This is the first in a series of communion meditations considering the Lord’s Prayer.
Today, we are beginning a consideration of the Lord’s Prayer. And the first thing to notice about the Lord’s Prayer is that in common Christian speech, it goes by two different names: The Lord’s Prayer, and the Our Father. Both names make sense and are simple to explain. It is called The Lord’s Prayer, because it is the prayer that our Lord Jesus taught to his disciples. Pray then in this way, he said to them. It is called the Our Father because those are the first two words of the prayer. And like many songs take their names from the opening lines, so too, this prayer has been known by Christians by its opening words throughout history. Both names make sense and are perfectly acceptable, and I intentionally use them both.
But as we consider this prayer, I think it’s important to start with those first two words, and the four that follow it: Our Father, who art in heaven.
There are three documents make up the core “discipleship curriculum” of the historic Christian church: the 10 Commandments, The Lord’s Prayer, and the Apostles’ Creed. It’s instructive that each of those three documents begin with the identity of God. In Exodus 20:2 God says, “I am the Lord your God, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.” God wanted his people to know that he was the one who had delivered them, who had redeemed them, who was their Savior. But while that identity does not change—he is still the only Savior, and besides him there is no God (Isaiah 43:11)—nonetheless, when we confess the Creed or approach him in prayer as Jesus taught, the named relationship is different: we believe in God the Father almighty. We pray to Our Father in heaven. This was an important shift that Jesus introduced.
In Old Testament times, God had revealed himself as the Father of Israel as a nation. To the extent that any individual might see God directly as a father, the king might do so, especially in his role as representative head over the whole nation.
But when Jesus, who by his sacrificial death in our place became the New Adam, the Head of a new Humanity, he brought every single believer into a newly intimate relationship with God. We now, this side of the cross and the empty tomb, and this side of the Spirit’s outpouring at Pentecost, do not simply relate to God as the Almighty God in Heaven. He still, most emphatically, is Almighty God in Heaven. But he now welcomes us into his presence as his children. He is our Father in heaven. We come as welcome children, those who have been given all the rights of sons and daughters. We come to him in prayer not as strangers or foreigners, not as those unfamiliar with him, but those who know that he has set his name upon us. We know the Father (1 John 2:12-13), and therefore we come to him with our every need.
We can have such confidence because he sent his Son to save us. The Lord Jesus, in coming to earth to purchase us by his blood, was doing the will of the Father; bringing many sons and daughters to glory. And so we pray now, enabled by the Holy Spirit, coming on the basis of the broken body and shed blood our our Savior and older brother, Jesus, into the throne room of the Father—expectant that he will do us good.
