The Lord’s Prayer

And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites . . . . Pray then like this:

Jesus instructs us that we relate to God not through a sovereign-subject relationship nor a relationship based upon blood-lineage, but based upon a personal familial relationship.

The hollowing of God’s name can be seen as either an internal action worked within the soul of the believer or an external action taken by us. 

God’s Kingdom refers to 1) the completion of our sanctification, 2) the coming eschatological reign of Christ, and 3) the church.

This petition represents the completion of our salvation as contained in the three Thou petitions – His Name is Hallowed, His Kingdom Comes, and His Will is therefore Done.

“Our Daily Bread” has four distinct layers of meaning: the material sustanence, the scriptures, Christ himself, and the gathered church community.

How can you call God just when you read the parable of the laborers in the vineyard . . . or when you read the parable of the prodigal son . . .  Where is God’s justice? Here is the fact that while we were sinners Christ died for us.

It is in this clause that Jesus speaks most directly about the atonement for he is the one that delivers us from the evil one. 

Jesus gave us the Prayer as a template to follow, not as a mantra to repeat.

Does it not then follow, that if His be the kingdom, we should fear no one, since there can be none to withstand, and divide the empire with him.

In the actual text of the Sermon on the Mount, for instance, at least in the original Greek, an ominously archetypal figure, identified simply as “the wicked man” (ὁ πονηρός), makes a brief appearance. He is almost certainly meant to be understood as a depiction of the sort of avaricious,…