Forgive us our trespasses…(Matthew 6:12). How necessary this is! Daily, even hourly, we need to come to God with a deep repentance for those thoughts, words and actions that dishonour his name. Like Isaiah (in chapter 6), we feel our unworthiness before his utter purity.
‘Woe is me,’ is our heart-felt cry – so well expressed in the general confession in the Book of Common Prayer:
Almighty and most merciful Father, we have strayed from your ways like lost sheep. We have left undone what we ought to have done, and we have done what we ought not to have done. We have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts. We have broken your holy laws. ..
What does God offer? He offers full and free pardon when we humbly turn to Jesus Christ. God took into himself the pain we caused when Christ died on the cross.
The Lord’s Prayer does not stop with the petition for our forgiveness, for Jesus continues, …as we forgive those who trespass against us. There is a real sting here, for he is saying that if we expect God to forgive us, we need to hold out forgiveness to those who have hurt us.
And in case we miss this point in the prayer notice what Jesus goes on to say in Matthew 6:14: ‘For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you; But if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive you your trespasses.’
These words are sobering!Think of it: if we expect to receive God’s gracious pardon, we need to cease nursing grievances towards others. God cannot, and will not, pardon the unrepentant heart. Paul echoes this theme in Colossians 3:13: “Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgives you.”
On Sunday, July 25, 1993, a year before Nelson Mandela became president of South Africa, a man with an AK-47 and another with grenades embedded with nails, entered evening worship at St James’ Anglican Church, Cape Town. Eleven people were killed in church that night and fifty-eight wounded. When TV reporters turned their cameras on the man whose wife had been the first to die, they asked, ‘What is your response?’ Looking squarely into the cameras, he said that he forgave the attackers. Throughout the church the response was the same.
The world was stunned. Some cynically responded that if there is a God, he would have protected his people. But countless others, in Cape Town and around the world started asking questions. Bishop Frank Retief recalls that a thousand people turned up at church the following Sunday night. Many over the coming months came to know Jesus Christ. It all began with the spirit of forgiveness that church members held out to their attackers.
Pause, and consider those whom you feel have wronged you – those whom you resent. ‘Pray about your attitude,’ says Paul in Colossians 3:13f. Can you forgive them? Remember Jesus’ words: Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us…
Yet, good Lord, have mercy on us; restore those who are penitent, according to your promises declared to mankind in Jesus Christ our Lord. Grant, merciful Father, for his sake, that we may live a godly and obedient life, to the glory of your holy name. Amen. (BCP)
Give us this day our daily bread. With this petition in the Lord’s Prayer we see that God is fully aware of our daily need for physical food to sustain our bodies. Jesus reminds us that we are ultimately dependent on God for this ongoing provision. Psalm 104 speaks of the whole of the animate creation looking to God for food in due season (104:27). Jesus echoes this theme, when he later says that God, our Father, knows our physical needs (Luke 12:30). (1)
As a side-note, this is the reason God’s people have made a practice of saying ‘thank you’ to God before a meal. It is something we can do even when we invite for a meal people who may not be believers. A simple comment that this is our practice often opens provides an opportunity for conversation about the gospel.
To pray for daily bread is also asking for spiritual foodfor our soul. All of us need the ongoing sustenance of God’s Word in our lives. Without it, our relationship with God dries up and we follow our own devices and desires (as the confession in the Book of Common Prayer puts it).
Prayer. All this brings us to a question about prayer: ‘Can God, whom we call Father, be trusted to hear our prayers?’ Jesus, anticipating this, responded with a parable known as ‘The Friend at Midnight’ (Luke 11:5-8).
The parable captures village life in Jesus’ world where hospitality was an unwritten law. It compelled a man to get out of bed, no matter the hour, to assist a neighbor in need. If he did not provide aid, he would be shamed, bringing dishonor to the whole community. ‘Can you imagine,’ Jesus was asking, ‘anyone saying to a neighbor in need, even at midnight, ‘Don’t disturb me, get lost’? His listeners’ unspoken answer would have been, “No!”
The honor of God’s name. Another key to understanding this parable is found in the words usually translated, “his persistence” (11:8). In using these words, English translations are following one that dates back to the twelfth century. Recent commentators have pointed out the original word is better translated, sense of shame, for the word has the idea of avoidance of shame. If we follow the flow of the personal pronouns, his, in the parable, we see that the focus of the parable is not on the man knocking at the door, but the sleeper in bed.
This is not a parable about persistence. Rather it is a parable about God and the honor of his name. It takes up the words in the Lord’s Prayer, “Hallowed be Thy name” (Luke 11:2). Jesus is telling us that because of his very nature, God does listen to our prayers, no matter how great or small, no matter the time of day or night.
If God ignored our prayers, his name would be shamed. It is a matter of his honor and integrity that he hears and answers them. He will no more ignore the prayers of his people than a good mother will ignore her crying baby.
