THE LORD’S PRAYER: REFLECTIONS FOR LENT (Reflection 7)

Reflection 7: 6^th Petition: And do not let us cross over to temptation, but deliver us from the evil [one]!

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

The first three petitions put us in a right relationship with God.  God’s honor and agenda is primary.  The second three petitions turn attention toward ourselves, but they still require that we put God first.  The 4^th petition is essentially a prayer to grow in faith, to grow in dependence on God and not on the material world.  Although in the 5^th petition we seek forgiveness, its focus is more about us desiring to become as merciful as God.

The purpose of the 6^th petition, the third in regard to ourselves, turns from offering ourselves in deeper submission and transformation.  Instead, here we imploring our Father for protective help from all that would disrupt our relationship with God. 

This intention of this text is difficult to translate accurately because it employs a poetic structure with which we are not familiar.  The first clause of this petition is easy to translate literally, “Do not carry/lead us into temptation.”  However, that requires clarification.  It would be wrong to think that God wants or even causes us to be tempted to sin.  [It is true that God tests people, but that is different.¹]  What we need to realize is that both the first and second clauses make the same point but dramatically through the use of what is called “antithetical parallelism.”  They state a point from the negative perspective and then states it from the positive.  For example, without knowingly being poetic, a child might say to a parent, “Don’t abandon me here, but do take me with you.”  The first clause has two negatives (“not” and “abandon” – functioning almost like a double negative) that are balanced in the second clause with two positives (“do take” and “with you”).  The child is not implying that the parent desires to abandon her, but is emphatically expressing what she desires with a negative and a positive statement.  A biblical example would be Prov 10:12:

1^st clause: “Hatred rouses up strife” (negative perspective of hate and strife)
2^nd clause: “But love covers all transgressions” (positive perspective of love and forgiveness)

Our text’s structure is:
            1^st clause: “Do not do negative X (tempt)”
            2^nd clause “But do positive Y (deliver from evil).”

If one were to rephrase the same sense in simple synonymous parallelism – both statements positive – it would be, “Take us away from temptation, and deliver us from evil!”  The translation given above attempts to keep both the positive sense and the dramatic parallel contrast.  God’s role is not to bring us across the threshold of temptation, but to deliver us from evil.  Our petition is for divine protection.

Our petition to be delivered from “the evil [one]”² means that we must take evil most seriously.  The basic Old Testament word for evil, ra, refers to that which is contrary to God’s creational order and will, which is “good” (tov).  That which is evil disrupts our relationship with God and brings chaos, sin, and suffering into our lives.  In Matthew’s Gospel, the “devil,” “the evil one,” or “Satan” (Hebrew for “adversary”) is the entity that actively seeks to draw Jesus and others into the chaos of a ruptured relationship with God and the suffering that brings.  As biblical Christians, we accept both seen and unseen dimensions of reality.  Jesus teaches us to ask to be delivered from a spiritual dimension that is adversarial to God.  At the same time, it is wise for followers of Jesus to avoid extremes of either discounting the reality of such evil or of holding an unhealthy preoccupation with it.  I like the adage, “As an infection is to a cut, so is evil to our normal weaknesses and flaws.”  Evil is to be taken seriously.
        Jesus faced temptation (Matt 4:1-10).  We face temptation.  The spiritual battle is real (Eph 6:12).  It takes place in the mind in which every thought must be taking captive to obey Christ (2Cor 10:3-5).  Otherwise, the temptation gives birth to sin and death (James 1:14-15).  For this we need God’s help.  We pray.

Journal Reflections

1. What does temptation mean to you?

2. How have you learned spiritually to confront temptation?

3. How can the church teach and help young Christians to be delivered from evil?

4. During Lent we look at how Jesus in his humanity was tempted as we are (Heb 4:14-15).  We also learn from John’s Gospel that when Jesus was “lifted up” (a pun for crucified and glorified) that he drew all people to himself and so defeated “the ruler of this world” (12:30-33).  What does this reflection mean to you?

Prayer quote:

Satan dreads nothing but prayer.  His one concern is to keep the saints from praying.  He fears nothing from prayerless studies, prayerless work, prayerless religion.  He laughs at our toil, mocks our wisdom, but trembles when we pray.  (Samuel Chadwick, source: J. Oswald Sanders, Effective Prayer, p.13.).

Notes:

1. Admittedly, another translation possibility here is that the Greek word for “temptation” can be used to translate the Hebrew word for “test.”  The postive purpose of divine testing is to make known the state of one’s heart.  For example, when the Israelites were “tested” in the wilderness, the event revealed the weak state of their faith and served as a call to faithfulness (Deut 8:1-10).  However, in the context of our text, “temptation” is negative.  The noun and verb forms of this word occur eight times in Matthew.  One time the verb is used of an honest test.  All other uses are negative, such as religious leaders trying to trap Jesus (e.g. 19:3; 22:18).  Most importantly, previously in Matthew 4 it was used twice to refer to the behavior of the devil (4:1, 3).

2.  “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.

GOD BREATHES ORDER INTO OUR CHAOS

I have been thinking about chaos in life and about Jesus.  Genesis 1:1 – 2:3 speaks to me.  It portrays our cosmos as a blend of chaos and order.

