St Luke 11:1-13/Our Father: Introduction and 1st Petition
In the Name + of JESUS. Amen.
Jesus teaches you to pray: by His example, by His instruction, by making it possible for you to pray on account of His Atonement and Reconciliation with God for you, by making His God and Father to be your God and Father. He has returned to you to the Father in the flesh by way of His Cross and Passion, Resurrection and Ascension. In His own Body, with His own Blood, He is the One who prays and intercedes for you. And He is, in many ways, Himself your Prayer to the Father.
For just as neither by your own reason or strength can you believe, nor can you, of yourself, pray. Jesus teaches you. And in so doing He teaches you to know and love and trust the true and only God, who has called you out of darkness into the marvelous Light of Christ Jesus so that you may be His own. You are His own dear child, His beloved son in Christ by grace and by adoption. He is your God and Father.
He tenderly invites you to believe this. And to call upon Him with bold confidence, as a beloved child, within the household and family of the Church where He is “Our Father.”
He is Father by way of His identity and distinction as the First Person of the Holy Trinity as it pertains to His eternal relationship with the God the Son. The Son is not the Father nor is the Holy Spirit the Father. This identity belongs to the distinction of the Persons. Yet the Divine Name above all names, YHWH, belongs to the Unity of the one, undivided Godhead. The prerogative of calling the First Person of the Blessed Trinity, Father, is bestowed only upon the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, the Son. He is the exact imprint of His nature and the fullest revelation of His divine essence, as He reveals it in His Word and work of the Gospel, particularly in His innocent suffering and death and the outpouring of His Spirit upon the Church by whom you confess that Jesus is Lord to the glory of God the Father.
All of this is to say, that as Jesus teaches you to know the Name of God, He also bestows that Name upon you by the blessing of His Word and by the washing of water with His Word in Holy Baptism. Only in this way does He teach you to know God as “Our Father.” Only through this means - the washing of renewal and rebirth by the Holy Spirit - are you given the right to be called children of God and so call upon Him as our Father. You invoke His Name, and in so doing, in fact, hallow His Name, by appealing to the Father through Jesus Christ, His Son, our Lord, in the Holy Spirit. You beseech Him as your own dear Father, for you now share the sonship of Christ Jesus!
The prerogative of intreating God as Abba, has been given to you as legitimate children and co-heirs with His Son, Jesus Christ. You do not go to Him as Jacob, covered in animal skins attempting to deceive your aged father. Rather you approach your dear Father in heaven as one who is the recipient and possessor of His Word and promises by faith. He is your true Father and you are His true children, going to Him with all boldness and confidence, with prayer which rests on the Word of God implanted firmly on the crucifixion, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord.
It may seem a bit odd, though, that He teaches you to pray, first of all, for God’s Name to be kept holy. But note that Christ Himself prays in this way in John 12 and again in John 17, providing you with an example to follow. He not only teaches you how to pray, He teaches you for what to pray. Christ Jesus sets your prayer aright, petitioning first and foremost, that God’s Name be kept holy among you.
For the Name of the Lord is already holy in and of itself, just as He is the Holy, Holy, Holy, One. There is no holiness lacking in God or His Name, which is His very essence. Holiness depends on Him and whatever is Holy is holy by the sanctification of His Name, by His Word and Spirit. He is utterly self-subsisting and self-sufficient. He is the I Am, the One who was and is and is to come. He is Life and Light and Love in Himself, in His own Being. He is the Source of all life and light and love in His creation. All things are created by Him and are good when received in faith and used with thanksgiving, according to His Word and through prayer. So too are you also created and consecrated by His Name for the life and love of God within the fellowship of the Holy Trinity.
So, what is Jesus actually teaching you to ask and to pray in the First Petition?
You pray that God the Father would sanctify you by His Name, by the Atonement, forgiveness, reconciliation and life of Christ Jesus in the Holy Spirit. That He would establish and maintain this living relationship with you in Christ, His Son, and so enable you to use His Name rightly, to call upon it, as you are taught in the Second Commandment.
It is a prayer, a petition, that you who are the possessor and beneficiary of His Word and promises, would sanctify His Name in your life, words, and actions, by the catechesis, confession, and prayer of His Holy Word, and by doing what He has called you to do within your vocation according to His commandments and to the glory of His holy Name. In this way the rhythm of daily prayer is really a daily catechesis in the Word of God. As you hear and confess His Word you are instructed in the way of faith and love by the Law and the Gospel, and are you are taught to pray, His Holy Spirit is actively present and at work in you to bring you to daily repentance and faith.
