I
When we consider the Prayer as a whole, we shall be impressed anew by its exquisite beauty of structure. Of this many people have never taken note. Yet it is of far more than a merely literary interest. It confirms, I think, the view that the Prayer in its complete form – the Matthean form we all use – could not have been extemporized at a disciple’s request, as was, apparently, that first sketch of the Prayer which St. Luke describes. Again, the precise balance of symmetry of form seems to prove that here we have what we may term the considered work of Christ. The Prayer has for me a value even greater than before when I feel that our Lord Himself thus clearly showed the importance He attached to it, working upon and revising it until this concentrated expression of His teaching, this noblest of all prayers, had become clothed in a form of wonderful beauty.
Let us look at that rather more closely before studying the individual phrases. We have seen already that the whole is made up of seven sentences – first, the words of address, and then two groups of three petitions each: the first three for God’s glory, the second three for human needs. And it is not merely fanciful to remember that for those to whom our Lord spoke seven and three were “sacred” numbers, fraught with mystic meaning. Next, we may observe how each sentence of a group matches the corresponding sentence in the other group. As Dr. Plummer has pointed out, the first petition is addressed to God as our Father, the second as our King, the third as our Master. And so in the second triplet it is to our Father that we look for sustenance, to our King for pardon, to our Master for guardianship.
| Petition | First triplet | Second triplet |
|---|---|---|
| God as Our Father | sustenance | |
| God as Our King | pardon | |
| God as Our Master | guardianship |
And again, “If we take the six petitions consecutively, we shall find that they begin with the glories of heaven, pass on to life on earth, and end with the powers of hell.” There are further details of symmetry and parallelism which will become clear to all who will be at the pains to examine the structure with care. And, apart from their intrinsic beauty, they show us beyond doubt that the Lord’s Prayer is not, so to speak, a casual assemblage of petitions for His disciples’ use, but an organic whole, thought out and contrived with transcendent skill and care. We may be sure that it did not cost our Lord nothing to achieve this work, to weld the asymmetric sentences of the earlier form into this masterpiece. And the Prayer must have the greater value and significance to ourselves because, thus clearly, it meant so much to Him Who made it.
As we approach the three petitions which compose the first part, there is one other detail of arrangement to be noticed at the outset. It is not clearly to be discerned in our versions, yet it seems to have a real importance. We may justly feel certain, I believe, that the words “as in heaven, so on earth” (such is their order in the Greek phrase) qualify each of the three petitions making up the first part of the Prayer. They do not refer, that is, to the doing of the will alone, but equally to the hallowing of the Name and the coming of the Kingdom. Thus this first part of the Prayer is:
Our Father in heaven!
As in heaven, so on earth,
Thy Name be hallowed, [reverence]
Thy Kingdom come, [honor]
Thy will be done. [obedience]
Does not that link in a very beautiful way the three petitions, showing one great thought that runs through each? We do not merely ask, in a general nd abstract way, for the hallowing of the Name, the coming of the Kingdom, and then, more precisely, for the doing of the will on earth as in heaven. Rather, the whole paragraph glows, from start to finish, with the same magnificent idealism. This springs, so to speak, from the opening words of address. We lift our hearts to God as our Father in heaven, and the use of that term leads us to ask that, as in heaven, so here on earth by us, He may be reverenced, honored, and obeyed.
Is it not true that for many of us there will be new cogency and force in the first part of the Lord’s Prayer when we keep this sense in our minds?
II
Now let us look closely at the wording and its significance.
As St. Luke records the Prayer, the opening address consists of the single word “Father.” In the complete Matthean version, we have, translating literally, “Our Father, the (Father) in the heavens.” It were needless to insist upon the import of the pronoun; that is as clear as it is beautiful. It implies the doctrine of Christian brotherhood. The man who in uttermost solitude uses the Lord’s Prayer must perforce pray not only for himself but for all his brethren. The man who in dejection might doubt if his weak prayers were worthy to be heard is made sure that with his own are linked the prayers of all within the brotherhood of Christ. The Creed, even when recited by a multitude, must be separate and individual; “I believe,” since none may do another’s believing for him; the Prayer, even when said in stark isolation, must be collective and social, “Our Father … Give us …” since love and unselfishness are at the very heart of all true prayer.
It will be noticed that the Greek word at the close of the opening phrase is ” heavens,” not “heaven.” Not much stress need be laid on this, as the plural and singular seem to be used often with no distinction of meaning. But we may remember the Jewish belief, echoed by St. Paul, in a series of “heavens,” [e.g., the sky, outer space, and God's abode] so that the grammarians may be right who term this a “plural of majesty” – the thought being that the Father pervades and rules all the heavens. Again, though, the phrase may be taken – and more rightly, I think – as merely the equivalent of an adjective. “Father in heaven” and “heavenly Father” seem to be used indifferently throughout the Gospels. And the thought linked thereto in the teaching of Christ seems to be one not of locality but quality. His eager desire was to show not where God is, but what God is. He gave no special revelation about the setting of life in its next stage, being content to reproduce, as in the Dives and Lazarus parable (Luke 16:19-31), ideas current among His audience. “Your heavenly Father” in His speech meant not chiefly a Father Who “dwells in Heaven,” but a Father Who is perfect. “Heavenly,” in His mind stands, then, for “perfection” and human life on “earth” for imperfection.
