relate this petition to each of the first three of the Ten Commandments? Can you think of similar prayers by Jesus or others in the Bible? What happened in response to these prayers? What indication, if any, do we have that God is interested in answering this petition? In what ways might the answer to this petition look differently for different people at different points in their lives? Do you think it would be good for you if God answered this petition? In other words, do you pray this petition? Can you think of ways in which God has answered this petition despite your not praying it earnestly… or at all? If God answers this petition whether or not we pray it, what’s the point of praying it?

Jesus teaches his disciples whom to address in prayer: God alone. Not a “generic god,” whether one god among many, or an impersonal force, or even a supreme being who remains ultimately unknown, but the only true God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus definitively reveals God to be his Father and ours. He receives us into his own life with God, inviting—commanding!—us to relate to God as he himself does, as the Beloved Son to the Father. Learning to pray doesn’t mean learning techniques or formulae, learning to enter into trancelike states through mantras, or learning to pull cosmic levers to coax the universe into giving you what you want. Learning to pray is learning to relate personally to God as our Father in Christ. In order to pray as Jesus teaches, you must trust that God is who Jesus says he is.

Jesus begins this way because this is the prior reality that shapes and controls all our prayer. It is the most important thing, the foundational thing, the essential thing to know about prayer. It is the starting place of Christian prayer; before you even thought of praying, God made you his child. Your prayer is a response to your Father. Through faith in Jesus you really may pray this way, out of the fullness of knowing yourself to be the Beloved of God. The one who prays as Jesus taught is no longer lost and desperate to have God as his Father. “The essence of true prayer is found in these two words, ‘Our Father.’ If you can say from your heart, whatever your condition, ‘Our Father,’ in a sense your prayer is already answered” (David Martyn Lloyd-Jones).

You are never alone in prayer. Each person of the Trinity is present and engaged in his distinct way. We pray to the Father, mediated by and joining with Christ the Son, through the Holy Spirit. So, even if you’re in your closet (Matt. 6:6), prayer is a community conversation. Furthermore, the Lord’s Prayer is explicitly the prayer of the church, the community of God’s people. Jesus teaches us to pray, “Our Father…” You are not an only child. Your spiritual relationship is meant to be lived in community, and prayer best reflects God’s intent when it is corporate. This is not to minimize private prayer, but to recognize the emphasis on unity in Jesus’ teaching on prayer. So we pray this way together in Worship as the family of God.

We pray to God who is in Heaven, that Holy Place accessible to us only because of the blood of Jesus (Heb. 10:19). With his life Jesus has purchased our right to enter Heaven—even now, by his Spirit—and approach God with confidence, as only a Son would do. Though prayer may not always feel like a mystical, ecstatic, beatific-vision-level experience of God, you do have audience with the one on the throne of heaven. And he is your Father!

Apart from learning to pray from Jesus, how are you prone to conceive of prayer? What do you instinctively assume you need to improve about your prayer in order to pray “more adequately or effectively”? Can you think of prayer as a personal-relational activity with this God who has graciously initiated your relationship? When you go long periods of time without prayer, do you feel like you have to say or do something before you’ll feel at home in God’s presence, or do you imagine God as a Father who is always delighted to hear his child’s prayer? Is it easier for you to pray alone or with others? How do you think about individual and corporate prayer differently? Are they, in fact, fundamentally different things?

“Jesus was praying in a certain place, and when he finished, one of his disciples said to him, ‘Lord, teach us to pray…'” (Luke 11:1). The disciple probably asked better than he understood, but it was the best request (prayer!) a new disciple could make. They saw that Jesus knew how to pray, and they wanted to learn from him. Disciples see that Jesus has a relationship with God, and they ask to share in it. In response, Jesus teaches the paradigmatic prayer that has come to be known as “the Lord’s Prayer” (Luke 11:2-4; Matthew 6:9-13), welcoming his disciples into his own prayer, into his own relationship and conversation with God.

Prayer is—first, essentially, and eternally—an activity of the Triune God. Prayer is the Son’s communication with the Father in the Spirit. Prayer is a reality because God is who he is, this God who prays. Prayer didn’t become a reality after God created human beings who could talk to him. In fact, the first recorded prayer of the Bible is God’s own dialogue which resulted in the creation of humanity (Genesis 1:26-27). Our life in God’s image is God’s answer to God’s prayer! And we are made for prayer, for relationship with this praying God, in all we do. So, prayer encompasses the whole of God’s intention for human reality.

It is no wonder, then, that Jesus knows how to pray. His prayerfulness as a human reveals and reflects his prayerfulness as God. His eternal life means prayer, and he incarnated as a human to restore humanity to prayer. He prayed as one of us, for us, in our place. He shares his life of prayer with us. And it is no wonder that we must ask him to teach us to pray. Apart from him, we cannot pray. By definition, sinners don’t pray, not really. We must get into God’s own life before we can truly pray, and Jesus is the only way into God’s life. We must be taken along with him in his prayer, and learn to pray as he does. “Prayer does not mean simply to pour out one’s heart. It means rather to find the way to God and to speak with him… No man can do that by himself. For that he needs Jesus Christ” (Dietrich Bonhoeffer).

