“Do Not Lead Us into Temptation, But Deliver us from Evil”

The sixth and final petition of the model of prayer that Jesus taught his disciples, like the third and fifth petitions, has two parts. The two parts or halves of the fifth petition, for example, work together in a complimentary way: ‘Forgive us our debts, as we have forgiven our debtors’. In the sixth petition, however, the two halves work together, but in opposition: leading us into temptation versus — on the contrary — delivering us from evil. Jesus teaches us to ask our heavenly Father not to do the first, and to do the second.

The first thing we should consider is that we have a translation decision to make — is it deliver us from ”evil” or “the evil one (i.e. Satan)”? It’s the same Greek word (poneros) either way, and we have to use context to determine which it is. In fact, Matthew uses this word in a variety of ways, not only ‘evil’ and ‘evil one’, but ‘bad’, ’sick’, and so on. How should we translate here (cf. 4:1, 3; 13:19; 16:1f.; 19:3f.; 22:18, 35; 26:41)? This question also ties in really well to the overall meaning of the first half of the petition.

The most immediate context for this petition, because of its mention of temptation, is clearly the temptation of Jesus by Satan which he has just overcome in order to enter into his ministry of proclamation of the coming kingdom (ch. 4). The Spirit leads Jesus into the wilderness ‘to be tempted’ by the ‘devil’ (v. 1), who is then called the ‘tempter’ (v. 3). This suggests that ‘the tempter’ is in view here, and that we should translate poneros as ‘the evil one’. On the other hand, throughout the rest of Matthew, Jesus is ‘tested’ by various religious leaders in a similar way (again, it’s the same word in Greek). In ch. 16, they ask for a sign in order to ‘test’ or ‘tempt’ him — and Jesus rebukes them like he had earlier rebuked the devil (vv. 1-4). There are similar exchanges in chs. 19 and 22. Matthew clearly paints the religious leaders as allies of the devil in their similar attitude and approach to Jesus as ‘tempters’, and I think this suggests that we should probably go with the majority of English translations, “Deliver us from evil”. This has nothing to do with denying the reality or role of Satan, but it recognizes that for Matthew, ‘evil’ in the sense of moral rebellion against God is inseperably connected both with the one he names the devil, the tempter, the evil one, as well as everyone and everything that displays the same attributes: rejecting Jesus, his claims and his work, his Spirit, his Kingdom and his Father.

Perhaps the clearest indication of the broader meaning of evil as ’sinful rebellion and its consequences’, is seen in the only other time Matthew uses the word for ‘deliver’, which like so many other key words and phrases in the Lord’s Prayer, ties into the final days of Jesus’ ministry:

And those who passed by [Jesus on the cross] derided him, wagging their heads and saying, “You who would destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days, save yourself! If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross.” So also the chief priests, with the scribes and elders, mocked him, saying, “He saved others; he cannot save himself. He is the King of Israel; let him come down now from the cross, and we will believe in him. He trusts in God; let God deliver him now, if he desires him. For he said, ‘I am the Son of God.’”

This is Jesus’ final temptation, when those whom he came to save tempted him with belief if he would just come down, stop all this tremendous suffering, and prove who he really was. The words of the religious leaders are the most cutting: if the God in whom you trust, the God whom you claim as Father, loves you, then let him deliver you from this evil. And the crazy thing is, he did trust in God and God was really his Father who did ‘desire’ him, but he didn’t come down and he wasn’t delivered.

And at this point I think we see the most fundamental message of the final petition of the Lord’s Prayer, in light of the Gospel as a whole: Jesus simultaneously teaches us to ask our gracious heavenly Father not to lead us into temptation and to deliver us from evil, and points us to himself as the one who was led into temptation, so that we may not be,  and was not delivered from evil, so that we may be.

