The Lord’s Prayer

You see, the prayer that Christ taught us to pray is the antidote to sin. Since sin starts with the heart, it is only when my heart desires God’s will more than it desires my will, that I’ll live within the moral, gospel boundaries that God has set for me. And it is only God’s grace that can produce this kind of heart.

“Thy Kingdom come,” words of surrender, words of protection, and words of grace that can only be prayed by those who’ve been delivered by the Redeemer from the kingdom that always leads to destruction and death, the kingdom of self. (Whiter Than Snow, 62)

Matthew 6:11-15

Our Lord’s model prayer now shifts its focus. It moves from our heavenly Father to us and our needs. I am grateful that our Lord addresses a fallacy that sometimes appears in the church. Some people argue that we should never pray “I,” “me,” or “we” prayers because that means we are man centered rather than God centered. It is true that many of our prayers focus more on ourselves than God. However, our perfect heavenly Father delights when we come into his presence to pour out our hearts and share our needs. Jesus tells us to ask for our daily needs, to ask for daily forgiveness of our sins, and to ask for our Father to daily deliver and rescue us from the evil one, Satan himself. It is right and good to pray for these things. If prayer is a wartime walkie-talkie equipping us for spiritual warfare, it is a wise strategy to ask our Commander in Chief, who is also our Father, for the essential equipment and reinforcements necessary for victory. Warren Wiersbe is right: “Satan wants to convince us that prayer is a waste of time, but the Word of God and our own Christian experience assure us that prayer is a key to God’s treasury of grace” (On Earth, 140–41).

In Matthew 6:11 Jesus tells his disciples to pray for “daily bread.” The request for daily food recalls God’s provision of manna for the Hebrew children during the exodus (Exod 16). God instructed the Israelites to gather only what they needed for that day and no more. When the next day came, he would again provide for the needs of that day.

People in first-world countries who pray this part often do so without thinking. Because we have an abundance of food—in fact, we have much more than we will ever need—we take daily needs for granted. However, the rest of the world prays “Give us today our daily bread” with a sense of urgency and desperation. Much of the world lives day to day. Their need for the necessary food to live is real every day. Their prayer is a prayer of complete sincerity. It is also a prayer of genuine humility. It is a cry of the heart that says, “Lord, you must supply what I need just to live, or I will die. I am totally dependent on you and you alone.” J. I. Packer again is helpful at this point:

Petitions looking to God as the sole and Omni competent source of supply of all human needs, down to the most mundane, are expressing truth, and as the denying of our own self-sufficiency humbles us, so the acknowledging of our dependence honors God. (Praying, 172)

We must not let the availability of food trick us into thinking we are self-sufficient and do not need God to provide our daily needs. The story of Job reminds us that everything we have is dependent on God’s giving it to us. Don Carson is also right that asking God to “give us today our daily bread: should not be ‘empty rhetoric.’ Disciples of Jesus are ‘to learn to trust their heavenly Father to meet their physical needs’” (Sermon, 67). As James 1:17 reminds us, “Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.”

This prayer also reminds us that our eternal needs, like our daily needs, are met by the one who himself is called “the bread of life” (John 6:35). In Christ we have a meal to fill our true and greater hunger. In John 6:53-58 he says that his body and blood are our bread and drink because, like food, his death and resurrection satisfy our great need to be rescued from death. Unlike those who ate manna in the wilderness, we only need to eat once, and the one who eats it will live forever (John 6:59). Everyone who comes to Christ for their eternal need will be satisfied.

The second petition where we share our concerns is our prayer for forgiveness. Verses 14-15 provide a helpful commentary on this request. Now some may find this petition confusing. Is it not the case that all of our sins (past, present, and future) have been forgiven? Is not Romans 8:1, that “there is now no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus,” true for everyone who has repented of sin and placed their trust in Jesus alone for salvation? How do we square this verse with what we read in verses 12 and 14-15? The answer is this: when we were converted and justified, we stood before God as Judge; here, in the disciples’ model prayer, we stand before God as Father. J. I. Packer once again is helpful at this point when he says,

The Lord’s Prayer is the family prayer, in which God’s adopted children address their Father, and though their daily failures do not overthrow their justification, things will not be right between them and their Father till they have said, “Sorry” and asked him to overlook the ways they have let him down. (Praying, 79)

