The Lord's Prayer, line by line

Our Father Which Art in Heaven

Petition 1 of 8 · Matthew 6:9 · The Lord's Prayer

The Lord's Prayer opens by naming the God we pray to as Father, and not my Father only but our Father, the God of a whole family, who is at the same time in heaven, high and holy above us. Jesus teaches us to come to God as trusting children who know they are loved, and as brothers and sisters who never pray alone.

After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name.Matthew 6:9 (KJV)

The first words set everything else

Before a single request is made, before we ask for bread or forgiveness or protection, Jesus tells us who we are speaking to. Everything in the prayer flows from these opening words. Get the address wrong and the whole letter goes astray. Get it right, that we are speaking to a Father in heaven, and every petition that follows finds its place.

It is worth pausing on how startling this was. The people who first heard Jesus knew God as the Almighty, the Lord of hosts, the One whose name was too holy to speak aloud. And here Jesus hands them a word from the nursery. He invites them to begin their prayers with the tenderest name a human being knows. That was not a lowering of God. It was the opening of his heart.

What the words mean

Father tells us the nearness. To call God Father is to say that he is not a distant force or a blind fate but a person who knows us, who has fathered us into being and, in Christ, has adopted us as his own. A good father delights in his children, provides for them, disciplines them for their good, and is moved by their cry. Jesus tells us that behind the whole universe there is a heart like that, and it is turned toward us.

Our tells us the family. Jesus does not teach us to say my Father but our Father. Even when you pray alone in your room, you pray as one of a countless family. The word quietly forbids a faith that is only about me and my God. When you say our, you are standing beside every other believer, in every land and every century, the rich and the poor, your friends and the people you find hard to love, all of them children of the same Father.

Which art in heaven tells us the greatness. If Father were the only word, we might make God small and cozy, a Father we could manage. Heaven guards against that. This Father is enthroned above all things, holy, free, and unimaginably great. He is near enough to be called Father and high enough to be trusted with everything. The two truths hold each other up: a Father we can run to, and a Lord we can rely on.

Why Jesus put it first

The order of the prayer is a lesson in itself. Jesus does not begin with our needs but with God, and he begins with relationship before request. We are taught to come near and to remember whose we are before we ask for anything. A child who knows he is loved asks differently than a beggar at a stranger's door. Jesus wants us to pray as sons and daughters who are already welcome, not as strangers hoping to be noticed.

This opening also steadies the soul. Anxiety shrinks when the first thing we say is Father. Before the day and its troubles are named, the God over the day is named, and named as the One who loves us. That is why so many have found that simply praying these first four words slowly, our Father which art in heaven, quiets the heart before a word of asking is spoken.

What it teaches about God, and about us

About God it teaches that his deepest disposition toward his people is fatherly. He is not reluctant, not stingy, not waiting to be persuaded. Later in the same sermon Jesus argues from exactly this: if you, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him. The whole logic of the prayer rests on the goodness of the Father.

About us it teaches that our truest identity is not what we achieve or own but that we are children of God. It also teaches that we belong to one another. You cannot say our Father with your lips and hold your brother in contempt in your heart. To pray this line honestly is to be enrolled, again, in the family, and to be reminded that the person you struggle to forgive prays to the same Father you do.

A common misunderstanding

Some hear Father and flinch, because their own father was absent, harsh, or cruel. It is important to say clearly that Jesus is not telling us God is like our earthly fathers. He is telling us what a father was always meant to be, and that the ache we feel over every failed father is an ache for this One. Where our fathers fell short, God is the Father who never will. The word is meant to heal the wound, not to reopen it.

Others assume that calling God Father is presumptuous, as if we are being too familiar with the Most High. But it is Jesus who commands it. We do not seize the name; he gives it. In Christ we are made children, and the Father is honored, not offended, when his children come to him as children.

How to pray this line

Slow down on it. Do not rush past Father to get to your requests. Let the word land. Say Father, and mean it, and let yourself be, for a moment, simply a child who is loved. If your heart is cold, ask the Spirit to warm it, for it is the Spirit who teaches us to cry, Abba, Father.

Then say our, and bring someone to mind. Pray as a member of the family. Hold before the Father the people you are praying with, and even the people you are struggling with, and let the word our do its gentle, widening work on your heart. Then say which art in heaven, and lift your eyes. Remember that the One you call Father is also the Lord of heaven and earth, and that nothing you are about to ask is too great for him.

The heart of the gospel here

We are not born with the right to call God Father. By ourselves we are far off, and the whole story of Scripture is of a people who wandered from home. That we may now say Father is not our achievement but a gift purchased at great cost. Jesus, the only Son, came to make us sons and daughters. He shares his own name for God with us. On the cross he took the place of the far-off so that the far-off might be brought near, and he taught this prayer to people he was on his way to redeem.

So the first line of the Lord's Prayer is already the gospel in miniature. Through Christ, and by his Spirit, the outsider becomes a child, the orphan is adopted, and the one who had no right to pray is handed the family's own words and told to begin, our Father. Every time you pray it, you are living inside what Jesus died to give you.

The other petitions and more: Hallowed be thy name · Thy kingdom come · Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven · Give us this day our daily bread · And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors · And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil · For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen · The whole prayer · How to pray · Prayer