Jesus is not saying, “Father, Your name is holy,” but, “Father, may Your name be hallowed.” That is, He is teaching us to ask that God’s name would be regarded as sacred, that it would be treated with reverence, and that it would be seen as holy. We must see this if we are to understand what Jesus is teaching us about prayer. I can’t emphasize too much how important it is that we grasp that this line of the Lord’s Prayer is not just a part of the address but a petition. If nothing else separates the Creator from the creature, it is that high, transcendent element of God’s own being, so marvelous, so majestic that He is worthy of the adoration of every creature. The primary way in which God differs from all creatures is that He is uncreated and eternal, whereas each of us is created and finite. What does it mean to say that God is holy? It means that He is different from anything that we experience or find in the material universe, that God the Creator differs from all creatures. And the very first thing that Jesus told them to pray for was that the name of God would be regarded as holy. These are the priorities that Jesus indicated His disciples should ask for in their prayers.

For this reason, those specific requests Jesus gave His disciples in the Lord’s Prayer are known as the petitions. Rather, it’s a petition.Įveryone knows what a petition is-it’s a piece of paper that people pass around for others to sign in hopes that this written evidence of agreement on an issue will induce the government or the ruling body of some association to change the rules of the game.

This line of the Lord’s Prayer is not simply an assertion that God’s name is holy. That is, we believe we are saying: “Our Father in heaven, Your name is holy.” But that’s not the format of the prayer. We have a tendency to read these words and to conclude that they are part of the address, that they are simply an acknowledgment of an existing truth.

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