Jesus was “led into temptation”, and tempted in every way that we are, and to the maximum, by Satan himself, yet was without sin. ‘Because he himself has suffered when tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted’ (Heb 2:18). He is thus our sympathetic great high priest,

who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need. (Heb 4:15-16)

Although not tempted by God himself (Jas 1:13), Jesus was led into Satan’s temptation by the Spirit on our behalf, so that he could succeed where we have failed and still fail, and suffer for our failures that we may forever enjoy the riches of his success. Jesus helps and strengthens us in this through the Spirit whom he has given us. This is exactly what the disciples’ failure to watch and pray in Gethsemane shows: ‘Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation. The Spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak’ (Matt 26:41).

In the same way, we can only pray “Deliver us from evil” with confidence in the one who was entirely delivered over to evil for our salvation, and conquered evil and its consequences through the cross and the grave and the empty tomb. Precisely because Jesus did not given in to the temptations from Satan or anyone else, he proved hismself the Son of God and King of the Jews. Because he did not ’save himself’ but gave himself for us, he is truly the only one who is able to save completely. ’Consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself, so that you may not grow weary or fainthearted’ (Heb 12:3).

This prayerful confidence in Christ and not in ourselves for deliverance is what the Heidelberg Catechism (Q&A 127) stresses when it talks about the meaning of the sixth petition:

And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil, that is, since we are so weak in ourselves that we cannot stand a moment, and besides, our deadly enemies, the devil, the world, and our own flesh [i.e. sinful nature], assail us without ceasing, be pleased to preserve and strengthen us by the power of your Holy Spirit, that we may make firm stand against them and not be overcome in this spiritual warfare, until finally complete victory is ours.

 As a final note, although it’s pretty clear from the manuscript evidence that the traditional ending to the Lord’s Prayer (”For yours is the kingdom…”) is not actually original to Matthew, many of us still use it (although I’d never say we have to), and I don’t think that’s a problem as long as we see it as our fitting ending and response to our praying this Prayer, instead of Jesus’ own words and teaching concerning this Prayer. In other words, it’s not the Bible text, but it’s still good theology. Again, the Heidelberg Catechism (Q&A 128-29) offers a great paraphrase of this wrap-up of the Lord’s Prayer:

For yours is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever, that is, all this we ask of you, because as our King, having power over all things, you are willing and able to give us all good; and that thereby not we, but your holy name may be glorified forever.

Amen means: so shall it truly and surely be. For my prayer is much more certainly heard of God than I feel in my heart that I desire these things of him.

“The Holy Trinity”: Inwoo Lee on Ch. 4 of Hyde’s The Good Confession

It’s a blessing worshipping the Triune God and learning theology at Oceanside United Reformed Church from Pastor Danny Hyde.  He knows his stuff.  What I mean by that is he knows his Scripture, the Reformed confessions and creeds, and his church history.  He’s a Reformed pastor — he better! Like a good surgeon, he better be good with the scalpel, if you know what I mean. The thing about Pastor Hyde that I appreciate is that he cares about and loves doctrine and likes teaching it. So when he’s teaching he guides us in Scripture, and summarizes and articulates a particular truth through the creeds and confessions, and answers any questions. And from time to time he would crack a little joke with his “Chesire cat grin” (see Hagan’s last post); the funny thing is he’d be the only one laughing at the joke he delivered, while we would sit there trying to comprehend what just happened.  All jokes aside, I’m grateful to the Lord for this church and being a recipient of the means of grace here at OURC.  In addition to Christ preached, we receive the gospel sacrament of the Lord’s Supper every week — how awesome is that!  

 In the membership class a couple months back, Pastor Hyde taught from the fourth chapter of The Good Confession: An Exploration of the Christian Faith, ’The Holy Trinity.’ Pastor Hyde began the class with a few questions, stressing the importance of the Holy Trinity then read parts from the Athanasian Creed:

1. Whosoever will be saved, before all things it is necessary that we hold the catholic faith;
2. Which faith except every one do keep whole and undefiled, without doubt he shall perish everlastingly.
3. And the catholic faith is this: That we worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity.    

