In the Matthew version, Jesus just blurted it out, so to speak, but in Luke's version the disciples asked Him an excellent question, a request Jesus was only too happy to fulfill. "Lord," they said, "teach us to pray." So He said, "Pray like this," and He told them how to pray (Matt 6:9-13; Luke 11:1-4). He told them to address their Father, a revolutionary concept at the time. He told them to pray that His kingdom would come, and we do, don't we? "Come quickly, Lord Jesus." He told them to pray that God's will would be done on earth. He taught them to pray for daily needs and forgiveness of sins and to help us to avoid temptation and to deliver us from evil. Yes, yes, we know all this.
Jesus taught His disciples to "pray like this." He taught them what was important to ask the Father for. Do you know what was at the very top of Jesus's prayer list? Do you see His very first request? A lot of people miss it. The first request, right after the address -- "Our Father in heaven" -- is often misunderstood as a further address ... to a holy God. "Hallowed be Your name." "Yes," you might say, "we are recognizing His holiness." But that's not how we'd say that. We'd say, "Holy is your name." Jesus didn't. "Holy" is a description; "hallowed" is an action. Jesus's #1 request was that the Father's name would be "hallowed" -- regarded as holy. Yes, He is holy. In fact, He is holy, holy, holy (Isa 6:3; Rev 4:8). He is "holy, holier, holiest." He is absolutely set apart. But the prayer is not that He would be holy, but that we would honor Him as such. We would recognize His holiness. Jesus wanted us to pray to the Father that we would, first and foremost, see Him as holy.
Holy is something that we don't quite get. That's okay. It means "other," "set apart," so you might see how we might not quite get that which is "other." That, in fact, is why we need divine revelation. It's why God has to reveal Himself to us. He is not us; He is "other." So He needs to fill us in on the things we can grasp. And we have His Word for that. But He is holy beyond our comprehension. So we need to pray that we regard Him as holy. And since that is the first thing Jesus taught us to pray, it must be important. It must be that we need to honor Him as holy in all that we ask, in all that we do, in all that we think. I suspect we don't do that very well ... which, of course, is why we need to pray for that, right?
2 comments:
Wouldn't it be interesting to have been able to hear Jesus praying on those instances where He went off by Himself to pray? Or even to have heard His entire prayer in Gethsemane?
Yes, like the 40 days in the wilderness. What did that conversation (with His Father) sound like?
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