You are not able to do or accomplish any of this on your own, for you are sinful and unclean in body and soul, in your thoughts, words, and deeds. It is not simply that you have failed or fallen short, it is already true from the outset that you are not capable of sanctifying God’s Name, until He has first of all sanctified you by and with His Name.
And so has Christ Jesus done and accomplished by His atoning sacrifice, by bearing the Name of the Lord in His Body into the Holy of Holies eternal in the heavens. He is your Great High Priest in all things pertaining to God. And He who has worked your salvation for you, now works in and with you by His Word and Holy Spirit, through the preaching of His Cross and Passion, Death and Resurrection, by the proclamation of repentance for the forgiveness of sins in His Name.
For the Father has given the Name above all names to Christ Jesus, the incarnate Son of God, in His own Body of flesh and blood, crucified and risen from the dead. And Christ Jesus has revealed and bestowed this divine Name upon you: in Holy Baptism, in the Holy Absolution, in the continuation of catechesis, and really in the whole Ministry of the Gospel, in the teaching and proclamation of His Word in its truth and purity.
Consider only how in the Invocation and in the Absolution you pray for and receive the blessed Cross of Christ upon your body and soul, upon your heart, mind, and spirit, in order that you be crucified, dead, and buried with Christ, as your Baptism into His death and so be raised with Him, unto newness of life in thoughts, words, and actions.
Certainly among the foremost ways that you now sanctify the Name of God in your Christian life is by calling upon the Name of the Lord in prayer. You are able to do so in Christ Jesus because He has been lifted up in death and lifted up in the preaching of the Word of His Cross, by which He has drawn you to Himself and makes His God and Father your God and Father. Thus as your prayer begins not in the poverty of your hearts, but in the manifold promises and mercy of God, so are you given to return to Him in prayer, calling upon your dear Father in heaven for the sake of His beloved Son in His Holy Spirit, who lives and reigns, one God, now and forever. Amen.
In the Name + of JESUS. Amen.
Jesus teaches you to pray: by His example, by His instruction, by making it possible for you to pray on account of His Atonement and Reconciliation with God for you, by making His God and Father to be your God and Father. He has returned to you to the Father in the flesh by way of His Cross and Passion, Resurrection and Ascension. In His own Body, with His own Blood, He is the One who prays and intercedes for you. And He is, in many ways, Himself your Prayer to the Father.
For just as neither by your own reason or strength can you believe, nor can you, of yourself, pray. Jesus teaches you. And in so doing He teaches you to know and love and trust the true and only God, who has called you out of darkness into the marvelous Light of Christ Jesus so that you may be His own. You are His own dear child, His beloved son in Christ by grace and by adoption. He is your God and Father.
He tenderly invites you to believe this. And to call upon Him with bold confidence, as a beloved child, within the household and family of the Church where He is “Our Father.”
He is Father by way of His identity and distinction as the First Person of the Holy Trinity as it pertains to His eternal relationship with the God the Son. The Son is not the Father nor is the Holy Spirit the Father. This identity belongs to the distinction of the Persons. Yet the Divine Name above all names, YHWH, belongs to the Unity of the one, undivided Godhead. The prerogative of calling the First Person of the Blessed Trinity, Father, is bestowed only upon the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, the Son. He is the exact imprint of His nature and the fullest revelation of His divine essence, as He reveals it in His Word and work of the Gospel, particularly in His innocent suffering and death and the outpouring of His Spirit upon the Church by whom you confess that Jesus is Lord to the glory of God the Father.
All of this is to say, that as Jesus teaches you to know the Name of God, He also bestows that Name upon you by the blessing of His Word and by the washing of water with His Word in Holy Baptism. Only in this way does He teach you to know God as “Our Father.” Only through this means - the washing of renewal and rebirth by the Holy Spirit - are you given the right to be called children of God and so call upon Him as our Father. You invoke His Name, and in so doing, in fact, hallow His Name, by appealing to the Father through Jesus Christ, His Son, our Lord, in the Holy Spirit. You beseech Him as your own dear Father, for you now share the sonship of Christ Jesus!