God, ‘The Friend at Midnight’ can be trusted to hear and answer our prayer for our daily bread.
When we begin a prayer relationship with God we open the door to untold blessings. This is why Jesus confidently taught: “Ask, and it will be given you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened for you” (Luke 11:9-10). As James put it, often we do not receive because we do not ask (James 4:2).
Now we may ask, ‘Can I trust God to give me good things, or is he fickle?’ Jesus, anticipating our question, assures us that God not only listens, but also has our best interests at heart. In Luke 11:11-12 we read two metaphors that we can paraphrase: ‘The most violent thief can be kind to his son and the most mercenary minded father can be generous to his daughter; do you think God is any less open-handed?’
Jesus addressed our concern about God’s goodness by illustrating the way good parents behave towards their children. Good parents do not give their children what is not good for them despite the child’s demands.
In Luke 11 we learn that we can trust God to be good and wise in the way he responds to our prayers. He is neither capricious nor malicious. He will not spoil us with over-indulgence. Loving parents use wisdom in giving good gifts to their children. How much more does God use his discretion in answering our prayers. In the Garden of Gethsemane Jesus prayed in agony that he would be spared the cup of suffering. Yet he prayed, ‘Not my will, but your will be done’.
None of us is wise enough or good enough to know what to ask for. And, let’s be honest, none of us is good enough to get everything we ask for. The encouraging truth is that our good, wise and loving heavenly Father knows what we need. He may not give us everything we want. He may delay making any response. He may even want to test the seriousness of our prayer – whether we will persist or simply give up. He may also want to test the quality of our relationship with him. Prayer is a precious privilege.
God is a father who loves to give. “How much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him?” Jesus concluded (11:13). Why did he raise the subject of the Holy Spirit here? In the sweep of Luke’s narrative, we see Jesus was anticipating the great gift of his Spirit following his resurrection and ascension. His Spirit would open our minds to hear God’s voice through his Word; his Spirit would open our hearts to God and enable us to call him ‘Father’; his Spirit would open our lives to God and empower us to trust him and to follow him.
As we continue to plumb the riches of the model prayer that Jesus gave his disciples we read:
Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.
His words give us pause, because there is so much in our world that is wrong and we are tempted to doubt the power of a God who is truly kind and compassionate.
As a side note, it is worth considering the question of doubt. In recent weeks the Archbishop of Canterbury has been taken to task because he says there are times when he has doubts about his faith. But when we think about it, doubt is not the opposite of faith. It is something we may well experience because we have faith.
YOUR KINGDOM COME
To return to Jesus’ prayer,
Father… Your kingdom come, your will be done,
Anyone of us with an ounce of intelligence can see there is much in life that appears to contradict an unquestioning confidence in God. Famines and earthquakes, terrorism and conflict, sickness and suffering, all prompt us to ask the same silent question: ‘How can a good God allow it?’
Surely the only sort of faith that is immune to this question is a blind faith, a faith that closes its mind to reality. This kind of faith is irrational, even cowardly. It is the kind of faith that deserves the contempt of the skeptic, for it only confirms the suspicion that believers are pathetic weaklings who need the crutch of faith to limp through life. Real faith has to confront the evil and suffering of the world.
The apostle Paul sought to address these kinds of questions in his Letter to the Colossians. His readers were under pressure from their neighbors. They were also under pressure from teachers who were attempting to turn Christianity from a faith that was grounded in a person who lived and died and rose again, into a system of works and mystical experiences.
To counter these problematic teachings Paul wrote one of the great statements found in the New Testament concerning the majesty of Christ and the supremacy of his rule over all things. Undergirding this are his opening words in 1: 15:
He is the image of the invisible God, the first-born of all creation;…
With these words Paul is telling us that Jesus is the projection into our world of the God who exists beyond space and time.
So, how has God in Christ used his position of power? In Colossians 1:20, Paul continues:
through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross. And you, who once were estranged and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and irreproachable before him,…
What we see happening on that cross is God, finding a way whereby he can absorb within himself the pain, the injury and the anger, that is rightly within him, when he looks at people like us who have hurt him and sinned against him. We see there a passionate collision of pain and fury, of love and mercy. He reconciled to himself all things, through the blood Jesus shed on the cross.
And, says Paul, the church is the evidence that God succeeded. The church is the nucleus of that reconciled community of men and women who have made peace with God and who now stand in his sight holy, without blemish, and free from accusation.
This is how our majestic, all holy God has used his vast power – to serve us in our greatest need. What’s more he plans to make a new heaven and a new earth where goodness and truth reign for ever. Let’s remember this when we pray,
What’s in a name? According to Shakespeare’s Juliet in Romeo and Juliet “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” The names of things don’t matter, only what they are.
But when we turn to the pages of the Bible we discover that nameis closely aligned with the essence of the person named. This is especially true for the name of God. In the model prayer Jesus gave his disciples, he taught, “Father in heaven, hallowed be your name…” – ‘may your name be honored’. Yet how often do we forget the honor of God’s name in our prayers.
