Our Father who art in heaven, Hallowed be Thy name.
Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, On earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread
And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from evil
For yours is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever. Amen.
(Matt. 6:9-13)
if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. 15“But if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your tespasses.
This prayer has to be seen in the context of the entire "sermon on the mount."
After many exhortations the Lord Jesus says that we must be perfect as our Father in heaven. Perfection here refers to being perfected in the Father’s love. (Matt. 5:43-48 “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor, and hate your enemy.’ 44 But I say to you, love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you 45 in order that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven; for He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. 46 For if you love those who love you, what reward have you? Do not even the tax-gatherers do the same? 47 And if you greet your brothers only, what do you do more than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? 48 Therefore you are to be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”
This love is not possible to the natural man. Anyone who has attempted to live the life that is described in these three chapters knows this. But the Lord Jesus has shown us the way in this prayer for the kingdom of the heavens to be realized.
The goal of the prayer is to have the Father’s name made holy, that is to be separated from everything common, as well as to have the kingdom of the heavens and God’s will realized on earth as it is in the heavens. This goal is based on the Father’s love which is expressed in His life in the Son and supplied to us as food by the Spirit. His name, Father, indicates that He is the source and supply of all life. It is His life that comes into us when we believe in the Lord Jesus. It is His life through the indwelling Christ that enables us the live the Christian life.
Because we are fallen and have a natural life that always misses the mark of expressing God, we must be supplied with His life every day. (Rom. 3:23) Unless we receive that supply, we will not be a person who sanctifies the Father’s name, lives in the kingdom nor will we be in the Father’s will. We will be one who lives in the self, which always insists on its rights and expects others to honor it and conform to it. It is the self-centered life which looks only at itself and wants others to care for its little desires. If others do not oblige it, self is offended finds it hard to forgive, and is soon divided from others.
Forgiveness in this prayer is based on the Father’s life that was imparted to us when we were born again. The expression of the Father’s life is love. “God so loves us that He gave His only begotten Son that whoever believes into Him has eternal life.” This life of God is a forgiving life. He forgave us all our sins. Therefore the kingdom life is also one of forgiveness. However, many times we fallen human beings are tempted to remain in the right and wrong of things and refuse to forgive. The devil has always tempted mankind to remain in the knowledge of good and evil and of right and wrong which inevitably issues in death. He was desperate to seduce Eve to eat the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in Genesis chapter three. The moment we appraise others by the standard of right and wrong we fall into death. In this death there is no forgiveness. The longer we remain there, the more we will hold on to our rights and be divided from others We see this condition all around us in the Christian world.
Satan hates us to remain in the life of God, for his goal is always to divide us from God and from one another. God’s desire for us is to depend on Him, enjoy Him and let His life constantly renew us. By the daily supply of His life we are being transformed into His image. Out of this divine life we spontaneously love our brothers and forgive others who are different than us. The issue will be oneness with God and with one another.
On the other hand, Satan wants to make us independent from God. His goal in Genesis three was to cause man to be independent from God. The devil knew that this would bring in death and ruin man. It would cause man to live independently, divided from God, and make him have the life of Satan, which is sin and which always misses the mark of glorifying or expressing God.(Rom.3:23) Only the life that is lived out of God Himself can express and glorify God.. Since this missing-the-mark-life would be in man, no matter what he did would not please God, whether good or evil.
The model prayer that the Lord Jesus gave us in Matthew 6 gives us the goal, the way, the issue and the result of a person who lives a life according to God’s arrangement in the New Testament age.
A. Our Father who art in heaven, Hallowed be Thy name.
The Lord says in this pattern prayer, "Father, hallowed or separated be your name." Our Father is the source of life. Anything that causes us to be separated from His life means that His name is not separated in us. His name is to be separated from everything common that causes His life to be frustrated from growing into His purpose. That life always wants to be increasing and flowing between Christians in love and forgiveness so that the body of Christ remains in oneness and expresses Him. (John 17)
The Lord Jesus prayed in John 17 that we all would be one as He is one with the Father. His oneness with the Father is by Him being in the Father and the Father being in Him. Our oneness must be the same. That is because we are in Him and He in us. This is our oneness. That oneness is simply Himself. It is not by our trying to be one or by our keeping the same teachings or methods or experiences that we are one. It is because His life is operating in us and that life is oneness. The more I am in that life, the more I am in the reality of oneness. Any other kind of oneness is not the real oneness. It is just political.
B. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, On earth as it is in heaven.
Our Father desires that the kingdom of the heavens will be realized by us in this age. The kingdom of the heavens today is among those who remain in His life, abide in Him, so that no offence, doctrine, method or anything else causes them to be divided from one another. Therefore they remain in His love.
How can we fallen people with a sinful nature live like this? There always seem to be those offenses that seem to be unforgivable. Someone does something to us that is wrong and we feel justified in not forgiving. Others believe strongly in a particular teaching, method or experience that differs from our teaching, method or experience, and so we divide from them or they divide from us. Look at all the various kinds of denomination, churches, groups, etc. of Christians in the world today. How much oneness are we practicing today? Are we offended with anyone? Are we meeting in any way that divides us from others? There are churches who are so strong to stand for the doctrine of oneness that they divide from anyone who does not agree with this standing! How deceived can you be!
C. Give us this day our daily bread
The Lord provides the answer: "Give us this day our daily bread." We surely need our physical bread. But the Lord is not talking about that in this prayer. A few verses later he says that we are not to be anxious over food and clothing. I believe that in this prayer He is talking about the fact that we are to receive Him as the bread of life every day so that His life will flow out of our inner most being in forgiveness. (John 6:56; 7:37-39) He has already forgiven and taken away all our sins. Now we participate in that forgiveness by experiencing His life. His life is forgiveness.
Every morning I ask the Lord to give me my daily bread. When I find that particular word which is the rhema for that day, that word becomes the joy and rejoicing of my heart. (Jer. 15:16) When I am in such a state, I am in the reality of oneness with all my brothers. I mourn and grieve that so many of our dear brothers, whom we love, will not fellowship with us any longer due to this one thing: they will not forgive because they no longer experience the life of Christ which is forgiveness.
D. And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from evil
Then He says, "Lead us not into temptation." What is the temptation here? The devil would like to tempt us to hold our offense which is according to right and wrong and not forgive. When we are offended, the person who offends us becomes our debtor. He or she owes us. They owe us repentance and apology and maybe other things. But the Lord says we must forgive our debtors or our Father will not forgive us.
In Matthew 18 Peter was shocked by this. He asked the Lord, "How many times should we forgive. Up to seven times?" But the Lord answered, "No, up to seventy times seven." This seemed impossible to Peter as it does to us. This high requirement can only be met by participating in the life of Christ. At no time does God ever place a requirement on us that He Himself does not supply the ability in us to fulfill. Then we are kept from the devil’s snare of holding on to our rights and not forgiving our brother or sister.
E. For yours is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever. Amen.'
The Lord then says that we end our prayer by praising Him since this life gained and experienced through prayer will issue in His kingdom, power and glory.
You’ll notice that the next two verses explain the prayer’s thrust. Matthew. 6:14 says, For if you forgive men for their transgressions, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. 15 But if you do not forgive men, then your Father will not forgive your transgressions.” The little word "for" introduces this sentence as an explanation of the key to the prayer. This is not a prayer to repeat as a religious ceremony. It is a model of the prayer that gives us the "prayer-key" that unlocks the life of the kingdom of the heavens that the Lord preached when He said in Matthew 3, "Repent for the kingdom of the heavens." This kingdom is a life lived under the rule of the heavens and that rule is a rule of life, love and forgiveness.
Although the focus of the prayer is forgiveness, the way of the prayer is to eat the daily bread. This means that we must participate in the words of our Lord. Jesus said, "My words (rhema) are spirit and they are life. (John 6:63) This is daily bread. Like the manna in the wilderness, we need a daily supply from the heavens. This supply of daily bread is in the Word of God as we pray it into our spirit. By participating in the Word day by day, we will live in the reality of the kingdom of the heavens, and all the differences and offenses will be swallowed up in His life. No matter how we may be offended or how different we are from our brothers, we will forgive and love them all. Praise the Lord!
(The writer of the following book explains this kind of spiritual eating in a helpful and more detailed way. It is one of the great Christian classics and ought to be read by every serious Christian.)
"Experiencing the Depths of Jesus Christ" by Madam Jeanne Guyon
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