Our Lord taught his disciples the Lord’s Prayer on at least two separate occasions. The first was in the Sermon on the Mount. In Matthew 6 he gave the Lord’s Prayer, but also instructions about it. 1) That we should pray in secret, and not as the hypocrites, on the street corners and in the synagogues in order to be seen by men. 2) That we should not use vain repetitions, because our Father knows what we need before we ask him. 3) That we may not ask for forgiveness of our sins until we have forgiven our brother whatever sins he has committed against us. 4) That we must have our priorities straight: we must seek first the kingdom of God and trust our heavenly Father to add to us whatever earthly things we need.
Luke 11 records the second occasion. There his disciples asked Jesus to teach them to pray. In response he again gave the words of the Lord’s prayer. This prayer is a model prayer. From it we learn how to address God, what to pray for, and what is to be our spiritual posture in prayer.
Again, he added instruction. The first point of instruction was about persistence. He said,
Which of you shall have a friend, and go to him at midnight and say to him, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves; for a friend of mine has come to me on his journey, and I have nothing to set before him’; and he will answer from within and say, ‘Do not trouble me; the door is now shut, and my children are with me in bed; I cannot rise and give to you’?I say to you, though he will not rise and give to him because he is his friend, yet because of his persistence he will rise and give him as many as he needs.
The second point was about trusting our Father in heaven.
If a son asks for bread from any father among you, will he give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will he give him a serpent instead of a fish?Or if he asks for an egg, will he offer him a scorpion?If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him!
- God is our Father
The fatherhood of God is an idea that appears quite a few times in the Heidelberg Catechism. It is part of our only comfort in the first question and answer: without the will of my Father in heaven not a hair can fall from my head. In Lord’s Day 9 we confess
That the eternal Father of our Lord Jesus Christ… is for the sake of Christ, His Son, my God and my Father, in whom I so trust as to have no doubt that He will provide me with all things necessary for body and soul; and further, that whatever evil He sends upon me in this valley of tears, He will turn to my good; for He is able to do it, being Almighty God, and willing also, being a faithful Father.
In Lord’s 10, the Lord’s Day on providence, the name appears twice. In Question and Answer 27, we learn that all things come not by chance but by his fatherly hand. In Question and Answer 28, we affirm our confidence
in our faithful God and Father, that no creature shall separate us from His love, since all creatures are so in His hand, that without His will they cannot so much as move.
In Lord’s Day 18 we learn that Jesus is our advocate in the presence of his Father in heaven and that the Father governs all things through him. There are a couple other places where that name for our God appears, but these are the main ones.
In all of these places the catechism lays the theological foundation for this discussion of the address of the Lord’s Prayer. How is it even possible that we call God Father? How can we use such an intimate and affectionate name for him? Adam was the son of God, and in Adam we were too, but we rebelled against him, left the obedience of children and were driven out of his house. Is it really possible that we should again be able to use that name?
That’s the question that the catechism answers for us in all these different contexts where it talks about the fatherhood of God. The key point is in Lord’s Day 9: “The eternal Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is, for the sake of Christ his Son, my God and my Father.” In his own eternal, natural and only begotten Son, God has adopted us and regenerated us, so that we are again his children and heirs.
Adoption is the legal procedure by which he gives us a right again to enter his house and to be part of his family. It is like human adoption in these points: 1) By nature and according to our natural birth, because of our sins, we are not his children or even like him. We do not belong to his family or live in his house. 2) Through the work of his Son, he does what is legally necessary to bring us back to his family and house and to give us his name. 3) He makes us his heirs, heirs of the kingdom and all the riches that belong to it.
Through regeneration he gives us a new birth. By this new birth he gives us the life of Christ, and he remakes us in his own image. This regeneration corresponds to the natural relation between a father and son.
So we are sons of God both by adoption and by birth. It is not enough for us to be one or the other. We must be both.
But there are many things that follow from that. In that Son, who gave himself for us, he has provided us with an advocate in his own presence to whom he listens, and whose prayers he always answers. Through his Son the Father, who is both the Father of Jesus and our Father, governs all things. Jesus said to his disciples before he ascended, I go to my Father and your Father. All things, therefore, come to me, not by chance nor ultimately by the malignity of my enemies, but from his Fatherly hand. He ensures that no creature can separate you from his love. He is always willing to provide you with everything necessary for body and soul, and indeed does exactly that. He turns evil to your good.
It’s in that theological context that our Lord Jesus Christ instructs us to pray, Our Father who art in heaven… And it’s in that context that we are able to pray, and in praying call him Father gladly and with grateful hearts. The Heidelberg Catechism calls it the ground of our prayers: God has become our Father through Christ.