He then explained to us the God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity; his book is clear and cogent so here is a quote from it:

“The Scripture reveals that God is both three and one.  That is not contradictory but a mystery.  As one writer says, ‘To say that God is One and Three is a contradiction only if we say that he is both in the same way and at the same time (i.e., God is One in person and Three in person). That is not what Christianity teaches. Instead, it teaches that God is one in essence and three in person.’” (54)

The Good Confession asks, Can we comprehend the doctrine of the Trinity? And Pastor Hyde makes an important distinction: that we creatures understand the Trinity essentially but not extensively. This also means that there is no human illustration for the Trinity. We cannot comprehend him but apprehend him, and through faith we embrace this doctrine that is clearly revealed in Scripture. So as Louis Berkhof writes in his Manual of Christian Doctrine, “the Bible teaches us that the one God consists in three persons. This is decidedly a doctrine of special revelation, a doctrine that is not revealed in nature, and that could not be discovered by human reason.”

Before Pastor Hyde went into Holy Scripture, he asked the class the question, How do mysterious doctrines like the Trinity affect our faith, worship, and Christian life? In class we talked about prayer, how the teaching of the Trinity affects our prayer where we can relate to God because of the Trinity! When we pray, we pray to the Father in Christ’s name and by the power of the Holy Spirit. Also, the doctrine of the Trinity affects our worship; take a look with me in Pastor Hyde’s What To Expect In Reformed Worship: A Visitor’s Guide, in the opening chapter:

“When you gather with us, you can expect to meet with the Triune God who is ‘Holy, Holy, Holy’ (Isa 6:3; Rev 4:8). The God of the universe has condescended (‘stopped down’) to us in his Son, Jesus Christ, and become our redeemer to draw into his presence by power of the Holy Spirit. Because we meet with this great God, our services are joyful, reverent, and purposeful. The reason for this joyful reverence is that what happens in worship is a reflection of theology; how we worship reflects what we believe about God. In fact, our worship is our theology in practice.” (5) Then we went to the Belgic Confession Article number 9 which give evidences for the Trinity in the Old and New Testaments (Genesis 1:26-27; Genesis 3:22; Matthew 3:17; Matthew 28:19; Luke 1:35; 2 Corinthians 13:14).

Article 10 of the Belgic Confession (which the book and class follow) went into the eternal deity of the Son of God, and taught us what the confession meant when it stated, “We believe that Jesus Christ according to His divine nature is the only begotten Son of God, begotten from eternity, not made, nor created…” The term begotten is to describe the relationship with the Father and the Son and to express that there is a Father and Son relationship, as we read in the confession that the Son from all eternity has always been the Son.  

Then Pastor Hyde taught from Article 11 which went into the person and eternal deity of the Holy Spirit. Here is Article 11 of the Belgic Confession:

“We believe and confess also that the Holy Spirit from eternity proceeds from the Father and the Son; and therefore neither is made, created, nor begotten, but only proceeds from both; who in order is the third person of the Holy Trinity; of one and the same essence, majesty, and glory with the Father and the Son; and therefore is the true and living God, as the Holy Scriptures teach.”

Pastor Hyde explained in class the biblical language of “proceeds,” which is a way of expressing the Holy Spirit being sent. Hyde took us to Acts chapter 2 where one hears of the imagery of the Holy Spirit being poured out at Pentecost. Further, the importance of saying that he proceeds from the Father and the Son was and is to protect the divinity of Christ. Historically, the Eastern church had a tendency of having a hierarchy of the Trinity when they stated that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father, when in fact, the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son (John 15:26, 16:7; Romans 8:9; Gal. 4:6).

When I was in college a Presbyterian friend of mine, a graduate of Westminster Seminary, catechized a couple of us from the Westminster Shorter Catechism. He told us to memorize these questions and answers. And then drilled us when he saw us again:

What is God?
God is a Spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable, in his being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth.

Are there more Gods than one?
There is but one only, the living and true God.

How many persons are there in the Godhead?
There are three persons in the Godhead: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit; and these three are one God, the same in substance, equal in power and glory.

Now, I was not catechized as a kid, so I appreciate my Prebyterian friend trying to put these things into my memory.  It helped my understanding of this important Biblical doctrine and I found it to be a great tool for discerning truth and error, and especially handy when your Muslim, Jehovah Witness, Mormon, and Jewish neighbors ask you questions surrounding the doctrine of the Trinity. You can tell them and share with them that you and your church,

believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible.

