Instead of praying like pagans, kingdom citizens are to pray in accordance with the model and pattern that our Lord Jesus has taught us. Since he is the eternal natural Son of God, he can teach us adopted children how we should pray.
It is more than possible to spend a number of weeks and months reflecting on the Lord’s Prayer. Jesus has much to teach us and there is a depth to each petition which is worth studying in detail. The final section of the Heidelberg Catechism does exactly that and would be worth reading if you have not done so before. With a broader approach however, there are three aspects of the prayer which are worth highlighting.
The first is the family aspect. We pray to God our Father. As we have already mentioned, these words imply an existing relationship. They tell us that the God who made this world is concerned for us. The God who is transcendent and glorious, who exists apart from and outside of the created world, has wonderfully set his love upon us and he desires our good.
No other religion teaches this. In Islam, God has ninety-nine names but Father is not one of them. The concept of relationship is unique to Scripture. As remarkable as this teaching might be, it does not stop there. The concept of God as our Father includes our relationship with fellow children. The Lord’s Prayer is not the prayer of an individual, but the prayer of a people, the prayer of a family. When we come to God, we come not only with our own individual needs and concerns but the needs of our fellow brothers and sisters in Christ. The Christian life is not the life of a lone ranger listening to devotions in his home. No God makes us part of a people. If you are a Christian, you must be part of a church community.
A second aspect to highlight is the agenda. The Lord’s Prayer is focused on God’s agenda rather than our own. The will of the Father is eminent. He is to be honoured and recognized as God by all people. His kingdom is the one that must come. What he has revealed to us in his moral law must be the ethic we aim to live by. Even in the petitions for our own needs and concerns, they are still tied to God’s agenda. We ask for our daily bread so that we can serve him in this world. We seek forgiveness of sins because we continue to mess up and desire what is wicked. We plead for protection from evil because the devil has not yet been cast into the fires of hell and the world and our own flesh are against us. God’s agenda is first and foremost, and as we pray this prayer, as we use this prayer for our model, we are asking God to shape us so that his agenda increasingly becomes our own.
Third, we pray as children of the Father. Jesus has already taught us earlier in his sermon that we must be perfect as the Father is perfect. Our ethical standard is not society, but God. Likewise, the standard for what we are to want and desire in this world is God, and that is clearly reflected in the words of the prayer. In this regard, since the Lord’s Prayer is a model used by the Spirit to shape our thoughts and desires; we are right to utter this prayer on a regular basis. Certainly, there is a danger of thoughtless repetition, the same danger that comes with confessing our faith and listening to God’s law. But repetition helps our learning; it serves to set basic truths before us again and again so that we can hear them and have our hearts changed by God’s Spirit.
Finally, the Lord’s Prayer is a prayer for children and not hypocrites. The family aspect of the prayer has already been highlighted, but there is also another section in the prayer where hypocrisy is challenged. And that is the petition for forgiveness.
Forgive us our sins as we forgive others. It is a conditional statement. A conditional statement that speaks to the principle which governs our prayer as well as the response which God wants from his people. In terms of the principle, just like the other examples which Jesus has made elsewhere in his sermon where he said we must cut off our hand if it causes us to sin or pluck out our eye, he is once again making use of rhetorical overstatement. He puts things in a very strong manner so that we will remember what he says and for the sake of emphasis. In this case the fact that children of God must forgive others just as they have been forgiven.
Jesus is not telling us that God’s forgiveness depends on our willingness to forgive. He is not setting a requirement that we have to meet, as if his work of redemption was not sufficient. If that were the case, there would be no salvation for anyone because our forgiveness of others is always tainted by sin and incomplete. Whilst sinful desires remain, we cannot perfectly forgive, we cannot meet the standard of perfection that our Father requires for life in his presence. Only Jesus was able to do so, and if we are not justified on account of his death and resurrection, then there is no hope for us, no hope for anyone. The conditional statement then speaks to the response that God wants from his people.
Having said that, there is also the principle that ought to govern our prayers. In the context of Jesus’ sermon, he teaches us on prayer in a section where he encourages godly living that is not polluted by impure motives, and pious actions and disciplines that are aimed at pleasing the Father rather than men. God is concerned for our inner desires as much as our outward actions. And in this regard Jesus’ words about forgiveness make it clear that kingdom citizens must be done with hypocrisy. We cannot come to God in prayer with a heart that has no concern for him and his agenda. We cannot come to God with petitions for help while harbouring a hatred and resentment of others.
This does not mean that our desires must be perfect before we come to God, but it does speak to the matter of relationship. As often as we recite this prayer, our words will be empty if we have no desire to actually pursue God’s agenda. Our words will be empty if we think this is another magic formula to get what we want from God.
Jesus’ statement about forgiveness is thus a confirmation that the Lord’s Prayer is a prayer for believers. It is a prayer for those who have counted the cost of following Christ. A prayer for those who look for reward from God and not from people. A prayer for those who are happy to receive material blessing in the future when Christ returns rather than the present. A prayer for those who are united to Christ by faith.
To conclude, let us remember that God’s will for our lives really is best. When we pray as children in accordance with his agenda, we are not putting our lives in the hands of someone who seeks to harm us or do us wrong, we are trusting in the goodness of our Father who loves us. We are trusting in his wisdom of our Father who knows what is best. We are trusting that his glory really is more important than our own, trusting that his kingdom is much more wonderful than anything we can imagine and that he will care for us in this world.
This is a confidence we can have because of Christ, a confidence in Jesus’ name. Let us therefore not come to the Lord with hollow prayers like the hypocrites. Let us not come with prayers that seek to twist and manipulate. Let us come with prayers from the heart, prayers that are simple and sincere, prayers that flow from the love of the Father, prayers in the Spirit where we ask God to make his agenda our own.
5 “And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites. For they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward.