Our Father in Heaven by Tom Clewer
“Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come; your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil. For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses. Amen.” Matthew 6:9–15
Growing up in the UK, you almost certainly prayed the Lord’s Prayer regularly in primary school. Even today, in our secular society, there aren’t many people who are completely unfamiliar with the Lord’s Prayer. However, its familiarity can sometimes make us lose the original purpose and power. The Lord’s prayer is not just theory, nor a lesson on prayer given by a master to a pupil. Rather, it is an invitation to know something of how Jesus prays and to learn to pray like him. It is true that Jesus himself would not have needed to pray all of these words (particularly “forgive us our debts”), but nonetheless, Jesus invites us to pray these remarkable prayers in the same spirit in which he prays. We are not learning to pray better, nor even discovering how to pray like Jesus. We are learning what it is to pray in union with Christ.
Luke 11 captures the disciples seeing Jesus pray. Naturally, having seen the Son of Man pray, they feel inadequate in their own prayer abilities and ask the Lord to teach them. Jesus responds with the Lord’s Prayer. In this response, we come to understand that the Lord’s Prayer isn’t just a set liturgy or guide to prayer. It is an offering where Jesus extends to us the very keys of heaven that he himself possesses. He invites us to come to the Father as he does, to know the Father as he does—and on the very same terms.
As he leads us to his Father, we discover that the goal of prayer is not that we get something from God, but that we get God himself. In praying the Lord’s Prayer we get a reminder to our souls that we have got God in the most unimaginable of ways!
My Father is your Father
Firstly, in the Lord’s Prayer, we must see the one-sidedness of our relationship with the Father. “Our Father” reminds us of our own familial relationships. A parent-child relationship is heavily dependent upon one side. If you’re a child, and you do something wrong, generally speaking, the father doesn’t kick you out the house. The father forgives. They keep loving, even when the child makes mistake upon mistake. You naturally expect more from a parent than you do a child. You expect the parent to be the one who chases after the child. To borrow the language of Jesus: “how much more … your Father in heaven” (Matt. 7:11).
In a similar vein, the quality of our prayer life is not dependent on us. It should not be judged by weekly minutes prayed, by how worn out your knees are, or even whether you have a multiple-page prayer list. None of those factors are the goal. No, it depends on Jesus and his grace. This one-sided relationship can be seen time and time again throughout the Scriptures. The story of Prodigal son pictures it most beautifully (Luke 15:11–32). This messy, broken son returns home. Yet, he doesn’t have to barter with his father to get back into favour. In fact, his pleas get cut dead in their tracks and the father interrupts him with unconditional grace and mercy. Of course, in any relationship what you say is important—that’s why Jesus gives us words—but a Christ-like prayer life depends far more on who he is than what we are like or what we say. Our prayer would be greatly enriched if only we would continuously remind ourselves of the mercy and grace of the Father who calls us his own.
A relational reality
Secondly, as Jesus gives us these words, “Our Father in heaven,” he’s telling us that he hasn’t just come to give us a one-way ticket to paradise. He’s come that we might share in him. More significantly, that you might share in his standing before God. “Our Father”—there’s a corporateness in this. Jesus is sharing his Father with his people. This is his great redemptive purpose. And so, when we pray, we are sharing in what belongs to Jesus. We are sharing in his Father. This is a stunning truth that Jesus shares with his disciples. The way that the Father loves us is the way that he loves his eternal Son. The way that the Father accepts Jesus as his only Son and has done through all of eternity is the way that he says to you, by Christ’s blood, “I accept you.” And it is from this point that prayer begins: “Our Father”
Isn’t that a beautiful thing? Prayer does not begin with us trying to convince God we’re worthy of him. It doesn’t begin with us trying to pray something brilliantly eloquent. It begins, first of all, with us sharing by grace in what belongs to Jesus. That is, his relationship with his Father. The Father says to you, “I accept you and welcome you as I accept and welcome my eternal Son.” You don’t need to prove yourself.
