THE LORD’S PRAYER: REFLECTIONS FOR LENT (Reflection 3)

 Reflection 3:  2^nd Petition: Your kingdom come!

[See Feb. 22, 2026 for translation and Reflection 1.] 

The first three petitions put us in a right relationship with God.  They are made on God’s behalf.  Praying them puts us in our rightful place, in submission to God.  When prayed consistently, the first petition sets the primary desire of our hearts on seeing the holiness of God revealed to the world through our lives.

The second petition, unfortunately, reveals how the gospel (“good news”) has almost been forgotten in our pop-Christian culture.  If I were to ask the average person – maybe even a church-goer – “What was Jesus’ main message?”  I imagine most people would say “love.” Maybe some would say “the Beatitudes.”  However, in the Gospel of Mark, the first and most important words out of Jesus’ mouth would have been quite shocking to his audience:

The [appointed]¹ time is fulfilled.  The Kingdom of God has approached.  Repent and believe in the gospel! (Mark 1:15).

The presence of the Kingdom of God is what Jesus proclaimed and what Jesus sent his disciples out to preach.²  Moreover, Jesus’ signs and wonders provided the proof that this divinely appointed time had indeed come.

We need to understand the background.  Many Jews of Jesus’ day believed theologically that they were living in an imperfect age of chaos but that, at the appointed time, God would begin a new age.  This would be an age of God’s perfect rule, the age of the Kingdom of God.  Many of them believed that God’s Messiah (Anointed One) would usher in this age in one great, complete movement.  Jesus shockingly announced that with his presence, that age had now arrived.  However, through his teachings, Jesus taught something different about the coming of this new age.  He taught that God’s Kingdom, which was initiated with his presence, would not be fully completed until he died and came again, a message virtually incomprehensible to his disciples.³
      Therefore, in his prayer, Jesus instructed his followers to pray for the kingdom, or reign of God to become increasingly realized in the present.  That is our second petition.  This is to be another consuming desire of our hearts.  Once again, though, God turns the onus back on us.  This is where “love” comes in.  By our love people will know we are Jesus’ disciples (John 13:34-35).  Our character will display the marks of the Beatitudes (Matt 5:3-10).  We will be practicing righteousness (Matt 25:31-46).  Through the Holy Spirit, we will do even greater works than Jesus did (John 14:12).  You and I are to reveal God’s reign, God’s Kingdom to the world.⁴  This commission is what we accepting when we pray, “Your kingdom come!” 

This petition influences my prayers.  Early each day I pray, “Jesus, what are you doing around me today in Your Kingdom?  I would like to be a part of it.”  I am trying to think and live as a kingdom person.  I am slowly learning and slowly being reoriented.
      This petition also confronts the Church.  The 8^th century prophets in the Old Testament had to warn the people of God about praying for the “Day of the LORD” to come as if God would come to eliminate their so-called ungodly enemies.  Rather, the prophets announced that God’s righteous justice would first be applied to the people of God.  God would first address their failure to obey, their ungodly behavior.  Is the Church ready?  Are you and I really ready for the completion of the Kingdom of God when Christ comes again?

Journal Reflections

1. How does thinking about Jesus’ gospel as the proclamation of the presence of the Kingdom of God influence how you see yourself as a Christian?
2. Are there aspects of how you approach life that do not fit with proclaiming the Kingdom of God?
3. This week try praying something like the prayer mentioned above, asking what is happening in the Kingdom of God around you so that you can participate in it and be of service.
4. During Lent, we are reminded that our King was willing to suffer for us His servants.

Prayer quote:

Is it not strange that in spite of our conviction of its [prayer] privilege and necessity, we are all plagued with a subtle aversion to praying?  We do not naturally delight in drawing near to God.  We pay lip-service to its value and potency and yet so often fail to pray.  ‘When I go to pray,’ confessed on eminent Christian, ‘I find my hear so loath to go to God, and when it is with Him so loath to stay.’  Is it here that self-discipline comes in… Here is an area in which we can avail ourselves of the Spirit’s promised assistance in our weakness. (J. Oswald Sanders, Effective Prayer, pp.8-9)

Notes:

1. “Appointed” has been added to the translation because the idiom here shows that Jesus is referring to a divinely anticipated event in history.
2. If you have access to a concordance, you might like to look up the many references to “kingdom” and “gospel” in the Gospels.
3. For an example, see the “Parable of the Weeds” and its explanation in Matt 13:24-30, 36-43.
4. Perhaps a note of caution should be added to avoid a misunderstanding that has taken place throughout Christian history.  Jesus made it clear before Pilate that his kingdom is in this world but not of it; that is, God’s rule does not come about by human powers or governments.  Followers of Jesus do not lord themselves over people; they get under them as servants and care for them (Mark 10:42-45).

