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.

BE HOLY STRANGERS

 Perhaps I am meddling.  1 Peter seems like the perfect biblical letter for me as an American Christian.  It is addressed to Christians who live as foreigners amid non-believers (1:1).  The charge is to be holy as God is holy (1:16), to be witnesses of Jesus.

Dear friends, I urge you as foreigners and exiles to keep away from fleshly desires that do battle against the soul, and maintain good conduct among the non-Christians, so that though they now malign you as wrongdoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God when he appears. (1 Pet. 2:11-12 NET)

That is easy enough to say.  The reality, though, is that I (we) think that America is my land.  I not only want a privileged, respected position in my culture, I also want others to have to be like me.

Example:
Christians often want to legislate our sexual moral values.  That is not biblical.  Moral obedience is voluntary.  Israelites voluntarily entered in to covenant relationship with God and agreed to follow God’s statutes.  Periodically, there were times of covenant renewal.  (Presumably Israelites who did not want those demands could leave the community.)  Paul, recognizing that believers in Jesus as Messiah and Lord constituted the “real Israel,” extended that moral code to Gentile believers.  However, the USA is not ancient Israel, not a theocracy, not the Church, and certainly not in a covenant with God.  It is not our land.  American Christians are like the patriarchs, strangers in a strange land (Heb 11:11-16); our citizenship is in heaven (Phil 3:20).

Application:
If I want to change my moral environment, I must be visibly holy (separate, distinct), practicing that which is morally good.  I cannot legislate someone into obedience to God.  The “natural law” is self-evident.  Violation of God’s order brings chaos into people’s lives.  Living within God’s moral law results in peace and order.  The Church must be holy to demonstrate that divine order.  Then, when people ask, I (we) will be ready to give an explanation (apologia)* for my confident hope (elpis) that is in God (1 Pet 3:15).

Lord, I don’t know how much my life is a witness and a light to others.  Not much I imagine, but I want it to be.  Please keep working on me, in me, and through me that I might serve others by living faithfully to you and your moral order.  Amen.
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*From this verse and the word apologia, Christians have created the discipline of Apologetics.  Each year as the advisor to an apologetics club that started on our campus, I would remind students that we are not called to be aggressors “battling the pagans” with our rational arguments.  On the contrary, we are called to live such lives that they ask us about the reasons for our faith.  We welcomed all comers to our club as friends.  Ironically, that is sometimes not the demeanor of Christian apologists.  (My students and I, because of our "contrary" attitude, were asked to leave the national apologetics organization that started with us.)