Many passages to illustrate this win occur to the reader, as, for instance, “If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more shall your heavenly Father …” Of all, however, the most significant is the sentence ending the Sermon on the Mount: “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect” (Matt. 5:48). That command accords completely with the opening sentence of the Paternoster. It propounds the ideal at which, though we cannot achieve it, we are to try to aim. With nothing less are we to be satisfied. And so, saying the words of address in the Prayer, the thought they are meant to bring is not the lifting of our voice to One far withdrawn in illimitable heights, but rather the thought that we turn to Him Who is Perfect and make His perfection the measure of our aspirations. “O Perfect Father, perfectly even here on earth, may Thy Name be hallowed, Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done!” That sets the key, the highest possible key, for the whole.
III
“Our Father, ” the Prayer begins. In Greek “Father” is the first word of the first sentence. We might wish it could have the same place in the English version, for there is no one word more characteristic of the Prayer’s Maker, no word the use of which distinguishes more clearly His teaching from that of all the prophets and wise men before Him. It occurs but seven times in all the Old Testament, but there can have been scarce a day when Jesus did not use it. During the centuries separating Old Testament from New there was very much development of religious thought; the belief in personal immortality, the idea of a Divine Kingdom to come were strengthened vastly within those four and a half centuries, and so prepared the way for the teaching of Christ. But the concept of God’s Fatherhood was still quite indistinct; so far as it took shape, it viewed God’s paternal relationship as existing not between Himself and individual souls, but merely between Himself and the Jewish nation as a community, and its sense did not go beyond an attempt to blend in one word the thoughts of God as Creator and Ruler.
Thus we have need to remember how startling and how novel was that doctrine of the Fatherhood which Jesus bestowed upon the world. It was His concrete manner of insisting that God is love. The relationship He described was not merely that between Creator and created, but that pictured once for all in the parable of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11-32). There is, Jesus insisted, a spiritual kinship between God and man; we are His children, and (as St. Paul says) “because we are sons, we cry, Abba, Father” (Romans 8:15)[Aramaic: Abba = Father, Daddy]. In a brief study of the Lord’s Prayer. it would be out of place to enter on a long discussion of all that Christ’s teaching of the Fatherhood implies Yet it is a needful, and a happy, thing for us to have in mind, that when we begin His Prayer we are encouraged by our Lord to address ourselves to God not as a great invisible power, not as a despot, not even merely as our Creator, but as “our Father,” as perfect Love, to Whom, with the simple trustfulness and frankness of little children, we are to tell our wants.
IV
Yet this view of God may be, indeed sometimes has been, so over-emphasized, so perverted out of all due proportion, as to become misleading and dangerous. Then the idea of the Fatherhood is degraded, as someone has said, to a kind of magnified Eli (1 Sam.), and the thought of God’s illimitable righteousness and majesty is sentimentalized away. The Lord’s Prayer is phrased as if Jesus were mindful of this danger. The opening word brings us to the Father, fills us with this new revelation of His tender love for each of His children. Yet our Lord, while giving this, would not weaken that tremendous sense of awe in approaching Him which had possessed the Jews through long generations. Because God was henceforth to be known as the Father, more, and not less than before, must the thought of Him fill us with humblest reverence. So we see again the exquisite poise and balance in the teaching of Jesus, shown by the structure of His Prayer. Having been taught to invoke God as “Our Father,” immediately the first petition that follows is that we may honor Him profoundly on earth, even as the angels do in heaven. First “Our Father,” and then immediately, “Hallowed [kept holy] be Thy Name”.
The meaning of this petition would be evident to all whom Jesus taught, for it was an accustomed beginning to Jewish prayers. But its force is less generally understood by people of our own time, who often do not realize for what “Name” stood, in Jewish usage. And indeed its precise force is less easy to set down in English words. But, approximately, “God’s Name” meant God as He disclosed Himself to man. The Name is not an impersonal revelation about God, but God as He has vouchsafed to show Himself. And so the prayer is that He may be worshipped and held in profoundest awe, that the Truth He has revealed of Himself may be held most sacred, that most humbly we on earth may do Him homage, even as do the triumphant hosts of heaven. As we use these words, we ourselves worship; we pray that we may ever do so rightly; and we ask that everywhere God’s revelation of Himself may be received and reverenced. We echo the cry of Magnificat, ”and holy is His Name,” (Luke 1:49) and our prayer is akin to that which the Fourth Gospel attributes to our Lord Himself: “Father, glorify Thy Name.”
So the meaning of the first petition becomes clear, and the need that we should make it is greater than it was for the disciples who first heard the Prayer. In our age the danger is more considerable of losing that sense of awe with which we should approach God. The sentence has a special import for us in our study of the Bible and in our theological discussions. It is good for us to examine God’s revelation, to ponder the union of human and divine in the Person and words of our Lord, to bring all modern knowledge – which is, indeed, a part of God’s revelation – to aid the conclusions at which we arrive. Yet assuredly we shall miss our way unless we undertake such studies in the right spirit, losing nothing of the infinite awe with which the saints of old touched holy things.
In ordinary life and speech, again, we need to pray for a deeper sense of reverence. God reveals Himself in many ways – through the Christ Who “declared His Name” (John 17:26), through nature, through experience. We need to treat all this revelation as deeply sacred, and be resolved that it shall not be disparaged through us for those who come after. Through our example, we ask, through our lives, through our spirit of lowly awe, Hallowed be Thy Name!