And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all ages; God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God; begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father, by whom all things were made. Who, for us men and for our salvation, came down from heaven and was Incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the virgin Mary,and was made man; and was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate; He suffered and was buried; and the third day He rose again, according to the Scriptures; and ascended into heaven, and sits at the right hand of the Father; and He shall come again, with glory, to judge the living and the dead; whose kingdom shall have no end.

And we believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and Giver of life; who proceeds from the Father and the Son; who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified; who spoke by the prophets.

And we believe one holy catholic and apostolic Church. We acknowledge one baptism for the remission of sins; and we look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. Amen (Nicene Creed).

Stay tuned for Hagan’s chapter five…

“Forgive Us Our Debts”

The fith petition of the Lord’s Prayer, “Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors”, continues the second half of the prayer (the 4th - 6th petitions), where Jesus is teaching us as his disciples to pray for ourselves and one another, in light of the first half of the prayer (the 1st - 3th petitions): prayer directed toward praising the goodness and faithfulness of our Triune God and acknowledging the realities and priorities of the life of the age to come.

The things this petition addresses — forgiveness from God and one another, in light of debt to God and one another — are part and parcel of so much of the Bible, but the actual wordings of the phrases in this petition are not common, particularly in the rest of Matthew. Since in these studies of the Lord’s Prayer we’ve been looking particularly at the language chosen for the petitions, and how this relates to the same language throughout Matthew, the fact that the language of this petition is pretty rare could pose a problem. The language is rare, however, not unique — there are just a couple other occurrences of such language in Matthew, and they also happen to be dealing with the very things Jesus is teaching us in this prayer.

The unforgiving servant

I suspect most of us know the parable of the unforgiving servant well, but I want to focus on this parable especially as it relates to the Lord’s Prayer and explains the meaning of the fifth petition in particular. It is crucial that Jesus’ motivation for telling this parable is Peter’s question, ‘Lord, how often will my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? As many as seven times?’ (18:21). Peter’s question, in turn, is in response to Jesus’ teaching on church discipline just before, when he said, ‘If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother’, and so on (v. 15). But if he continually refuses to listen, he must be treated like an outsider and stranger to the covenant blessings of God (v. 17). This is serious business, because the church’s decisions in this regard are on behalf of the Lord himself, who is ultimately the one being rejected: ‘Truly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven…’ (v. 18).

Understandably, Peter asks what the limit to this discipline is; assuming the sinning Christian repents, how many times should he be received back into full communion and fellowship? At what point do we as Christians individually or as the church officially declare ‘enough is enough’, and expose the sinner as unbelieving, insincere, unrighteous, hypocritical, once and for all? It’s so important that Peter isn’t asking ‘How many times should I seek the restoration of my wayward fellow believer?’, but ‘How many times should I forgive them?’ That makes all the difference. Jesus responds, in effect, by calling Peter to hold out unconditional forgiveness to those who sin against him, even time and time again. In other words, Jesus is calling Peter (and us) to display in our forgiveness of others the character of our God in his forgiveness of us.

So to illustrate this, Jesus tells a parable, a story about a servant who owed his master roughly the equivalent of 200,000 years worth of daily laborers’ wages. For comparison’s sake, the current average yearly salary for a general laborer in the US is $21,726. That’s a debt of $4, 345, 200, 000. Clearly, since this is a parable after all, owing just over 4.3 billion dollars…as a bondservant…and it’s due right now…means he has a debt that is unfathomably large that he can’t possibly pay back. Thus the servant and all his household and everthing he held dear was ordered to be sold for payment (which wouldn’t put a dent in what he owed).

Yet in response to his pleas for patience and more time, the master freely and mercifully releases the servant from his debt (vv. 26-27). Notice that the servant asks for patience so he can ‘pay everything’ (v. 26), while the master forgives all (v. 27). This is the context of forgivenness from the master in which the servant then proceeds to show no mercy to his fellow servant.

