Thus therefore pray *ye* Our Father who art in the heavens, let thy name be sanctified,
Jesus has just warned His disciples not to pile up empty words when they pray. Now He gives them the pattern instead. It starts with who God is, not with what we want.
One writer ties this pattern back to the warning in verse 7:
In Matthew 6:9-13 we have a pattern for prayer. When the Lord gave this example He was not asking His own to repeat the prayer parrot-fashion. The Lord guards against this in verse 7 by telling us not to use empty repetitions as the nations do.
Calling God "Father" was a real advance on what had gone before, though not yet the full Christian position:
"Our Father in heaven." This is a distinct advance on anything known of God before. The patriarchs had fellowship with Him as the Almighty. Israel knew Him as Jehovah. But the coming of the only Son into the world has brought out the sweet name of Father… Even so, Matthew 6:9 falls far short of John 20:17. There we hear the risen One announcing the fruits of His great victory: "I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God."
That name also limits who can use it. One writer contrasts the tax collector, who came to God on completely different ground:
This prayer does not have the whole human race in view, and it was not spoken to everyone alike. It does not express the state, wants, and feelings of everyone who has some desire after God, or a fear of coming wrath. So the tax collector stood far off. He would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, realising his sin and unworthiness. He does not dare to say, "Father," or "Our Father in heaven."… "God, be merciful to me, a sinner!" was the right and fitting cry from his broken heart.
The opening line packs three distinct thoughts into a few words:
The first section of the prayer has three subjects. First, "Our Father" indicates the dignity of His prime place, yet at the same time His tender care. "In heaven" shows His supremacy, high above all creation. "Hallowed be Your name" is the reminder of His sublime holiness, as set apart from all others.
The first petition reaches into the life of the person praying:
"Name" in Scripture always expresses what God is as revealed. So, in connection with the Father, it is the truth of what God is in that relationship. When we desire that His name should be hallowed, we ask that it be sanctified in us, by us, and by all who have the privilege of calling on God by this precious title. We ask for an answering response in us to His holiness in this relationship. How often we have said this prayer with little thought of what it involved! We said it even while we, as His children, were dishonouring His name as our Father by our unholy ways and associations!
Placed first, it becomes the root from which everything else in the prayer grows:
"Hallowed be Your name" is the great foundation of all, the first and strongest feeling of a renewed mind.
God's concerns come before ours in this prayer, and that order is meant to reshape our own asking:
How often we put ourselves and our interests first in our prayers. It was not so that the Lord taught His disciples. He taught them to put God first. They were to pray that His name might be hallowed, and then to reach out in their desires to the furthest bounds of the earth… The heart first reaches up to the sacred glory of God's name, and broadens out to include every dwelling of man. Then we may ask for our daily needs.
Commentators here agree that this prayer was not given as a fixed form for the church age, and they point to what is missing from it:
Examine the Lord's prayer closely, and nothing strikes the mind so strongly as the absence of any mention of the name of Christ… And our Lord in this passage says plainly that up to that moment His disciples had not asked anything of the Father in His name. This was at the end of His time on earth.
Yet the same writer insists its petitions remain ours to pray:
The death and resurrection of our Lord and Saviour have brought us into a new place, and into the known possession and enjoyment of higher blessings. Even so, we can go back in the power of the Spirit, take up many of its petitions and present them before God.
- Relationship first. Prayer begins with who God is to you — "Father." The coming of the Son brought that name out, and only His disciples could use it.
- Height second. "In heaven" sets the Father high above all creation, while "Our Father" holds His tender care.
- Holiness third. His "name" is all He has revealed Himself to be; asking it be hallowed asks that His holiness be answered in us and by us.
- Order fourth. God's glory leads, our needs follow — the reverse of how we usually pray.
- Use fifth. Given as a pattern, not a chant; Christ's name is absent from it, yet its petitions can still be taken up in the Spirit.
let thy kingdom come, let thy will be done as in heaven so upon the earth;
Jesus has taught His disciples how to address God. Now the prayer looks outward, to God's rule and God's will reaching earth. Two questions follow: whose kingdom is meant, and when will the answer come?
The prayer has a clear order. God's side comes first, and man's blessing turns on it.
There are six petitions. The first three have to do with God; His name, His kingdom, His will. The second three have to do with us; our bread, our debts, our deliverance. The heavenly Father and His claims must be first, and our needs second. The blessing of men on earth depends upon His will being done on earth, and that will only come to pass when His kingdom is established.
The verse does not say "Christ's kingdom." Matthew's Gospel keeps two spheres apart.
"Your kingdom come." It is not exactly Christ's kingdom, but the Father's. Read Matthew's Gospel with care, and you see the Father's kingdom marked off in Scripture from the kingdom of the Son of Man. So in Matthew 13:41-43 the Son of Man sends out His angels. They gather out of His kingdom everything that causes sin and all law-breakers… then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. At the end of this age the Lord will take the world as His kingdom, and must have evil purged from it, sooner or later, by His judicial power. But the Father's kingdom is another and heavenly sphere where only the righteous shine.
The second half of the verse makes heaven the measure. It also shows where the trouble lies.
But it does not satisfy the heart that the Father's will should be done in heaven only. So the third petition runs: "Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven." When the Father's kingdom comes, this will be the moral answer to it, if I may put it that way, though in a lower sphere. Instead of meeting contempt and resistance, the Father's will is yet to be the guide and guarantee of all blessing in what was still a rebellious province. The disciples were to pray that it might be done on earth. Nothing like it was there yet, except in the ways of Him who was turning their desires toward God.
Kelly's last words point to one exception standing in front of the disciples.
"Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven" goes further still in its full accomplishment. Only once has earth seen this, in the life and death of the Lord Jesus. He alone could say, "I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do" (John 17:4). He alone on earth has done the Father's will perfectly. Nor will it be done in the Millennium, except by Himself as the King who will reign in righteousness.
The Millennium is Christ's thousand-year reign on earth. Even that, one writer holds, is not the last stage.
This petition reaches beyond the Millennium. The Father's kingdom will not be fully established until the new heavens and the new earth appear… and the Son of Man will not deliver up the kingdom to Him who is God and Father until He has subdued every enemy, so that God may be all in all (1 Corinthians 15:21-28). Everything here below is as wrong as it could be. We know it, so we long for this blessed outcome and pray for it.
This prayer is not neutral. It reaches the patch of earth you stand on.
How often we put ourselves and our interests first in our prayers. It was not like this that the Lord taught His disciples. He taught them to put God first. They were to pray that His name might be hallowed. Then their desires were to stretch to the furthest bounds of the earth: that every evil imagination might be overthrown, every evil work judged, every will subdued to God's will, and the whole earth filled with the glory of God. Then the heart has reached up to the sacred glory of God's name and widened to take in every home of man. Then we may ask for our daily needs… with a sense of the blessedness of His will — a will we ourselves have determined to live under. Otherwise our prayer that His will might be done on earth would be glaring hypocrisy.
- Order — Name, kingdom, will come before bread, forgiveness and deliverance. God's claims lead; our blessing follows.
- Kingdom — The prayer asks for the Father's kingdom, a heavenly sphere, distinct from the Son of Man's future rule over the world.
- Standard — Heaven sets the measure. Earth is the rebellious province where that obedience is still missing.
- Precedent — One life on earth has already answered this prayer: the Lord Jesus, who finished the work His Father gave Him.
- Reach — The full answer waits for the new heavens and the new earth. Until then, the one who prays it must live under that will himself.