Historical note: One reason that our culture may have lost sight of the gospel in terms of the Kingdom of God is because that frame of thinking was particularly Jewish.  As Christianity spread to a Gentile audience, that language shifted to that of participating in the eternal of life of God in the present.  We can see this shift taking place in John’s presentation of Jesus’s dialogue with Nicodemus (John 3:1-16).

THE LORD’S PRAYER: REFLECTIONS FOR LENT (Reflection 2)

[See Feb. 22, 2026 for translation and Reflection 1.] 

1st Petition: Your name be made holy! 

The first three petitions put us in a right relationship with God.  They are made on God’s behalf.  Praying them puts us in our rightful place, in submission to God.

In regard to the first one, interestingly, we often miss the fact that this sentence is a petition in the imperative mood and not a statement about the nature of God.  God is holy, of course.  However, Jesus is telling us that the primary desire of our hearts is to long for God to be made known as holy.  These words are to be the first prayer out of our lips!  This is our first  petition. 

Let’s develop this petition a little more.  “Name” in the culture behind the text is easy to grasp.  It represented the person.  In that world, the spoken word was something vital, almost tangible, because it comes into being by one’s life breath.  So, to proclaim one’s name invoked the vital character of that person.  For example, if a king’s courtier were to come up to a group of peasants, hold out the king’s signet ring, and say, “In the name of the King, come!” they would jump up and come.  The name of God, known to Israel as “YHWH,”¹ references the full character of the one true God.
     “Make holy” is a hard concept.  Holiness is as hard to grasp as gravity.  It refers to the absolute transcendent distinctiveness of God -- One without spot, blemish, imperfection, etc.  As such, God is sanctified, that is recognized as set apart as holy.  God is totally other than you and me.  Isaiah says that as the heavens are higher than the earth, God’s thoughts and ways are not comparable to ours (Isa. 55:8-9).  Recognizing the holiness of God, God’s totally pure “otherness,” is the starting point to a right relationship with God.  It makes a good first petition.

However, lest we speak this first petition complacently, there is a stunning, astounding twist about it.  Throughout Scripture, God puts the responsibility for revealing God’s holiness back on you and me, on God’s people!  The disciples knew that.  Israel was called to be a blessing to all nations by being God’s holy people.  When Isaiah condemns people of Israel for calling evil good and good evil, for calling darkness light and light darkness, the charge is that they are spurning the Holy One of Israel (Isa. 5:20-24).  We, the Church, are called to be holy.  Over and over, “Be holy!  Be holy!  Be holy!”  (See, for example, Lev 19:2; Matt 5:48 which precedes our text; 1Thes 4:7; 1Pet 1:14-16.)
     Like the illustration that pointing a finger at someone points three back at ourselves, we cannot pray, “Your name be made holy” without pointing at ourselves.  Jesus calls us to be holy so that others will know the holiness of God.  This is an imperative.  This is who we are to be as followers of Jesus.  I look at myself, my example, and cringe.  Still, the Holy One says to us, “For I am YHWH your God, holding you by your right hand, saying to you, ‘Do not be afraid, I will help you’” (Isa. 41:13).  The Holy Spirit can work God’s holiness into even me.

Journal Reflections

1.  The primary desire of our hearts is to see God revealed as holy.  Is it?  What does this say about me, my heart?  About you?
2. What are some ways that you, like me, have become accustomed to unholiness?
3. If we are to accept the charge to be holy, what is one thing about you today that you need the Holy Spirit to address?
4. During Lent, we reflect on how the holy life that Jesus lived, how everything he did glorified the Father.  What does that reflection mean to you?

Prayer quote:

“He [God] encourages us to ask as freely for the impossible as for the possible, since to him all difficulties are the same size – less than Himself.” (J. Oswald Sanders, Effective Prayer, p. 26.)

Note:

1. When God gives this name YHWH (from Hebrew) to Moses (Exod 3:14; often spelled “Yahweh” or rendered “LORD”), that answer is a word play on the Hebrew verb for “to be/to exist.”  For Moses, who was from a polytheistic cultural setting, it was necessary to know the name of a god in order to know what particular function that god had, as well as to be able invoke it magically.  The name God gives in response, in a sense, is no name, because God is no lower-case “god” that is limited and manipulable.  God is who God is, the sovereign God.  This is what Moses and the people in slavery in Egypt learn as they learn about following the God of Abraham, YHWH.

THE LORD’S PRAYER: REFLECTIONS FOR LENT

My church asked that I write some reflections on the Lord’s Prayer for Lent.  I have provided a translation and seven reflections with questions which can be used for a journal of personal reflections and one’s prayer experience.  Below are the translation and Reflection 1.  I will post the other six over the following weeks of Lent.
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The Lord’s Prayer (Matthew 6:9-13)

Like good disciples, Jesus’ disciples asked their Rabbi Jesus to teach them a prayer that expressed his concerns – just as John the Baptist taught his disciples (Luke 11:1).  The prayer that Jesus taught them is the model for all followers of Jesus.

Pray, then, this way!¹
    Our Father, who is in heaven,
        Your name be made holy!
        Your kingdom come!
        Your will come to be, as in heaven, even on earth [itself]²!

        Give us today our bread of the day!
        And forgive us our debts³ as even we [ourselves]⁴ have forgiven our
             debtors!
        And do not let us cross over to temptation,⁵ but deliver us from the 
            evil [one]!⁶”

Notes on Translation
This is a new translation to give fresh insights for this series of reflections.  You might wish to compare it to your favorite translations.  Here it is formatted to show that, after the invocation addressing God, there are three petitions on behalf of God and then three petitions on behalf of ourselves.  This basic structure of first God then people roughly parallels the Ten Commandments and the Greatest Commandment (first love God, second love you neighbor).
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1. Exclamation marks have been included to show the imperative mood (commands).  They are not necessary in a format of petitions but are included here to indicate an emphasis that could be missed.
2. “Itself,” is added, but captures the emphatic phrasing in the Greek.
3. “Debt” rather than “trespasses” is more accurate, since it can refer to a moral debt and better communicates that all sin leaves a negative result as explained in Reflection 6.
4. “Ourselves” is added, but captures the emphatic phrasing in the Greek.
5. A more literal rendering is “do not carry/lead into,” but this is an idiomatic way of asking for help that is explained in Reflection 7.
6. “Evil” here has the definite article, “the evil” so it is probably used as a personal noun for “the evil one” as in Matt 13:19, 38 and probably Matt. 5:37.  See Reflection 7.
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Reflection 1:  The Invocation: Our Father in heaven

It is good to pause on the first word, “our.”  Jesus taught his disciples a communal prayer, not a for-me prayer.  We come out of the womb focused solely on ourselves, and too often we go to the grave with the same preoccupation.  The prayer for Jesus’ followers immediately teaches us we must reach out beyond ourselves.  We are called to a new life-orientation.  Jesus’ followers serve others (Mark 10:42-45).  Being Jesus’ follower is not like participating in an individual sport.  We are a team, a corporate identity, like an organic, living body.  We care for each other (Hebrews 10:25).  We intercede in prayer for each other.
    I had a godly grandmother who turned a closet in her house into a prayer closet.  She taught me one way to pray the Lord’s Prayer.  Whenever she had been hurt by someone or had bad feelings toward someone, she would go into her prayer closest and pray the Lord’s Prayer.  However, she would replace the first-person plural pronouns (our, we, us) with the name of that person.  After praying it that way, she felt reconciled in her heart to the other person. 

“Our Father in heaven,” in distinction from our parents¹ on earth, launches us into the unfathomable depth of God’s desire for intimacy.  “In heaven,” is a way of picturing the sovereignty of God spatially.  Doing so overwhelms me.  I am but a speck in the town of Boone, which is but a speck on Earth, which is but a speck in our solar system (1.3 million Earths would fit in the Sun), which is but a speck in our galaxy, and so on to the ends of the cosmos.  Yet, somehow, the Creator of all this desires a family-like relationship with me, with you.  I cannot comprehend it.  All I can do is worship in response.
    This Creator condescends (“comes down”) to us.  The Creator humbly seeks to relate to us like an ideal parent to a beloved child.  This Creator walks and talks in the Garden of Eden.  This Creator encounters people individually.  This Creator becomes incarnate in the flesh.  This Creator humbles Himself to death on a cross.  A “god” like this could not be respected in the pagan world.  Such a god was not comprehensible in that world.  The pagan world wanted powerful gods on their side, sometimes against others.  However, the true God loves me and you.  The true God does not loftily remain above the chaos and suffering in our lives.  Our Lord and God understands our pain, sorrow, and suffering and willingly enters into it with us.  Jesus tells us to say, “Our Father” and realize what that means.