Again, the servant on whom the master showed such remarkable and ill-deserved pity, was still under the delusion that he had to somehow pay his master back and that he should pay his master back. But hadn’t his master released him from punishment and payment, and forgiven his debts, free and clear? Not in the servant’s eyes – he didn’t understand grace. ‘Now when a man works, his wages are not credited to him as a gift, but as an obligation. However, to the man who does not work but trusts God who justifies the wicked, his faith is credited as righteousness’ (Rom 4:4-5). He couldn’t accept the utter gratuity of the mercy and forgiveness he’d freely received, and so he couldn’t freely give it either.

The servant quickly found another servant who owed him money (I suspect that if you had 4.3 billion-plus, even if it was somebody else’s, your friends would be asking to borrow a little too!). Instead of telling the good news of the incredible forgiveness he’d received, and showing mercy likewise on his fellow servant, the ‘unforgiving servant’ is still operating  within the economy of debt. To him, his debt has not been forgiven, he still must somehow find a way to pay, and he thinks he’ll even be able to ‘pay everything’. So he chokes his fellow servant and demands, ‘Pay what you owe!’ (v. 28). What did the servant owe? About 100 days’ laborers’ wages, or just under $6,000. There are two things to keep in mind here: 1) 100 days’ wages is not insignificant; it’s not automatic or easy to forgive a third of a year’s debt, and that’s not what the parable’s saying; 2) no matter how much the fellow servant owed, the unforgiving servant refused to show any mercy at all, even after being forgiven so much more owed by him to his master than was owed to him by his fellow servant. He throws him in jail until he pays back everything–until his fellow servant does exactly what he still thinks he has to do for the master. Ironic, isn’t it?

The master’s response is the ‘moral’ of the parable:

Then his master summoned him and said to him, ‘You wicked servant! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. And should not you have had mercy on your fellow servant, as I had mercy on you? (18:32-33)

So the servant’s attitude and actions are not only ironic, but supremely wicked, and the master exercises even more punishment and delivers him ‘in anger’ to the ‘torturers’, until he should be able to pay all he owed, that he refused to be forgiven — in other words, forever.

Forgive, as we have forgiven

Just in case the disciples somehow miss the point, Jesus spells it all out for them: ‘So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart.’ This is the answer to Peter’s question. We must never say ‘enough is enough’ in forgiving one another because God never says that with us — he forgave us everything, and he didn’t just say ‘I forgive you’, but he took our debt and our punishment on himself in Christ. Jesus’ dying words, ”It is finished” could also very faithfully be translated, “Paid in full”. But not showing this forgiveness betrays our own lack of truly being those who have been forgiven, and living in that identity. The servant never believed or trusted in his master and the forgiveness he freely offered to him; he continually thought and worked within the economy of debt. His seeking after such a way to be right with his master got him exactly what he asked for: what he truly deserved.

Furthermore, this is how we should understand what Jesus says along these lines immediately after the Lord’s Prayer:

For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses. (6:14-15)

Jesus isn’t here saying that we receive the forgiveness of our sins for Jesus’ sake because of our prior forgiveness of others’ sins toward us. Like in the parable of the unforgiving servant, Jesus is saying that if we fail to live out of the identity of our forgivenness by forgiving others, then we prove ourselves to be those who have not truly embraced the promises of God in Christ for the forgiveness of our sins. We prove ourselves to have received the promises, but without faith.

Finally, we need to tie in the petition for forgiveness from our heavenly Father, with the condition of our own showing of forgiveness to one another. Just because our forgiveness doesn’t come because we first truly forgave, doesn’t mean that our showing of forgiveness isn’t a ‘condition’ of our proving ourselves to be forgiven and of the same character as our forgiving Father in heaven. Jesus truly calls us to forgive one another, ‘from the heart’, and even claims that the reality of God’s forgiveness of us in a certain sense depends on our forgiving of others.

Here, what else can we do but cling to Christ as all our righteousness? Otherwise, even after receiving God’s gracious forgiveness, we have no hope. I’m like Peter; I don’t forgive others unconditionally and from my heart like God requires, and I certainly don’t do it in such a way to want to receive from God in return –justly! —  the same kind of fickle and half-hearted forgiveness that I’ve shown.