In Galatians 4, Paul says God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts. The Spirit of Jesus dwells in us and lives in us. When the Spirit of Jesus comes into our hearts, Paul says he shares the Sonship of Jesus with us. Therefore, when we cry out, “Abba, Father” like Jesus did. It is not make-believe. It is not wishful thinking that we call God, “our Father.” There need be no uncertainty and no doubts over how the Father treats you, loves you, and accepts you because you’re in Christ! There has never, in all of eternity, been a shadow of doubt over how the Father will treat his Son. It has always been a consistent and reliable certainty, and it is just so for us today. We are no less secure in the Father’s affections than Jesus has been for all eternity.
Paul’s describes wonderfully how we “have received the Spirit of adoption as sons,” this adoption to Sonship is the greatest reality for Christians. That, in Christ, we are Sons of the Father. Some modern translations may make the error of translating this as, “Sons and daughters.” But this language is not a misogynistic oversight on Paul’s part, rather, it is theologically indicative: we all, whether male or female, find our new identity in the Son. As such, we share in the privileges and honours of the first-born Son of the Father. We share in the Son’s status, even more, we come to share in the unfailing, eternal torrent of favour and love that flows from Father to Son. That is where prayer begins.
As Paul says in Colossians 3, your identity is now hidden in the Son. When the Father looks upon us, he sees not a sinner in his rags, but his Son clothed in righteousness. This is the foundation we stand on when we pray. We get to call his Father our Father, not just in some theoretical sense, nor as a kind of spiritual make-believe, but in a lived-out a relational reality.
The spiritual reality of adoption
There is a well-known Victorian saying, “children should be seen and not heard.” Of course, this is completely and utterly impossible. In this day and age, Children are always seen and almost always heard—and that’s a great thing in many ways. But when you come before the Father, Jesus invites us to come alongside him and experience a Father like he experiences him. In other words, we are children that are seen and heard by our heavenly Father. We get to know that he looks on us and loves us. We get to experience his delight in us. His love poured out into our hearts through the Spirit. Jesus calls us through the Lord’s Prayer into a fulfilling, life-giving, and joyful relationship.
But we must be careful not to judge our heavenly Father, or understand his love and care, by way of our human fathers. Not all of us have experienced love and grace from our earthly fathers and it can be tempting to picture similar treatment from this “other” father, maybe even to imagine that we will never know the Father as Jesus does. But that is to miss the point: our knowledge of him simply does not depend upon our experiences and past failures. The relational reality that we have in Christ is a miraculous thing! Our heavenly Father’s love, borne of the Spirit, causes us to know the beauty of being in Christ. This is what Paul was affirming in Romans 8: that we get to come to know the Father in a way that the Son, and only the Son, has ever known him. In a way that only the Spirit can show us.
This is more than theory. It’s more than just getting a bigger understanding of what the Father is like. You see, not only does the Son give us the keys to the house but the Spirit leads us to know in the depths of our souls that we belong there and that we are loved. We share in all that is the Son’s. This is the grace of the gospel: that everything Jesus knew of his Father, he shared with us. Every joy he knew in his Father is now ours. Every confidence and assurance he knew in him is yours. We need settle for no less of the Father than Jesus knew. And yet, we are frequently far too easily pleased.
Perhaps you wonder why Jesus leads us to call God Father at all. Why not, “Our Master,” or “Our carer,” or even “our mother” for that matter. But Father is not just a name that God thought up one day, saying: “that might be a useful description, that might be helpful to aid these little people in understanding who I am.” But that’s not it. He is called the Father because that is the eternal and enduring definition of who he really is, both in identity and at heart. It is who he is by nature, and we get to enjoy him; the ultimate, unparalleled Father.
Through Jesus we are lifted up into this closest union with the Father and it is a beautiful thing. The angels may not be able to look on God, and the very mountains may quake at his name, but we have been brought into the most beautiful, loving place where through tears and trembling lips we are able to utter the heartfelt name: “Abba.” Our Father in heaven is not an empty phrase to be repeated. This is our glorious reality, if you have Jesus, you have our Father in heaven.