2. We pray to our Father
All of this awakens in us a child-like reverence for and trust in God. We can illustrate child-like reverence by remembering how very young children think about their fathers. Older children begin to understand that their fathers are not all-powerful, omniscient and incapable of doing wrong. But for very young children Daddy knows everything and can do anything. My Dad is always stronger than your Dad, and my Dad is the one who can confirm or deny anything that any teacher, minister, or other person in authority tells me. That’s how this address of the Lord’s prayer teaches us to think about our Father in heaven. He can do anything, solve any problem, answer any question.
We can illustrate child-like trust also by the way a little child looks to his father for comfort in any pain or grief. A caress and a kiss, objectively useless as they are, soothe any trouble and comfort any sorrow. So this address of the Lord’s prayer teaches us to trust absolutely and implicitly that our Father in heaven will provide everything that we need, all spiritual and bodily neess, all comfort and strength.
Or what man is there among you who, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will he give him a serpent?If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask Him! Matt 7:9-11
Christ says to fathers (and mothers too), “Think about your relationship to your children. They come to you with their requests. Some of those requests are frivolous or wrong but some are right and necessary, requests for bread or fish – food necessary for sustaining life and strength. How do you respond? Do you give them something useless or even harmful as food, a stone or a serpent? No, you give what they need, at least if it is in your power to do so.”
He goes on. “Now consider that you are evil. Your love for your children is never perfect, never unperverted in some way by your sinfulness. Yet you do still know how to give good gifts to them.”
“Now,” he says, “consider your heavenly Father. Become a child now instead of a parent and think about him. He is like you in relation to your children. He knows how to give good gifts to his children, just as you know how to give them to your children. But there is also a difference. He is greater than you, and he is not evil. Therefore, he knows much better than you do how to give good gifts, because there is no sin to cloud his mind and affections or to pervert his love.”
But you might say, “He gives such strange things! He doesn’t give what I ask, but something different, or perhaps nothing at all!” True. If your children always ask for cookies instead of bread, will you continue to give them cookies? If you are always asking for cookies instead of bread, will your heavenly Father give them to you?
Jesus is saying, “Trust your heavenly Father to give you what you really need. If you are godly in your prayers, striving always to ask for what is best, still recognize that you are a very little child, and have a child’s very limited understanding, also of what you need. Your heavenly Father knows better and will give according to his wisdom. He will do that because he loves you. Submit your understanding to his understanding. Submit your will to his will. He knows best and will do the best.”
3. We pray to our Father in heaven
There is great intimacy and love in our calling God our Father, but there be great reverence. He is in heaven and we are on earth. It is necessary that we remember both in our prayers.
When we consider his greatness we think of his heavenly majesty and his almighty power.
There are many passages that talk about his majesty. Psalm 8 is one:
O LORD our Lord, how excellent is your name in all the earth… When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, The moon and the stars that you have ordained, What is man that you are mindful of him, The son of man that you visit him?
Isaiah 40 is another:
Who has measured the waters in the hollow of His hand, Measured heaven with a span And calculated the dust of the earth in a measure? Weighed the mountains in scales, and the hills in a balance?… Behold, the nations are as a drop in a bucket, And are counted as the small dust on the scales; Look, He lifts up the isles as a very little thing. And Lebanon is not sufficient to burn, Nor its beasts sufficient for a burnt offering. All nations before Him are as nothing, And they are counted by Him less than nothing and worthless.
We must have no earthly thought of that heavenly majesty. He cannot be likened to any of his creatures. He is all glorious, he rules all things, and he is infinitely holy. Fear and reverence are necessary.
The catechism also mentions his almighty power. He can do whatever he pleases in heaven and on earth. There are no limitations on his power. No one can frustrate him.
This is part of that majesty of which we stand in awe, but it also means that he can do whatever we ask of him. Therefore, we expect from him all things necessary for our salvation.
By his heavenly majesty he directs our minds to heavenly things, he teaches us that we are not to seek him in a particular place, as in the Old Testament, and he shows us that he is not to be worshiped in his creatures.
In his commentary on this part of the Lord’s prayer, Zacharias Ursinus says that when we address God as our Father that includes knowledge, confidence and obedience. The knowledge is that theological foundation that we saw in our first point, and all the knowledge of God and his works. These shape our prayers, and teach us our relationship to him, and how we should come to him. The confidence is that certainty we have that he is graciously disposed to us and will do us good. The obedience is what is necessary for us as children in relation to him. It includes love, fear, hope, humility and patience.
Therefore, when we pray to our Father in heaven we fear and reverence him, and yet at the same time we know that God is our gracious Father in his Son Jesus Christ, we trust him as implicitly as a little child trusts his father and we believe that he is able and willing to provide us with all things necessary for body and soul. We pray because we love him and know that he loves us.