But truly one of the most amazing things about our Savior is that he has accomplished perfectly on our behalf the very life that he calls us to live in him. Jesus is a complete Savior, and only by looking to his cross alone can we honestly and rightly take up our own crosses and follow him. In sum, we must approach the requirements of our own forgiveness of others, in light of God’s forgiveness of us, and just as much in light of Jesus’ forgiveness of others, on our behalf, credited to us by faith:

And when they came to the place that is called The Skull, there they crucified him, and the criminals, one on his right and one on his left. And Jesus said, ‘Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.’ (Luke 23:34).

“Our Daily Bread”: Manna from Heaven

The fourth petition of the Lord’s Prayer is “Give us this day our daily bread.” In light of everything we’ve seen in the prayer so far, this should come as a bit of a shock — or at least a clear ‘gear shift’ in the prayer. To this point the prayer has been saturated with the glory and praise of our Triune God, with the heavenly realities of the age to come, and with the accomplishment of the everlasting will of our God, out of the love of the Father, in the accomplished work of Christ the Son and in the Spirit’s application of that work through the Word, to everlasting life for all who believe.

But in the fourth petition we get something like, ‘Lord, please provide for us today that sustenance we need every day’. There is a major difference in focus here (no matter what ‘daily bread’ means, which we’ll get to in a minute), but it’s important to recognize that it’s a shift in the prayer, not a contradiction between two mutually exclusive realities.

It should be really encouraging for us that our Lord was not like us, who so often seem to pit these things against one another. We seem either to get caught up in heavenly things (without recognizing and pursuing their here-and-now significance and relevance) — or we get caught up in our day to day life (looking down at our stumbling feet instead of pressing on toward the goal). Jesus here upholds the importance of both the big picture and the small picture, the ‘telephoto’ lens and the ‘macro’ lens in the Christian faith and life, even while giving clear priority to the heavenly viewpoint. So we must give priority to ’setting our minds on things above’ as well, although always understanding and meeting the day-to-day needs we all have here below.

There is such wisdom here. Jesus doesn’t neglect our basic concerns and needs, or pretend they aren’t ‘real’, but he calls us to look to our gracious heavenly Father’s provision, for all our needs, both now and forever. Looking at life through the lenses of the age to come doesn’t mean not looking at life — it means looking at it clearly, with the eyes of faith, in light of the abundant life that we have through and in Christ.

So we can recognize that Jesus is bringing ‘heaven’ to bear in our concrete situations on the ground, so to speak, but more specifically we have to ask, What does “daily bread” actually mean? There are three clear options:

