At thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore (Ps. 16: 11)

After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen (Matt. 6:9-13).

We were created by God to inhabit both space and time, and to do so forever. Because of the fall, and the curse that resulted from the fall, we have an optical illusion created by death. That illusion is that our lives are like those of mere beasts. We breath our last, and then we are done. “For that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts; even one thing befalleth them: as the one dieth, so dieth the other; yea, they have all one breath; so that a man hath no preeminence above a beast: for all is vanity (Eccl. 3:19). That is the way things appear under the sun.

The word forever here is literally into the ages. In other places, the idiom that expresses this is ages upon ages. God is the one who stacks eons upon eons, and then invites us to live there.

In English we make a distinction between the word eternal and the word everlasting. God is eternal, outside time, and so the word eternal does not presuppose time. The word everlasting does presuppose time, and refers to a continued existence down throughout all of that time. By the grace of God, we are privileged to share in both the quantity of His overflowing life (everlasting) and also in the quality of it (eternal). We don’t quite understand how it can all work (it does not yet appear how we shall be, 1 John 3:2), and the language used in Scripture is quite metaphorical (age upon age). But we can understand one thing about it, even though it is negatively stated. God’s goodness to His people will never stop.

Read Full Article

At thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore (Ps. 16: 11)

After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen (Matt. 6:9-13).

We really need to pay more attention to glory. We pray to the Father for all these things, as Jesus instructed us, and we do so because His is the kingdom, and His is the power, and His is the glory. As we pray in this way, we are leaning toward a participation in His glory.

Theologians distinguish between God’s incommunicable attributes, which cannot be shared with any creature, like omniscience, and His communicable attributes, which He can and does share with His creatures, like His love. The glory of God here is one of His communicable attributes.

The apostle Paul even defines sin as something which falls short of the glory of God (Rom. 3:23). We apparently have a moral obligation to attain to the glory of God. God renders to every man according to his work (by grace alone), and so those who in patient endurance seek for glory, honor, and immortality (Rom. 2:7), God grants eternal life.

So we need to know how this works, and this part of the Lord’s Prayer helps us. As creatures, we reflect. We are mirrors. The Bible tells us in its very first pages that we are created as an image (Gen. 1:26-27). This is why we become more and more like what we worship. When we finally see Christ, we will be like Him, because we will see Him as He is (1 John 3:2). When we worship God, we are facing Him, and when we are facing Him, we reflect Him. When we reflect Him, we are being transformed, from one degree of glory to another (2 Cor. 3:18).

And so this is what happens as we address the Father, hallowing His name. This is what happens when we humble ourselves and recognize that He is the king, when we bow before Him, acknowledging His power, and when we yearn for Him, seeking to share in His glory. And we will share in it, according to our faith.  

Read Full Article

At thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore (Ps. 16: 11)

After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen (Matt. 6:9-13).

The second thing mentioned in the coda of the Lord’s Prayer is the power. As the Lord was training His apostles over the course of three years, He was not preparing them for indoor clerical work. They were given the mission of preaching the gospel to every creature, bringing all the nations of men into submission to the authority of Christ, and teaching them to obey all that Jesus had taught throughout the course of His earthly ministry. This obviously involves a transformation of the entire world, and just as obviously, this is something that cannot happen without a great exercise of power.

In this prayer, the disciples were taught to pray that God would perform certain things—the last one mentioned being “deliver us from evil.” Then the reason why these petitions were presented to the Father is given. For the kingdom is His, and the power, and the glory. God is not a paper monarch. He is no figurehead. His is the kingdom, certainly, but it is a kingdom suffused with power. The word here is dynamis. “For the kingdom of God is not in word, but in power” (1 Cor. 4:20).

Because the kingdom of God is a kingdom of power, then it follows that the emissaries of this kingdom should be able to proclaim it with power. “For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us which are saved it is the power of God” (1 Cor. 1:18).

As we learned earlier in the prayer, we are to beseech the Father for His kingdom to come. We are to offer this petition because it is plain that He has every intention that His kingdom come with power.  

