Daily Devotional
"Pray then like this: 'Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.'"
Matthew 6:9
Two words from Jesus correct both the hypocrite and the pagan. Our Father. Donald Hagner and other commentators on Matthew note how radical this address was in first-century Judaism. Jewish prayers of the period leaned hard on God’s transcendence, His holiness, His distance. Jesus had already drawn fire from the religious leaders in John 5:18 for the offensive intimacy of calling God His own Father. And now in Matthew 6, He hands that same word to His disciples and says, This is how you pray.
This is not Jesus blurring the line between His own unique Sonship and ours; the Gospels carefully preserve that distinction. Jesus says “my Father” when speaking of His unique relationship with God, and He says “your Father” when teaching the disciples. But here, in the Lord’s Prayer, He invites the disciples into a corporate “our.” By the Son, through the Spirit, we get to share in language that was once His alone.
Dane Ortlund draws out the heart of this in his reflection on 2 Corinthians 1:3: God is “the Father of mercies.” The Father’s heart is not distant or calculating; it is a heart characterized by mercy from before the foundation of the world. The same gentleness and lowliness that Jesus disclosed as His own disposition is the very character of the Father. When you say “Our Father,” you are not cautiously approaching a deity who might be in a good mood. You are coming home.
Today's Challenge
If you had to describe in one phrase how you actually picture God when you pray, what would you say? How does the truth that He is the Father of mercies reshape that picture today?
Prayer
Father of mercies, thank You that I do not have to earn an audience with You. The Son has secured it. The Spirit prompts the cry. And You receive me as Your own child. Help me, today, to come to You with the trust of a child who knows He is loved. In Jesus' name, Amen.