 Journal Reflections
1.     What does Jesus’ assumption of praying communally for others mean to you?
2.     Try replacing the first-person pronouns with the name of someone with whom you are having difficulty.  Does that help you to be better reconciled to that person and to God?
3.     I get a kind of “brain freeze” when I try to imagine how something so insignificant in time and space as myself can be loved by my Creator.  How are you moved when you realize that Jesus tells you to pray to your Creator as “Father”?
4.     During Lent we reflect on the unimaginable humility and compassion of the Creator of all becoming flesh among us.  What is your response?  How does this impact your prayer life?

Prayer quote:
“What a person is on their knees before God in secret, that is what they will be before people: that much and no more.”  (Fred Mitchell, Royal Exchange, p. 24.  Edited for gender neutrality.)

 Note:
1.     I have used “parent(s)” because our culture does not assume the patriarchal/matriarchal distinctions of the original audience.  Although the biblical culture had this distinction, the Scriptures also portray God with what they would consider feminine attributes, such as mercy and compassion.  Whenever we speak of the undefinable God, we, like the biblical composers can but only use the frail metaphors of our time and place like father or parent.

 

WHAT DOES “JESUS DIED FOR US” MEAN? Q's and Responses

My previously posted sermon (Feb. 10, 2026) on the above topic raised some good questions that were directed to me personally.  It is likely that others had the same type of questions.  This post consists of the questions and my responses.  I say "responses" rather than "the answers" because the latter sounds too definitive.  I am a finite person with limited understanding, studying the Bible as well as I can.  These are my responses.  As abbreviated as they are, they are still quite lengthy, but I hope that they are helpful. 

Q #1: I really appreciate the distinction between covenant language and atonement language.  God's grace again is the driving force.  But I don't really understand the transition to the blood sacrifice after genuine repentance.  Comments? 

Response: Here is an analogy.   God is beyond this world and our comprehension (God is super-natural).  In a sense, then, we can only speak about God metaphorically, using the language of our world, the natural.  Religious ritual is a richer, more dramatic, more complex way about communicating the nature of God and relationship with God.  Example: ancient temples and sites divided places into more and less sacred space, something which has carried over the architecture of many churches.  The closer one came to a sacred object (altar, inner chamber, image, etc.), the more one was encroaching on the dangerous sacred space of the god and had to be "cleansed," sanctified, and prepared to do so -- often as a priest.  

Most of the religious rituals of ancient Israel were picked up from the cultures around them, but the Israelites de-mythologized them, stripping them of their polytheism and literal beliefs in magic meant to encourage or manipulate the gods.  The adapted Israelite rituals become dramatized, symbolic acts rather than acts of coercive magic.

In Israel, the Temple symbolized God's dwelling place.  Israelites knew God did not literally live there.  Moreover, since sin has a real consequence in terms of impeding our relationship with God, sins were dramatically represented as polluting areas of the Temple, such that people would be alienated from God, and God would eventually "leave" (Ezekiel's messages).  Note that the emphasis was on sin polluting God's place, not the sinner.  The penetrating effect of sin varied: inadvertent sins of the individual did not penetrate into the more sacred areas/parts of the Temple as deeply as deliberate sins of the individual and community.  While there are many different offerings and sacrifices, the ones dealing with sin required a ritual that symbolically cleansed the place/object of pollution such as the outer altar, the holy chamber, or the ark of the covenant (Day of Atonement) in the holiest chamber.  In these rituals, blood is the main symbol.  The polluting effect of sin is uncleanness, chaos, and death.  However, blood, particularly that of a “pure” animal without blemish, was a tangible, manipulable symbol of life that is more potent than death.  Note, too, that the death of the animal is not focal point; an unblemished animal provided the blood necessary for the cleansing atonement.  That "life" sprinkled or poured or wiped on a sin-polluted altar/object of God, symbolized it being cleansed and then reconsecrated, with the result that there was no longer an impediment in one's relationship with God, atonement had occurred. 

My point was about how confession (repentance) is what results in God's graceful forgiveness.  However, to represent that restored relationship, the sin offering had to be offered and the blood applied to remove  symbolically, not magically, the pollution and to return the state of things to normal -- atonement.