1. Daily bread means roughly ‘day-to-day provision of our needs by God’. This is a very important theme in Matthew, and we can think especially of Jesus’ calling his disciples not to worry about their life, what they will eat or wear, and so on, since our heavenly Father is more than able and willing to take care of us better than any grass or sparrow (6:25-34). The end of this section is especially close to the language of the fourth petition: ‘But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble’ (vv. 33-34). As in the Lord’s Prayer earlier, Jesus calls his disciples to look first to their gracious Father in heaven, then trust his provision for their daily needs. We can also consider in this light Jesus’ feeding of the five thousand (14:17ff.) and four thousand (15:33ff.). Finally, Jesus may be alluding to Prov 30:8-9: ‘…feed me with the food that is needful for me, lest I be full and deny you and say, “Who is the LORD?”, or lest I be poor and steal and profane the name of my God.’ Notice this also has to do with honouring the name of God.
2. Daily bread means roughly ‘the continually nourishing word of the gospel of Christ’. This option is especially clear in Jesus’ temptation by Satan. When Jesus is completely famished and the devil tempts him to prove himself by turning stones into bread, Jesus’ well-known answer is, ‘It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God’, quoting Deut 8:3. There is another interesting use of bread as a metaphor for the gospel of salvation in 15:26-28. Jesus responds to a Canaanite woman’s plea for help for her daugher by saying, ‘It is not right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.’ She replied, ‘Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table’ — then Jesus praises the greatness of her faith and heals her daughter instantly. My point is that the children’s bread, and the dogs’ crumbs, is the redeeming work of Christ received by faith. And any ‘dog’ who recognizes the constant and abiding sustenance this bread provides receives this saving nourishment by faith. Last (but certainly not least!!) is the Lord’s Supper. Christ himself is the bread we eat for nourishment to everlasting life (see 26:26). Jesus is the true bread from heaven, the true and lasting manna in the wilderness, as he says throughout John 6.
3. Daily bread means both; there is purposefully a double meaning. Think of such statements from Jesus as, ‘Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find…Which of you, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone?…If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!’ (7:7-11). He uses the example of ordinary basic provision of needs in order to speak of God’s physical and especially spiritual provision for all who call upon him. While we should always be careful reading an author’s words as saying two different things at the same time with the same language on purpose (since it is the author’s intended language and not his intent that we actually read), this is possibly what’s going on here. This is especially the case since the two meanings are not mutually exclusive; often in Matthew the basic bread we must continually eat to sustain life is compared to the saving work of God that we must continually feed on for everlasting life. Isn’t this exactly what Jesus says to his disciples in ch. 16? He tells them to ‘Be on your guard against the yeast of the Pharisees and Sadducees’, and they think he’s referring to their forgetting to bring bread on their journey (vv. 5-7). Notice what Jesus says: ‘You of little faith, why are you talking among yourselves about having no bread? Do you still not understand? Don’t you remember the five loaves for the five thousand, and hw many basketfuls you gathered? Or the seven loaves for the four thousand, and how many basketfuls you gathered? How is it you don’t understand that I was not talking to you about bread?…’ (vv. 8-11). Jesus here interprets the meaning of the physical feeding of the multitudes as pointing to spiritual realities. We are called to understand all Jesus’ words and actions (discerningly!) in the context of his mission and its redemptive character.

In sum, whichever meaning we should go with here, they’re related — and whether or not its implicitly a double meaning (meaning 3), the reality of meaning 1 should nevertheless consistently point us to the reality of meaning 2, and be understood in its light. Jesus is by the Spirit our nourishment for everlasting life, and the daily provision we need for our faith and life in this pilgrimage here below. And on this pilgrimage, our gracious and faithful heavenly Father’s provision of all things necessary for us — primarily his kingdom and his righteousness — should give us confidence of his adding to these everything else we may need according to his purposes and our good. Christ is the one who truly and really nourishes us, by the Spirit through faith, on his shed blood and broken body as our bread and wine unto everlasting life together with them and the Father. And this same God provides just as faithfully for our earthly good as he does for our spiritual and heavenly good, daily sustaining us through whatever trouble is enough for each day, feeding us until the day we won’t be hungry anymore, but always feasting and always satisfied.

“Your Will Be Done, On Earth as it is in Heaven”

As with each of the other petitions of the Lord’s Prayer (or rather the disciples’ prayer), this third petition addresses themes that are much, much broader and deeper than I can address here. So as I’ve been doing, I want to highlight only a couple key things going on in this petition, especially as it relates to what is going on with similar language elsewhere in Matthew.

“On earth as it is in heaven” serves to qualify “Your will be done”, giving us a better idea of the character of God’s will and its accomplishment, so I’ll talk about “on earth as it is in heaven” first.

Heaven and Earth

Again, since I’ve been focusing on the language of this prayer, as we come to better understand what it means in large part by looking at its context in Matthew (always against the backdrop of the Old Testament, which I won’t get into explicitly at this point), I want to look briefly at a few passages in Matthew where ‘earth’ and ‘heaven’ are spoken of in relation to one another. There’s more to it than this, of course, but getting at the context and meaning of the setting for this phrase in this way does help to shed light on the petition as a whole (and the prayer as a whole).

