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.
give us to-day our needed bread,
The prayer the Lord gave His disciples turns here from God's name, kingdom and will to the one praying. The first thing asked for is a day's food. Much of the teaching in this short line hangs on that order, and on the odd word translated "daily."
The prayer falls into two halves, and this verse opens the second. One writer sets out the division and what each half is for:
This is not the prayer of a sinner seeking mercy. It is the prayer of people who already stand in a relationship with God, and who deal with Him directly as Father about their need. The petitions divide the prayer into two parts. The first three ask for the glory of God. The last four express the creature's dependence. It is beautiful to see the spirit of worship in the way the Name, the kingdom and the will of God come first… The whole prayer shows the three main thoughts of true prayer: God's glory, and the creature's need — first in earthly things, then in spiritual things.
So we confess the body's everyday need first, and the soul's need after that.
The English word "daily" does not carry the full force of the original. One writer says the word seems made for this petition, and that its sense limits what we may ask:
The word "daily" is a very poor way to put the original term into English. The Greek word epiousios means our "sufficient" bread — a word that seems to have been made for this very idea, as opposed to having more than we need. We cannot ask for more than enough without slighting the wisdom of the Lord. One ought not to look for more, even from the Lord of heaven and earth. He tells me to ask for bread enough for each day's needs.
The same writer connects the petition with contentment:
Give us today our sufficient (or, necessary) bread. So they are taught to begin by confessing dependence for ordinary needs, just as the apostle called us to be content with food and clothing.
"This day" sets the limit of the request. It leaves tomorrow out:
We have to do with God today. We may leave tomorrow to Him. He is our God, our Father today, He will be the same tomorrow when we meet it. The Lord did not teach His disciples to pray about tomorrow, but "Give us this day our daily bread."
Asking only for today shows how much we lean on a secured income:
Many a saint of God would almost break his heart if he thought his income would come to an end in twelve months' time. But this prayer means that we look to Him, and have no other resource for today's needs.
Every petition in the second half is plural, and that shapes who is in view when we pray for bread:
A sense of dependence, of failure, and of weakness stands out plainly in them. The needs we feel are seen as the needs of others in the same family of faith, who are therefore joined with us in every petition. The prayer is a family prayer all the way through. It expresses a shared interest, and no one pulls out of it to walk alone. How well we would be cared for if everyone remembered everyone in this way, and the family tie held the whole family together.
Commentators differ on how far the petition reaches. One writer says it covers the soul's need as well as the body's, and points to the manna — the bread God gave Israel each morning in the desert:
It is not stretching the request for daily bread to let it include a spiritual meaning too… In both ways the supply must be constant. The manna must be fresh every morning, and freshly gathered as the morning comes: hoarded, it breeds worms and stinks. There is no release from this dependence. It only makes us feel the love that keeps supplying us, and it keeps us near the gracious hand of the Almighty… it is not meanness but love that deals with us this way.
For anyone who can walk into a shop, the petition can feel like a formality. It was not framed for them alone:
It is easy to have a well-filled purse, and enter a well-stocked shop, and buy what we need. It is quite another thing to be like the persecuted believers… for whom every single meal was an anxious question of where it would come from. What deep comfort to have the ear of One who loves, who knows, who cares, who is almighty, and who holds the hearts of all people in His power.
- Order — God's name, kingdom and will come first; only then do we ask for anything, and the first thing asked for is a meal.
- Enough — the word rendered "daily" carries the sense of sufficient or necessary bread, not extra; we ask only for what the day needs.
- Today — the request stops at this day, leaving tomorrow to the Father we will meet there unchanged.
- Us — the petition is plural throughout, a family asking together, no one praying for himself alone.
- Daily — like manna that spoils when hoarded, God renews the supply each morning, and that keeps us near the hand that gives it. That continual dependence is love, not meanness.
and forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors,
At the heart of the model prayer the Lord puts a request about debt. He ties God's answer to the way we treat those who owe us. Two questions follow: what forgiveness is in view, and how does our own forgiving set its measure?
The word "debts" pictures sin as an unpaid account with God. The parables use the same picture, and there the debtor cannot pay anything at all:
When Scripture speaks of our debts being forgiven (see Matthew 6:12; Matthew 18:23–35; Luke 7, etc.), it uses the word in its wider sense, as it always does. These are unpaid debts, trespasses or sins. God forgives them, as we have seen, because Christ has died and made atonement. In those parables we are not only debtors. We are bankrupt beyond hope, without a penny in the pound to offer... So we go free, not because God cancels what we owe, but because a competent Substitute bore the penalty for us — one His own love provided.
Notice who is praying. That changes what the request means:
One aspect of forgiveness here needs careful thought. These are not sinners speaking to God, but disciples — children to their Father. The gospel tells the sinner of forgiveness full and free through the Saviour's blood, and nothing the sinner does has any part in it. In Matthew 6:12 we have the Father's government of His family, an altogether different principle.
Reading this line as the gospel would make pardon depend on our behaviour:
The question here is not the full forgiveness we receive by believing the gospel. It is God's watchful, constant oversight of His children's ways. This has nothing at all to do with the poor sinner's need. It is plain that the gospel offers no forgiveness of sins on the condition that we forgive others. Grace gives remission of sins on faith in the Lord Jesus. But if you — a Christian — fail to walk in a forgiving spirit with others, God is displeased with you. You then lose your communion with Him, and He will not restore it until you truly judge yourself for the wrong.
"As we forgive" sets the measure, and our own forgiving is often held back:
Our own forgiveness of others sets the measure of the forgiveness we pray for — "as we forgive our debtors." But think what we are: our hearts are subtle, we hold things back without knowing it, and we often find it hard to give free, full and absolute forgiveness to those who have sinned against us. From this petition, then, we could never know whether we may rejoice in knowing the full pardon of our sins against God.
The clause is not a bargain offered to a hard heart. The ESV puts the forgiving in the past — "as we also have forgiven our debtors" — so it describes someone who has already let the offence go:
This is remarkable, because it assumes someone who already has a forgiving spirit. No one truly has this except the person God's grace has forgiven. And God does hold His children to this. How can a man who does not forgive another claim to enjoy the forgiveness of his own sins before God?
Under God's government, the way I treat others comes back to me:
Our attitude to others has a serious bearing on ourselves. This passage surely views forgiveness from the standpoint of God's government, and it is on the lines of government that the matter becomes very serious. Do I forgive? Then I can call on God to forgive me. Am I hard and unforgiving? I shall reap what I sow.
Commentators differ on how far this petition fits the believer. One answer turns on who is addressed:
The simple fact that it is addressed to the Father removes every difficulty. Those who plainly take the place of relationship are asking a Father for His forgiveness... These trespasses cost us communion, and bring chastening to restore us. We must forgive, if we are to be forgiven.
- Debt: Sin is a debt we cannot pay. God clears it because a Substitute bore the penalty, not because He waived the account.
- Family: The one praying already says "Father." A child is seeking his Father's face, not a sinner seeking pardon.
- Government: What is at stake is not eternity but communion. A Father watches His children, is grieved, chastens, and restores.
- Measure: "As we forgive" makes our treatment of others the gauge. An unforgiving child cannot walk happily with God.
- Fruit: The forgiving spirit is assumed, not bargained for. Only the forgiven can forgive, and God holds His children to it.