Do you believe that God prays? Does that matter to you? How would you describe your need for Jesus to teach you to pray? Have you prayed that Jesus would teach you to pray? What has that meant for your relationship with God? Do you think people can instinctively pray apart from faith in Jesus, apart from learning to pray from Jesus? Why or why not? Have you ever considered teaching others to pray the Lord’s Prayer as evangelism? If the Lord’s Prayer is paradigmatic for us, what place does it take among the prayers recorded in the Bible? What are some other prayers recorded in the Bible that help you to pray? What relationship do these prayers have to the Lord’s Prayer? What does it mean to pray “in Jesus’ name” (John 16:24)? To pray “in the Holy Spirit” (Jude 20)?

“Amen” is more than just a nice word to signal to others that a confession or a prayer is over. It is a word frequently found in the Scriptures, often in the context of covenants, to pledge one’s personal agreement to the truth of what is said (or prayed). Jesus says this word a lot, but it’s usually translated this way: “Truly, truly (Amen, amen), I say to you…” From him, it has the emphatic force equivalent to the declaration, found throughout the Old Testament, “Thus says the Lord…” With this word, attention is called to the truth as God’s truth, which should hold the highest significance for all people. This word is the final word in the Scriptures (Revelation 22:21); God’s revelation is given so that we might respond with faith. This whole world, and especially humanity, is meant to be one big “amen” to the glorious truth of who God is. But sinners disbelieve God’s truth, which is at the heart of what’s wrong with us all. When sinners start believing God’s truth, the world is being set back right.

Jesus is the only human who is in complete personal agreement with God’s truth, who fully says, “Yes” to God’s revelation and covenant. And he does so on our behalf, vicariously. “All the promises of God find their Yes in him. That is why it is through him that we utter our Amen to God for his glory” (2 Corinthians 1:20). Jesus Christ is the True Believer; his faith is our life with God. Believers resonate on his frequency, so to speak. Because he believes God’s truth, we may believe it also. In Christ, and only in Christ, do we pledge our personal agreement to God’s truth. With Christ, we profess and proclaim the Gospel, commending it for the faith of others. The Apostles’ Creed opens with the words, “I believe,” and closes with, “amen,” framing our confession in terms greater than mere intellectual assent—in terms of personal trust and allegiance. The whole world must resound with the “Amen” of redeemed humanity in Jesus Christ. It will mean the renewal of all things in right relationship to God. “Amen!”

How is creation meant to be an “amen” to God? Why would God bother to give us his Word—to give us his very own Son—in order to evoke an “amen” from us? Do you resonate with God’s truth? Do you profess your faith (and pray) publicly? Do you seal your profession (and prayers) with an “amen”? If so, why do you do this? What significance does this word have to you, if any? Does it have the same significance for you that it does when Jesus says it? What are the similarities/differences? Will there ever be a time when you are in complete personal agreement with God’s truth? When? Why? And what will that be like?

“Love never ends” (1 Corinthians 13:8). The Lord’s people sing, “His steadfast love endures forever” (Psalm 100:5; 106:1; 107:1; 117:2; 118:1-4, 29; 136; 138:8). “The Life Everlasting” isn’t just the unceasing continuation of mere existence. It is divine communion, which is why it endures forever. The duration of eternal life derives from its character, its nature, its essence, which is love: specifically, Triune Love. The Triune Life of God is eternity; the mutual indwelling of the Father and Son in the communion of the Spirit is eternity. Eternity would be nothing at all if not for the Holy Love of God.

This very Life of God is exactly what the Lord has shared with us. Through his power, according to the Gospel, his people have been made “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:3-4). That is, the Triune Love “has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us” (Romans 5:5). That is, we know God with God’s own knowledge, with the intimate knowledge that he has sent in the knowledge of his Son, Jesus Christ. Jesus prayed to his Father and ours, “This is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent” (John 17:3). And this life will never end, because the Triune God lives and loves forever.

So, at the Resurrection, the eternal state in the New Heaven and New Earth (Revelation 21:1) will be consummated in the most wonderful of all celebrations: the Wedding Feast of the Lamb (Revelation 19:7) who was slain to make us his bride. The Risen King who has been “anointed with the oil of gladness” (Psalm 45:7) has made ready to receive “the all glorious princess” (v. 13), having sanctified her by his gracious word (Ephesians 5:25-27; Psalm 45:2). With joy and gladness we will enter together with our Beloved into his palace (Psalm 45:15), into his chambers (Song of Solomon 1:4), into the very bosom of eternity. In the fullness of his presence and in true union with him we will have the Life of God wholly in us, which will be the final death of all our sin, and the death of death itself. In the New Creation, eternity will be for us, together, what it is for God himself: love. Deep, strong, jubilant, utter love—as the Lord lives!

Does “the Life Everlasting” sound good to you? Are you willing to go public with your profession of it as Gospel? What’s the most interesting part to you? When would it be helpful to meditate on it? What prevents you from believing it? How might this central proclamation of the church be mistaken for escapism, and what’s wrong with that idea? (Is there anything right with the “escape” idea?) Can you imagine the love that is the essence of eternal life? How can you participate even now in the abundance (John 10:10) of God’s Life? What do you do with the tension between the realities of the “already” of communion with God and the “not yet” of the coming consummation?