To put it simply, Jesus often speaks of heaven and earth in terms of the end of this age, and the realities of the age to come. Those of you who’ve been following these studies will know how much and how often this keeps cropping up; these petitions are different, but they’re all part of the same prayer and (importantly) the same way we’re taught to pray. Over and over, we’re taught to pray in light of and with a focus on such ’heavenly’ things, and to consider all our present circumstances and decisions in that light.

So Jesus first mentions earth and heaven together earlier in the Sermon on the Mount, in speaking of their ‘passing away’: ‘For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished’ (5:18). He later uses the phrase again in speaking of the church and the kingdom of heaven (see my last post): ‘I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven’ (16:19). He repeats the same thing with regard to church discipline at 18:18, and adds this: ‘Again I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven. For where two or three are gathered in my name, there I am among them’ (vv. 19-20). In speaking of his second coming, Jesus says,

Then will appear in heaven the sign of the Son of Man, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. And he will send out his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other. (24:30-31)

The next occurrence comes immediately afterward, and is very important for understanding what we’re talking about: ‘Truly, I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things take place. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away’ (vv. 34-35). Although there are a lot of questions about what exactly ‘this generation’ and ‘all these things’ mean here, one thing that is clear is that Jesus wasn’t saying that everything that had to do with the end of the age was about to happen immediately (see vv. 36-44). But another thing that is clear is that in a very real sense these things that belong to the end of this age and the coming of the next age took place in the death and resurrection of Jesus. How do we know? Well, from the other half of this petition.

The will of God is done

This language which is steeped in the light of the end of the present age and the ushering in of the age to come, is employed by Jesus to explain the phrase, “Your will be done”. Although Jesus is here teaching us to pray for this from God as our heavenly Father, there came a time when he would pray this same prayer to his Father, under utterly different circumstances:

Then Jesus went with them to a place called Gethsemane, and he said to his disciples, ‘Sit here, while I go over there and pray’….Then he said to them, ‘My soul is very sorrowful, even to death; remain here and watch with me.’ And going a little farther he fell on his face and prayed, saying, ‘My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will but as you will’….Again for the second time, he went away and prayed, ‘My Father, if this cannot pass unless I drink it, your will be done.’ (26:36-42)

This last statement from Jesus is exactly the same in Greek as how he teaches us to pray in the Lord’s Prayer in ch. 5. But what a difference between the two! Jesus’ prayer for his Father’s will to be done was answered, and his prayer for the cup of wrath to pass was not, so that our prayers to God will be answered and so the cup of wrath will never pass over to us. We may pray ‘your will be done’ with hope and confidence, because we know that Jesus prayed it with fear and trembling, on our behalf. We are shown mercy because he was not, and we have confidence because he took the cup, drank it to the dregs, to death and hell, and rose again the third day, the firstfruits of the resurrection life of the age to come. Before and above everything else, this is what ‘Your will be done’ means for us. It means that Jesus accomplished all the will of God, in judgment and mercy, all on our behalf, and in so doing fulfilled and ushered in the life of the age to come where righteousness dwells — where we will dwell with him. The covenant between Father, Son and Spirit to redeem a people to everlasting life was accomplished in space and time in the curse that Jesus took on and bore and overcame. In Jesus’ death and resurrection, the will of God was done on earth as it is in heaven.

The realities of the age to come, which are brought to light and ushered in at the Last Day, are present even now in the Spirit’s application of the redemptive work of Christ in and among his people, all those who will be gathered to heaven on the Last Day, as Jesus says in Matt 24. This heavenly reality is ‘breaking in’ in the church’s proclamation of the gospel and our confession of it, the gospel which seals our status in the age to come, depending on whether we embrace Christ in the gospel or deny him — depending on wether we’re loosed or bound on earth, so to speak. This gospel doesn’t operate according to the ways of the present evil age, and in that ‘foolishness’ lies so much of the glory of the wisdom of God, as Jesus says, again tying heaven and earth and the will of God together: ‘I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little children; yes, Father, for such was your gracious will’ (11:25-26).

In order to tie all these things together and to mention the last occurrence in Matthew of heaven and earth in conjunction, I have to end my exploration of this petition as I did the previous petition, and this is no accident:

All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age. (28:18-20)