The prerogative of intreating God as Abba, has been given to you as legitimate children and co-heirs with His Son, Jesus Christ. You do not go to Him as Jacob, covered in animal skins attempting to deceive your aged father. Rather you approach your dear Father in heaven as one who is the recipient and possessor of His Word and promises by faith. He is your true Father and you are His true children, going to Him with all boldness and confidence, with prayer which rests on the Word of God implanted firmly on the crucifixion, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord.
It may seem a bit odd, though, that He teaches you to pray, first of all, for God’s Name to be kept holy. But note that Christ Himself prays in this way in John 12 and again in John 17, providing you with an example to follow. He not only teaches you how to pray, He teaches you for what to pray. Christ Jesus sets your prayer aright, petitioning first and foremost, that God’s Name be kept holy among you.
For the Name of the Lord is already holy in and of itself, just as He is the Holy, Holy, Holy, One. There is no holiness lacking in God or His Name, which is His very essence. Holiness depends on Him and whatever is Holy is holy by the sanctification of His Name, by His Word and Spirit. He is utterly self-subsisting and self-sufficient. He is the I Am, the One who was and is and is to come. He is Life and Light and Love in Himself, in His own Being. He is the Source of all life and light and love in His creation. All things are created by Him and are good when received in faith and used with thanksgiving, according to His Word and through prayer. So too are you also created and consecrated by His Name for the life and love of God within the fellowship of the Holy Trinity.
So, what is Jesus actually teaching you to ask and to pray in the First Petition?
You pray that God the Father would sanctify you by His Name, by the Atonement, forgiveness, reconciliation and life of Christ Jesus in the Holy Spirit. That He would establish and maintain this living relationship with you in Christ, His Son, and so enable you to use His Name rightly, to call upon it, as you are taught in the Second Commandment.
It is a prayer, a petition, that you who are the possessor and beneficiary of His Word and promises, would sanctify His Name in your life, words, and actions, by the catechesis, confession, and prayer of His Holy Word, and by doing what He has called you to do within your vocation according to His commandments and to the glory of His holy Name. In this way the rhythm of daily prayer is really a daily catechesis in the Word of God. As you hear and confess His Word you are instructed in the way of faith and love by the Law and the Gospel, and are you are taught to pray, His Holy Spirit is actively present and at work in you to bring you to daily repentance and faith.
You are not able to do or accomplish any of this on your own, for you are sinful and unclean in body and soul, in your thoughts, words, and deeds. It is not simply that you have failed or fallen short, it is already true from the outset that you are not capable of sanctifying God’s Name, until He has first of all sanctified you by and with His Name.
And so has Christ Jesus done and accomplished by His atoning sacrifice, by bearing the Name of the Lord in His Body into the Holy of Holies eternal in the heavens. He is your Great High Priest in all things pertaining to God. And He who has worked your salvation for you, now works in and with you by His Word and Holy Spirit, through the preaching of His Cross and Passion, Death and Resurrection, by the proclamation of repentance for the forgiveness of sins in His Name.
For the Father has given the Name above all names to Christ Jesus, the incarnate Son of God, in His own Body of flesh and blood, crucified and risen from the dead. And Christ Jesus has revealed and bestowed this divine Name upon you: in Holy Baptism, in the Holy Absolution, in the continuation of catechesis, and really in the whole Ministry of the Gospel, in the teaching and proclamation of His Word in its truth and purity.
Consider only how in the Invocation and in the Absolution you pray for and receive the blessed Cross of Christ upon your body and soul, upon your heart, mind, and spirit, in order that you be crucified, dead, and buried with Christ, as your Baptism into His death and so be raised with Him, unto newness of life in thoughts, words, and actions.
Certainly among the foremost ways that you now sanctify the Name of God in your Christian life is by calling upon the Name of the Lord in prayer. You are able to do so in Christ Jesus because He has been lifted up in death and lifted up in the preaching of the Word of His Cross, by which He has drawn you to Himself and makes His God and Father your God and Father. Thus as your prayer begins not in the poverty of your hearts, but in the manifold promises and mercy of God, so are you given to return to Him in prayer, calling upon your dear Father in heaven for the sake of His beloved Son in His Holy Spirit, who lives and reigns, one God, now and forever. Amen.
RSS Feed