The NT authors talk about Jesus bearing/lifting sins just as the Old Testament does about God/Yahweh lifting/bearing sins as a metaphorical expression for forgiveness -- one of many metaphors.  I cannot imagine that a trained rabbi like Paul, when using the sacrificial language of the Temple believed in pagan magic of sins being put onto a scapegoat or person who then "pays the price" to fool or appease the gods

Q #2:  NT:  God has made possible a new covenant in which I am not only forgiven of sin but the way to him has been forever made open through the cleansing blood of the Lamb.  But doesn't, in this case, the cleansing come before the confession, repentance, and forgiveness?  A new relationship to God has been offered to those who entrust their lives to him.  And that new relationship is really new life, a life like the original human life was meant to be and a life that even now we know will go on forever.  Jesus' death is more like the passover lamb shed for the covering and freeing of the Israelites in Egypt, but somehow this all fits together.

Response:  Great insight, question, and observations.  I cannot give a proper reply without giving it the depth it deserves, but superficially I would answer your question about cleansing being first with a qualified "no" that is somewhat covered by your own following comments about a new life. 

As an introductory note, your example about the Passover Lamb, referred to in the Gospels at the Last Supper, is not a sin-cleansing ritual, but is an example of “somehow this all fits together.”  There are two allusions in those NT texts.  First, the Passover event was part of a pre-Mosaic, covenantal act of God, along with the plagues, that revealed to the Hebrew slaves in Egypt God’s sovereign nature and God’s commitment to the Abrahamic covenant by delivering them from Pharaoh.  Blood as symbolic of life (mentioned below) protected them from the Angel of Death.  Celebrating the Passover recalled that deliverance.  Secondly, Jesus refers to his blood as initiating a new covenant (Mark 14:24) such as in the ritual one finds in Gen 15:7-21.  Neither allusion is about cleansing from sin.  However, the “new covenant” will be viewed by the first Christians as including Gentiles.

To put things into a clearer perspective, we modern Christians need to back up a step from our typical Gentile point of view.  Paul thinks about Jesus as the Messiah for the Jews -- those who accept Jesus as Christ are/become the true Israel.  To explain PART of the work of Christ, Paul uses atonement language proper, such as Jesus being the Mercy Seat of the Ark of the Covenant (Rom 3:25, the physical "intermediary" between God and the Israelites, often poorly translated metaphorically as "sacrifice" or "propitiation;" but see YLT or NET) and, mixing metaphors, as Jesus being the sin-offering (Rom 8:3; 2Cor 5:21, with the latter sometimes poorly rendered as "sin").  A Jew, of course, would see sacrificial-atonement language as first calling for confession/repentance, a point made in my sermon. 

However, two further co-considerations complicate the matter.  First, Paul sees the total work of Christ (expressed by "faith/faithfulness of Christ") to have brought about, as you note, a new age and the ultimate expression of the "faith/faithfulness of God" and God’s righteousness (Romans 3).  (This is a similar line of thought to the Gospels' presentation of Jesus as inaugurating the Kingdom of God.)  For Paul, to be "in Christ" (participatory theology) means that a person is no longer under the reign of sin and death that has ruled since the time of Adam.  The one who "believes into Christ" belongs to the reign of the Spirit and life (see Romans 5-8).  In this reign, a person is no longer under the guidance of the Law/Torah including sacrificial ritual and the role of the Temple symbolism.  (Think of the participatory theology in the Book/Letter of Hebrews.)  The full work of Christ -- atonement in the technical sense AND much more -- has brought the believer/entruster into a new life and way of living. 

Second, the co-consideration is that the full work of Christ takes us back prior to Moses and the Law to fulfill the promises to Abraham of being a blessing to the nations/Gentiles.  It is important to Paul, regarding the inclusion of Gentiles, to explain to Jewish Christians that God receives people as "righteous" (in right relationship) simply by faith (entrusting oneself to God), citing Hab 2:4 (Rom 1:16-17) and alluding to Abraham and Gen 15:6 (see his discussion in Romans 4 and Gal 3:6-14).  So, again we see that God offers a covenant relationship to Gentiles, just as with Abraham, prior to any "cleansing."  The grace of God is always primary.  However, the notion now of "cleansing" is that it has been taken care of once for all for those in Christ who repent.  It appears to me that the author of 1 John is thinking the same way when he states, "But if we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous, forgiving us our sins AND cleansing us from all unrighteousness" (1 Jn 1:9 NET, caps is my addition).