God First

Our Father

Our - Relationship is now intimate not only with God but with all of God’s children

The fall left us destitute - without a father because people didn’t have the right to direct access to God and people didn’t have the right relationship with one another. (Gen 3-11)

The viel was torn (Matt 27:51; 2 Cor 3:16; 4:3)

Christ is the true son in whom we live in and have become adopted sons and daughters of God. ( Rom 8:15; Gal 4:5; Eph 1:5)

We now have a Father with many children who by nature and designation are one and by temporal commission are to become one. ( Eph 4:4-6; John 17:20-23)

Father - as aforementioned, there has been a change of relationship, and therefore status between God and man. Furthermore, the address has implications of what God offers to man in this eschatological relationship.

Abraham was promised that he will have an innumerable amount of descendants (Gen 15:5; 26:4). And those who believe in Christ become Abraham’s children through faith (Gal 3:7,29) . What we tend to miss is that Abraham is given a similar blessing as Adam, in that he is to multiply (see Gen 15 for typology). Also, similar to Adam, who was once in an unadulterated image of God, Abraham’s relationship through faith brings about justification (Gen 15:6; Rom 4:3) and in a sense an image of God acceptable to God.

In imaging God, Abraham’s blessing simply images, in a typological sense, God’s own ability to be abundantly fruitful.

In antiquity, especially among the Hebraic culture, a man who is fruitful is looked at as a man who is blessed. (Ps 127:3-5)

What follows from ‘a.’ is that our vision of God is not only that we possess him as Father but we possess a truly blessed father or the father of fathers, to use a biblical idiom.

In Heaven

In Heaven - In connection to “our father”, we are elucidated to the fact the we aren’t abandoned and our home is where our father resides in glory, power, abundance, and more.

Jesus’ audience already has the predisposition that they are praying to an all powerful God who has made Israel his own, but Jesus brings in to view the reality that they can now make God their own and everything that comes with that.

What comes with God as father is the perfect beauty and glory that is heaven for God has all the resources obeying him in heaven unlike what earth has forfeited through us in Adam.

Its is also understood by Jesus’ audience that heaven and earth ultimately belongs to God but the problem is that there was an ontological and governmental separation that happened by man’s rejection of God.

God begins a process of restoring his rule and convenantal relationship by grace through faith in the person of Abraham.

Through Jesus Christ God’s rule takes effect and the transformed heart of man may experience the blessing that comes with God. More on this later with “thy Kingdom come”

Hallowed Be Your Name

4. 1rst and foundational petition - Though it is true that God’s name is great in and of itself, this is stated in the Lord’s prayer as the first request from God.

God doesn’t NEED anyone to make his name great. He has done it alone just by being God, creator of all things, and was always from eternity past, GREAT.

the reason for the request is so that what is reality may become so in our live and in the lives of the world. What has been made illusory and of no importance by man should be made of the utmost importance by God’s people. It is our desire to see that God becomes the most popular and venerated person in our lives and the lives of others.

5. Hallowed - To truly be holy is to be like nothing else, to be truly unique. To be set apart and sacred (wholly other and special). God is transcendent and yet immanent. He is sovereign Lord and yet became man to humbly die in submission to God for those who rejected him as sovereign Lord.

6. Your Name - This is not meant simply as an appellation or title, but scripture , ANE, and many cultures throughout time, figuratively abstracts the term to be used to describe a person- his character, attribute, destiny, etc.

We are asking to see the reality of God’s person to be held in high regard and treated like no other by ourselves and by the whole world.

Since God needs no man or thing to make his name great, the making of his name great is for our benefit. The proper veneration of God leads to the manifestation of God’s presence- grace, power, love, etc.

God takes his name seriously and commands his people to do the same (Exodus 20:7; Lev 19:12)

Jesus,the one who God glorifies (Jn 17:2-3) and in whom we reside, carry’s the name of God as himself (Jn 17:11-12a,) and we are by the glory given to us by Him, make his name great(Jn 17:22-23).

Your Kingdom Come

7. Kingdom - the domain of the king- His power, grace, blessing, beauty, providence, etc are corollaries or symbolically, and paradoxically, literally the domain itself.

King - Jesus is the King that God places on the throne and through whom he will mediate his sovereign rule and blessing.

Domain- dominion - the affix dom- comes has one of its denotations as ‘house’

We see in scripture and theologically that Christ is the “temple” (house of God)(Jn 2:19) and by virtue of Christ the church too is the “temple” (house) of God (1 Cor 3:16; 6:19; 2 Cor 6:16; Eph 2:21) . In the future consummation of the new heaven and earth, we see that the whole world becomes the “temple” and the temple is Christ and his Bride, the church (Rev 21:9-22)

8. Kingdom Come - For God’s glory, power, grace, etc. to be manifested in us and through us and in the world

In teaching to pray that God’s Kingdom come, Christ invites us to share in his own ministry

Christ (Just like John the baptist) made the kingdom of God primal and central to his teaching.

Christ showed by his teaching and acts that the Kingdom of God has come through Him.

Your will be done

9. Your Will and not mine - Though it can be tied to the previous petition its imperative that we differentiate our will from God’s will.

Our understanding is that God is infinitely wise and we are finite; therefore, His will becomes our desire over our own since we know that God is for us and not against us. He wants the best for us and ultimately the best for all of creation to the Glory of his name. (Rom 8:28-39)

10. God’s will

Decretive - sovereign, efficacious will of God. When the Bible speaks of the will of God in this sense, it is describing the will that causes whatever He decrees to come to pass.

preceptive - The preceptive will has to do with His law and commandments, the precepts He issues to regulate the behavior of His creation.

disposition/inclination - has to do with what is pleasing or displeasing to Him. (2 Pt 3:9)