Matthew 6:9-15 - The Lord’s Prayer.
Jesus is introducing us to how to pray. The preceeding passage instructs us to avoid publicly practicing almsgiving and prayer. Now, Jesus provides an example of how we should pray. What they call The Lord’s Prayer is also a list of instructions, each of which is to be practiced with diligence … work … much more than just repeating the words.
First, address ‘Our Father in the heavens, honored be your name.” Bring God to mind and feel love for God in your heart. Everything, even this prayer, seems to begin with love for God.
Second, ask that Jesus’ ultimate mission be accomplished, “your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” This is hugely important for two reasons: 1. Human beings often bewail the absence of mercy on Earth. 2. This tells us how the kingdom (the way) comes to the Earth: “Your will be done.”
People have a lot of different ideas about what God’s will is, usually wrong ideas and ideas not taught by Jesus. Christians worship Jesus because they believe he made a way to the heavens, and he’s coming back some day to rescue us. But that’s not what Jesus teaches here. Jesus teaches that the way of the heavens comes to Earth by humans doing God’s will.
The question is, just what is God’s will? That’s a really important subject, and we’ll get into it later, when we quote Jesus on that matter. Remember that everything written early is explained later. Everything.
Third, ask for a little something for ourself, just enough so we don’t starve: “our super-essential daily bread” (literally from the Greek). By super-essential, it means just enough to get by and no more, the minimum needed for survival.
Fourth, ask to be released from our debts as we release the debts owed to us. This is clearly another tit-for-tat exchange. While debts literally refer to money, we can extend the analogy and ask God to release any bad feelings against us in the same way that we release any bad feelings we have toward others.
A hint here: When you harbor bad feelings toward others, take responsibility for the feeling. Not the offense or circumstances, but for the fact that you are holding on to those feelings and ill will. Forgive yourself for clinging to those feelings, release the bad feelings, and love yourself as you are … someone who got hurt and has a hard time letting go. Jesus teaches us, love your neighbor as yourself. So, don’t forget to love yourself, weak human. When you do, it will be easier to forgive other weak humans.
Fifth, ask God to not be taking us to trial. The Greek word for trial is usually interpreted “temptation”, but it is literally trial as in testing or proving by adversity. And Jesus specifies which adversity: He teaches us to ask to be rescued from evil, an adjective. Interpreted to mean the “evil one” or Satan, it is actually referring more generally to all evil, both as a result of bad people, bad institutions, and bad situations. Interesting note: The flavor or subtext of this kind of evil is that brought by oppressors.
Somehow, in the New International Version, the last part of the 13th verse gets left off. In the Leningrad Codex it includes the words, “for yours is the way (kingdom) and the dynamic (power) and the glory into the eons (thousands of years), amen.” Perhaps the NIV translators used a different early copy that does not have this, or perhaps they thought it was added on later. Either way, they omited this. Interesting difference.
Verse 14 repeats the fourth instruction above, and verse 15 makes clear that forgiving sins is a tit-for-tat exchange with God. “For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.” So, there is clearly a condition under which the Father will not forgive your sins. It’s worth rereading the fourth instruction.
Jesus doesn’t just provide an example prayer to be recited over and over. Jesus provides us a list of instructions about how to pray and what to pray for. It’s easy to understand why each of these is an essential part of our prayers.