Read Full Article

At thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore (Ps. 16: 11)

After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen (Matt. 6:9-13).

As we come to the coda of the Lord’s Prayer, the kingdom, power and glory phrase, the first thing to comment on is its presence. In some versions of the Scriptures, the prayer simply ends with the petition to “deliver us from evil” (e.g. ESV). Other versions of the Scriptures include it (e.g. KJV, NASB, and NKJV). The difference is a function of the manuscript tradition that is being relied on—the Textus Receptus includes the phrase, and more modern critical texts do not. One of the reasons why I use the King James is that I prefer the Textus Receptus manuscript family. It is worth noting, quite apart from the manuscript issues, that the abrupt ending of “deliver us from evil” seems odd, like the petitioner ran into a wall while praying. The prayer really seems incomplete without the coda.

The petitions of the prayer are grounded in the fact that the kingdom, the power, and the glory belong to God forever. Let us begin with the kingdom.

This is the second time the kingdom has been mentioned in the prayer. The first time was in the petition for the kingdom to come. Here the fact that God possesses the kingdom is the basis for all the petitions, including the earlier prayer for the kingdom to come. This reinforces the fact that the Christian faith is a monarchy. Jesus Christ is the King of kings and the Lord of lords. As we preach the gospel to unbelievers, we are not canvassing votes, trying to get Jesus elected president. We are not trying to rally support for Him. He has been crowned, and Christians are the messengers and heralds, sent out into all the world to declare what has already been accomplished.

“And the seventh angel sounded; and there were great voices in heaven, saying, The kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord, and of his Christ; and he shall reign for ever and ever” (Rev. 11:15).

He is on His throne now, and has been reigning for the last two thousand years. When Jesus ascended into Heaven, He approached the Ancient of Days on the clouds of heaven and was given an everlasting dominion (Dan. 7:13-14). In that passage from Daniel, we may even have an anticipation of the blessing found in this coda. “And there was given him dominion, and glory, and a kingdom” (Dan. 7:14). 

And because “His kingdom [is] that which shall not be destroyed” (Dan. 7:14), it is possible for us to offer up all the petitions found in the Lord’s Prayer, doing so in full confidence. He is the King over all, which means that He can provide for us (daily bread), protect us (lead us not into temptation), and restore us (forgive us).

Read Full Article

At thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore (Ps. 16: 11)

After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen (Matt. 6:9-13).

The first part of this petition is a prayer that we not be led into temptation. This requires a personal context—that of a tempter. And this in turn helps us understand the translation of the second part of the petition. Should it be deliver us from evil or deliver us from the evil one? While the King James renders this as evil generally (along with the ESV), I think it would be better to take it as evil one.

The word evil is an adjective, and in either case it is being used as a substantival adjective. We are either asking to be delivered from the evil thing or from the evil one. When we say “the good die young,” there is a noun implied in there, meaning that we are intending to say that the good men die young. In the same way, we are asking for deliverance from the evil what? The adjective here is poneros, and there are other places where this same word, without any accompanying noun, is simply translated as evil one.

“I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one” (John 17:15, ESV).

“But the Lord is faithful. He will establish you and guard you against the evil one” (2 Thess. 3:3, ESV).

Ultimately the argument here should be contextual. Is the Lord changing subject in the middle of the sentence (from personal temptation to a concern about general evils befalling us)? I think it makes better sense to see the petition as continuous, wanting to be delivered from the temptations of the devil, and from the devil himself.

If this is the case, there is no problem with Christians thinking of the devil in personal terms, and as a personal adversary. “Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour” (1 Peter 5:8). We have warrant for doing this in the Lord’s Prayer, which He Himself taught us to pray, while avoiding the other extreme of thinking that the prince of the power of the air has nothing better to do than to follow Herbert Schwartz around in an effort to get him to give way to the false promises of popcorn gluttony. As individual Christians, we are not that important. But at the same time, we are not unimportant either, and the Lord has taught us how to pray.

Read Full Article