The honor of God’s name. In the great prayers in the Old Testament we see how jealous for the honor of God’s name men like Moses and Daniel were. For example, in Daniel 9:15f, in a prayer where Daniel freely acknowledged the failure of his fellow Israelites, he pleaded for God’s mercy for the sake of his (God’s) name. We read: Lord our God, who brought your people out of the land of Egypt with a mighty hand…You made your name renowned even to this day—
God’s name. Daniel is bold to pray for God to rescue his people because he wanted to see God’s name honored. Because God freed the Hebrews from slavery in Egypt, his name was revered in Moses’ day. People came to know you didn’t mess with this God – He did what he said he would do! That is why Daniel prayed: Lord, we have sinned, we have done wickedly.
Today. We live in a society that gives little thought to God, let alone the honor of God’s name. Our society has concluded that God is not there. Yet the reality is, the evidence for his existence has not changed. Many scientists agree that we are not here by chance, and historians consistently acknowledge that Jesus of Nazareth existed. The truth is, we have attempted to put ourselves in God’s place.
Arguably, the economic problems we face are often a result of our insatiable demand for the immediate gratification. The social problems that concern us are typically the outcome of our collective repudiation of the law of God that we’ve known for centuries. We do not deserve any good thing from God.
Consider how Daniel continued his prayer: Lord, in view of all your righteous acts, let your anger and wrath, we pray, turn away from your city Jerusalem, your holy mountain (9:16). He didn’t ask God to put aside his righteousness and overlook the faults and failings of Israel. Instead he asked God to act because of his righteousness. This was Israel’s only hope. Daniel knew his Bible and understood that the Exodus from Egypt took place, not because God’s people were worthy of God’s intervention, but because God had made a promise.
Daniel knew that because God is righteous he keeps his promises. Like Moses, he appealed to the honor or name of God: ‘Lord, you promised; We don’t deserve mercy, but you promised’ Now therefore, O our God, listen to the prayer of your servant and to his supplication, and for your own sake, Lord, let your face shine upon your desolated sanctuary. Incline your ear, O my God, and hear. Open your eyes and look at our desolation and the city that bears your name (Daniel 9:17-18).
Daniel was humble and contrite about his own and Israel’s sin. But this did not prevent him from praying on the basis of God’s character and God’s promises. One of the great encouragements of Daniel’s prayer is that God is a God of mercy. The glorious thing about God is that he is always willing to receive us back on the basis of our repentance and our willingness to start anew.
We live on the other side of the cross of Jesus Christ where God demonstrated his perfect righteousness and mercy. We have greater reason to pray with confidence for God’s mercy for our world today – including our loved ones, our friends and work colleagues – so that God’s name might be honored.
In times when you feel your prayers are not being answered have you ever wondered whether you are praying correctly? How encouraging it is to discover that Jesus’ disciples were aware of their need to know how to pray. Without their request we might not have the model prayer that Jesus gave them!
‘When you pray’ we read in Luke 11:1, ‘say, “Our Father in heaven”.’
The words “in heaven” are striking. They remind us of the understanding of God that we find in the great prayers of the Old Testament, for example, those of Moses, Isaiah, Job and Daniel. All of them understood God’s awesome holiness and majestic power. So, when Isaiah saw the vision of God in the temple, high and lifted up, his first response was “Woe is me, for I am a man of unclean lips.” Jesus’ opening words in the prayer he gave his disciples, remind us of God’s awesome majesty.
But there is a breath-taking new dimension that Jesus introduced with his first two words:
“Our Father…” For his first followers these words would have been electrifying. While the Jewish people understood the notion of the fatherhood of God and had heard prophets like Hosea speak of God’s people being his sons and daughters, the idea of calling God, ‘Father’ was quite unknown. Nowhere is this found in the Old Testament.
When we think about it, the idea of calling God ‘Father’ is one of the surprising distinctions between the Old and New Testaments.
In his, Knowing God,Dr J.I. Packer asks the question, ‘How would you define a Christian?’ He answers with, ‘Someone who knows God as ‘Father’.
To know God as Father is an even more important and richer idea than our being justified! Yes, justification is essential to our relationship with God – we can’t reconcile ourselves with God by our own efforts, church-going or charitable-giving. But, as Packer rightly notes, it is not the highest idea of Christian teaching. What is most important is our being adopted by God as his sons and daughters.
Through his death on the cross Jesus has provided the legal and just way for God to adopt us. That is our highest privilege. And in this model prayer Jesus tells us what this meant when it came to speaking with God. It is the greatest privilege of all, to be able to call him, ‘Father’. From now we can approach the great, majestic God of the universe in a very personal way.
These first words of the Lord’s Prayer encourage us to see that this big, exciting God delights in us knowing him personally and intimately as his children. When I think of this, I for one, want to pray, “Our Father in heaven…”