Paul Tripp adds,

When I live this lifestyle I find joy in telling Jesus, day after day, that I need what he did in his life, death and resurrection. This lifestyle is about growing to acknowledge that in some way, every day, I give evidence to the fact that the cross was necessary. And this lifestyle of forgiveness makes my daily attitude one of heartfelt gratitude and joy. (Quest for More, 159)

So as we ask for daily bread, we also ask for daily forgiveness for our sins, which is what the word “debt” means. We were faced with an insurmountable debt because of our rebellion against the infinite God, but that entire debt has been wiped out because of the gracious work of Christ. In justification the Lord Jesus washed (past tense) all our sins away. Now, in sanctification, he washes (present tense) daily our sins away.

In the second half of verse 11, Jesus adds a crucial qualifier we must not miss. We ask God to forgive us of our sins in the same way we forgive those who have sinned against us. We are not to be like the ungrateful servant in Matthew 18:21-35, who refused to forgive a fellow servant of a minor debt after he was forgiven an unpayable debt by the great king. Jesus makes the principle clear in verses 14-15 where he says, “For if you forgive others their offenses, your heavenly Father will forgive you as well. But if you don’t forgive others, your Father will not forgive your offenses.” John Stott helps us see what our Lord is saying when he writes, all that debt (which was huge) . . . ; should not you have had mercy on your fellow servant, as I had mercy on you? (Message, 149–50; emphasis original)

Thomas Watson nails the application when he says, “We are not bound to trust an enemy; but we are bound to forgive him” (Body, 734). For the disciple of Jesus, Ephesians 4:32 (“forgiving one another, just as God also forgave you in Christ”) must always be in our hearts and on our lips.

The final petition of the Lord’s Prayer is crucial for our success in spiritual warfare. It is twofold and set in the form of a negative-positive request. First, “do not bring us into temptation.” Second, “deliver us from the evil one,” a reference to the devil.

The first phrase raises a theological question. Why would we need to ask the one who “doesn’t tempt anyone” (Jas 1:13) to “not bring us into temptation”? Charles Quarles writes, “Request[s] for protection from temptation were standard fare in ancient Jewish prayers” (Sermon, 213). They would not have seen anything odd about this request at all. Further, the plea to our heavenly Father is not, “Do not tempt us,” but “Do not bring us into temptation.” Drawing on the second part of verse 13, the idea is to “simply ask God not to lead Jesus’ disciples into situations which the evil one would seize as an opportunity for temptation” (ibid., 217). In this light the request is a wartime cry for protection and guidance. Jesus could resist Satan by himself in the wilderness (Matt 4:1-11). We cannot. We need the Father’s guidance, the Savior’s work, and the Spirit’s strength to gain victory over the evil one. We need God for our spiritual survival. Quarles again puts it perfectly:

Sermon, 221)

Satan’s wartime goal is to discourage us, defile us, devour us, and defeat us. Without the Lord’s guiding us through the minefield of his demonic devices, we are certain to be defeated. The prayer for deliverance from temptation and the evil one is preventative medicine. This is a petition to be prayed at the beginning of every day. It is a prayer you should also pray throughout the day. Remember 1 Corinthians 10:13 and pray it throughout the day:

No temptation has come upon you except what is common to humanity. But God is faithful; he will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation he will also provide a way out so that you may be able to bear it.

Andrew Murray (1828–1917) was a pastor and advocate for missions. He wrote more than 240 books. Yet, for all his achievements, he was best known as a man of prayer. One of his best-known works is With Christ in the School of Prayer. There he provides a powerful word, in the form of a prayer, that serves as an appropriate conclusion to this study of the disciples’ model prayer. He writes,

Lord Jesus! Enroll my name among those who confess that they don’t know how to pray as they should, and who especially ask you for a course of teaching in prayer. Lord, teach me to be patient in your school, so that you will have time to train me. I am ignorant of the wonderful privilege and power of prayer. Lead me to forget my thoughts of what I think I know, and make me kneel before you in true teachableness and poverty of spirit. Fill me, Lord, with confidence that with you for my Teacher, I will learn to pray. . . . Blessed Lord! I know that you won’t put that student to shame who trusts you. And, with your grace, that student won’t shame you, either. Amen. (With Christ, 15)