The Lord’s Prayer, Part 2 of 6

Published by DonDavidson on

Our Father who is in heaven,
Hallowed be Your name.

Last week we talked about the opening of the Lord’s Prayer, “Our Father.” The next two lines seem to go together:

 . . . who is in heaven,
Hallowed be Your name.[1]

The very first verse in the Bible says: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”[2] We of course dwell on the earth, but in the Lord’s Prayer Jesus tells us that God dwells in heaven—as if to emphasize the separation that exists between God and man. We are as far from attaining God’s moral standards as we are from the Moon and the stars. God demands perfection, and we are of course far from perfect. Nothing we do can bridge the vast gap between God’s standards and our behavior.

But Jesus could. And he did. Paul tells us that Jesus’s death reconciled us to God.[3] There is just one condition. We must surrender ourselves to God by placing our faith in Christ.

What does it mean to place our faith in Christ? I talked about that in a blog entry I wrote last year. (You can find it here.) In a nutshell, it means that we are to love God and Christ above all else. They must become more important, for example, than career, family, money, or possessions.

The second line of the Lord’s Prayer says, “Hallowed be Your name.” As I mentioned in a blog entry about Halloween, “hallowed” means to regard something as holy or sacred. Thus, Jesus is telling us that we are to treat God’s name with reverence and respect, as we would something that is holy or sacred.[4]

To me, this follows naturally from placing our faith in Christ. Love involves kindness and respect. Why would we want to insult or blaspheme the name of the One whom we love above all else?

Link to Part 3


[1]. Matthew 6:9

[2]. Genesis 1:1

[3]. See Romans 5:10, 2 Corinthians 5:18, and Colossians 1:21-22.

[4]. This is of course reminiscent of one of the Ten Commandments: “You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not leave him unpunished who takes His name in vain.” (Exodus 20:7) Similarly, Leviticus 19:12 forbid the Israelites from using God’s name to make a false oath.


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