The First Request

Most of us know the Lord's Prayer (Matt 6:9-13) by heart. Even unbelievers have heard it. As an aside, I think "The Lord's Prayer" is probably not the best title for it. That would be found in John 17. This one is a structure Jesus offered His disciples when they asked Him to "Teach us to pray" (Luke 11:1). So how should we pray? I would bet that the first words out of His mouth teaching them to pray was a shock to the disciples: "Our Father, who is in heaven." You see, Jews didn't think of God as "Father." That was too familiar, too personal. They didn't even like to use His name. So Matthew, for instance, was much more comfortable using "the kingdom of heaven" than "the kingdom of God." Referring to God as "Our Father" must have been a jolt.

Oddly enough, most Christians don't recognize the very first request that Jesus suggested to His disciples. They typically think it's "Your kingdom come ..." It's not. It's the line before that. "Hallowed be Your name." Most people think He was simply stating that the Father's name was holy. But if that was His intent, He would have said, "Hallowed is Your name." He literally said, "May Your name be regarded as holy." As a first request in a prayer intended as a pattern for His disciples to use when they pray, I would think that might be important.

Twice in Scripture God is referred to as not just "holy" or even "holy, holy," but "holy, holy, holy" (Isa 6:3; Rev 4:8). Repetition was the Hebraic way of underlining, italicizing, and bold-print for emphasis. There is none like God. He is, in the literal meaning of the word, "other." When God executed Aaron's sons, Nadab and Abihu, for offering "strange fire" in the tabernacle, Moses told Aaron, "It is what the LORD spoke, saying, 'By those who come near Me I will be treated as holy, And before all the people I will be honored'" (Lev 10:3), and Aaron had nothing more to say. Because God must be regarded as holy ... above all else. So, too, should we. We tend to think of Him in more personal terms, more "friendly" terms, but if Jesus's first request was that we would regard the Father as holy, perhaps we might want to spend more time and effort on doing just that in our hearts and minds and lives.