There are 7 “creation” accounts in the Bible, but the initial one (Gen 1:1 – 2:3) sets the foundation for life with its theology.  The Israelites, as rather newcomers in the world of the ancient Near East, adopted the origin accounts of its cultural environment, but demythologized them and presented a different world view.  (So, too, Christianity adopted from its environment, such as the winter solstice for Christmas.)  And, most ancient creation accounts start with chaos.*  That makes sense.  The maintenance of life as we know it – not God’s existence – consists of a struggle against chaos.  For example, to grow a garden a person must remove rocks, trees, weeds; till the soil; plant the seeds; and, then fight the encroachment of chaos in the forms of more weeds, pests, droughts, etc.  In a loose sense, the origin of religion, as well as science, is rooted in trying to understand and align oneself with the cause of what order there is in this world.

Life as we know it in the present “heaven and earth” requires a delicate blend of chaos: too much chaos and, well, all is chaotic; too much order and all is crystalline.  We want some control over chaos, a pursuit that can be well and good, but our efforts always fall short.  We will all die, in this life, from the apparent triumph of chaos.  That is OK. 

What I learn from the first creation account is that God does not remove chaos, neither the surd physical chaos nor moral chaos.  Rather, God breathes order into chaos.  Christians know that.  Like everyone else we will suffer and die from all the moral evil and surd chaos in this world.  However, in the midst of chaos, we have Jesus who breathes order and peace into our hearts.  (I am reminded of a friend who tells how his atheistic sister who was a physician in a hospital observed Christians die differently, such that she wanted what they had.)  Still, in the snares of chaos, this can be hard to believe.  For example, when the chemicals of the brain go haywire and induce panic, it is almost impossible to believe.  But, the certain hope of the one who knows the resurrected Jesus is that He will not only breathe order into one’s current suffering unto death, but also that He will breathe new life after death.

Lord, I have many friends in the throes of chaos.  Breathe into them and into this suffering world your Presence.  Use me and my fellow Christians as mediators of your breath.  Amen.

*Of course such a beginning leaves evil unexplained, something that has been a source of consternation for systematic theologians.  See post, “Where Did Evil Come From? (8/16/23).

WHERE DID EVIL COME FROM?

 My last post alluded to the problem the above question raises.  Based on the Bible, my answer is, “I don’t know.  But, what I do know is that God is good.  Etc.”  Surd evil (physical chaos) is present in the beginning, such that God’s creative action is to speak order into chaos (Gen 1).  Moral evil (the serpent figure) is present before Adam and Eve rebel against their creator (Gen 2).  The Adversary (Satan) who appears before a heavenly council in the wisdom literature of Job is also without an explained origin.  However, since people are not content without answers to such issues, they “find” solutions in Scripture.

The most popular explanation for the origin of Lucifer (equated with Satan) comes from a literary taunt against the king of Babylon (Isa 14:3-23), particularly verses 12-15 about “lucifer.”  [See similar taunts against the king of Tyre in Ezek 28.]  However, this text models an Ancient Near Eastern taunt genre against a ruler and is based on imagery that is taken from ancient mythology in which a “heavenly host”( = a star = a god) rebels and is cast down, becoming the lowest “star” on the horizon, probably the planet Venus: “Look how you have fallen, O Shining One, Son of the Dawn” (Isa 14:12a).  The name here, which from the Hebrew is “Helel, Son of Shachar,” and in the KJV was translated “Lucifer (light bearer) Son of the Morning,” was a god in Canaanite lore who had a failed coup against the main god.  However, people who must have an answer to the origin of evil (e.g. Satan, who is not mentioned here) first turn the order of literary borrowing upside down and then convert the text into heavenly history!^1,2

Reflection: Life as we know it (not God’s “existence”) requires a delicate balance of both order and chaos.  Too much chaos and no organized systems supporting life could emerge in our universe.  Too much order and all would be “crystalline.”  This observation supports a supposition that surd “evil” (physical chaos) is necessary for life in this universe and that perhaps even moral “evil” is necessary for the capacity for a “free” relationship with God.

Application: What is most important to me is that, as a being who must live with the chaos of surd and moral evil, I have a God who became in-fleshed in this same world of chaos, who died and rose “above” it, and who now intercedes for me and walks with me through the chaos that I face and so brings divine order into my life.  The Christian witness to others, then, is not that we escape the chaos in this life, but how we face it in Christ.
Lord, I trust you to take my hand amid life’s chaos, so that I find “order” in You.  Amen.

Notes
1) The idea of the origin of evil being attributed to fallen angels is at least as early as the Jewish intertestamental Book of Enoch, a book which was quoted by the second-century Christian, Justin Martyr.  However, the Book of Enoch was rejected from the Hebrew canon apparently in part because of this teaching; and, it was also not accepted as part of the Christian Scriptures.]

2) Interestingly, Venus as a bright “star” being visible in the early evening or dawn also developed into positive symbolism and is used of Jesus (Rev 2:29; 22:16, see, too, 2Pet 1:19).

3) Also, fun to think about: At the level of neurology, scientists would also note that genetically much about a person is generically ordered/fixed.  However, although the topic of why humans have a sense of “free will” is certainly debated, some people point to how the billions of neurons of the brain function probabilistically and/or to the rise of unpredicted emergent systems of the brain lead to a sense of consciousness and agency that transcend the ever-changing individual atoms, molecules, cells that make up the material brain.  Again, both order and chaos.