As I read through Lord Teach Us: The Lord’s Prayer and the Christian Life I plan to share select quotes and some quick thoughts. To follow the series as it develops, click here.
What a chapter. If there has not been much to make you think through the Lord’s prayer and it’s “real life” implications thus far, you are in for a treat. I won’t comment much on this one, but here are some quotes:
On God as an idea, not a being:
But when we pray the Lord’s Prayer, we say something different. We say that God is personal, God lives and acts, God has a name.
On the Holiness of God and His name:
Upon hearing God’s name, Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God (Exodus 3:6). And who wouldn’t? To discover that God’s ways or not our ways (Isaiah 55:8), that our God is not the patron of Pharaoh, not safely sealed in heaven but busy disrupting arrangements here on earth, is to he moved to fear.
We are unable, like Moses, to look at so holy a God. Yet, we are able to speak to God, to call God’s name in prayer. For God has graciously told us his name.
On the Holiness of God’s name in ethics:
We are commissioned to live our lives in such a way as to make visible to all the world that the holy God reigns, that God has a rightful claim to all of his creation, that God has regained some of his rightful territory from the enemy. God’s newly won territory is us, those who pray, “Hallowed be thy name.”
Christianity is not mainly a matter of what we do and how we live but first a matter of what God in Christ has done. We have no idea of how to live until we first know who God is. So when we say that God’s name is holy, that tells us how we ought to live. Knowing the Creator tells us where the creation is meant to move.
That comes close to how we are to react to the holy God. Christians don’t steal, don’t cheat in their marriages, don’t bless war, but not in order to get on the good side of God, since, in Christ, we have been made right with God. We are to live in the light of our knowledge of God’s name, God’s holy name. The conflict we encounter due to our attempts to live faithfully to the gospel doesn’t come to us as a surprise. It comes with the territory.
On the ethic of living out God’s holiness in our modern world:
In the face of this culture’s pervasive hedonism, our idolatry of the flag, our worship of ourselves and our assorted deities, give your life to the holy God of Israel whose name is to be hallowed in all that we do and the world will begin calling you “alien” and “exile.” Our culture has a way of driving out of the discussion those who do not bow at the culture’s altars.
On taking God’s name in vain:
Though it may well he blasphemy, saying “God damn” may not be the greatest blasphemy against the name of God. The German soldiers who went into battle in World War II hearing Gott wit Urns (“God with Us” ) on their helmets are a greater blasphemy to the holy name of God. To invoke the name of the free, mighty God as patron of our causes is to take the name of God in vain. Those who are being formed by praying, “Our Father who art in heaven, holy be your name” are not permitted to abuse the holiness of God by attempting to put a leash on God, then dragging God into our crusades and cruelties. The holy God will not be jerked around in this way. So when a president prays a public prayer, calling upon God to bless our troops going into war, that is blasphemy. God’s name is not to be used as a rubber stamp for our causes.
