Hallowed be Thy Name - It's place in the Lord's Prayer

"Hallowed be Thy name." A scripture passage that every one has heard and that is known by heart by anyone that attends a Christian service. It is a passage almost all Christians recite at least once a week; but very few of us have thought about what it means. Have you ever heard a sermon or teaching about this passage before? Here it is in context in two different translations: (Matt. 6:9-10)

(KJV) Our Father which art in heaven
Hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come.
Thy will be done
in earth, as it is in heaven.

(GNT) Our Father in heaven:
May your holy name be honored;
may your Kingdom come;
may your will be done
on earth as it is in heaven.

For reasons which I will make clear, I rather prefer the second.

First let us think about the place it holds in the Lord’s Prayer. In very general terms, there are two kinds of things we say in prayer: there are petitions, that is requests, and there are declarations where we state that something is true. So, for example, in the Lord’s prayer, when we say “Our Father, who art in heaven”, this is a declaration. We are not asking God to become our father or go and be in heaven. We are declaring, that is he our Father and that he is heaven. Praise and worship often use this kind of prayer.

For an example of a petition think of when Jesus told the disciples, "The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest." (Luke 10:2) Here, Jesus is telling his disciples to ask God for something: that more laborers would be sent into the harvest. When we are told to petition for something, I think it presupposes two things: one, that this thing has not happened yet. As Jesus says, "the laborers are few." And two, that God wants it to change. He wants this request to be granted It is God's will.

But if it is God's will, why doesn't he just do it himself? This is the mystery of prayer; that God has chosen to share his rule over the universe with us, that there are certain things he does not do until we ask for them.

Another example of a petition is in the Lord's Prayer when we say “Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven,” We are not declaring that this is true now. We all know that his will is not being done on earth, certainly not like it is being done in heaven. And, plainly, God wants his will to be done on earth, but also wants us to be part of bringing that about, at least through our prayers. So Jesus tells us to ask that he would act and move others to act, that it would be so.

So what kind of statement is “Hallowed be thy name”? Is it a declaration of something true already, or a request for things to be different? I used to lump the first two phrases together, making them both declarations. I am addressing God the Father, whose name is hallowed (whatever that means, that is the subject of the next post.) i think this understanding is largely the result of the rhythm in our English translation:
“Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name,” Breath,
“Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Breath.
We have the nice parallel, almost rhyming phrases, "thy kingdom come, thy will be done.” Because it sounds this way, we tend to group their meanings this way.

But in Greek, the language in which the New Testament is written, the form of the words and the parallel phrases goes the other way. It goes more like this:
Your name, be hallowed
Your kingdom, come
Your will, be done.

All three are requests about something of God’s: His name, his kingdom, his will. All three verbs: "be hallowed", "come", "be done", are imperative verbs, that is commanding or requesting something.

And because of this parallelism, it seems to me, that the following phrase, “On earth as it is in heaven” should be applied to all of them. So when we pray this part of the Lord’s Prayer we are asking God that his name would be hallowed on earth, and his Kingdom would come on earth, and his will would be done on earth, all just like they are in heaven.

Note also that this is the first request in the Lord’s Prayer. If this order is significant, then it would imply that hallowing our Father’s name is more important, or somehow comes before his kingdom coming! Now I have seen many books and heard many sermons about the Kingdom of God and about knowing and doing God's will. But how many teachings regarding this theme, hallowing God's name, are you aware of? I hope, through these posts, to begin to remedy this neglect. I believe this is an overarching biblical theme that should be as prominent in our thinking as the Kingdom of God itself.

In my next post I will explore what is meant by the words "hallowed be Thy name" and what has to happen for this prayer to be granted.

Surprises

One of the things I love about studying and teaching the Bible, is that I keep on being surprised. I will take some old Bible story that I first heard before I could read, look up what it actually says in scripture, and I will find something new.

Another favorite thing is finding and exploring themes that run through out the Bible, large, overarching narratives that can be found in both the Old and New Testaments. One example is the great commission, the commandment to the church to spread the faith to those who have not yet heard it. I thought that this was found only at the end of a few of the gospels and the beginning of Acts and that was it. But then Don Richardson, in "Eternity in their Hearts" showed that this theme, that the chosen people are chosen to extend God's blessing to all peoples, is not just a New Testament idea, but goes back, at least, to God's covenant with Abraham in Genesis 12: "in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”; and then continues through out God's dealings with both Israel and the Church.

Well, now I have come to see another theme that is all through scripture, though I do not think I have ever heard any teaching on it, and I first saw this theme clearly in a passage that every Christian knows by heart and regularly recites, but which is little understood and also rarely taught on.

The scripture passage is from the Lord's Prayer, "hallowed be thy name".
The theme, that I have come to believe is a major concern of scripture, but is almost ignored today, could be called God's honor or God's glory, or to put it in more common language, the importance of God's reputation. In following posts I want to share what I mean by this and why it is really important, starting with the Lord's Prayer, then jump back to the Old Testament and trace this idea throughout the whole Bible.

My one claim that I am nervous about is that no one else has seen this or is teaching about it. If you know of others teachings on this subject either in the past or the present, please excuse my ignorance and introduce or remind me of those who have gone before me.

I have shared these ideas before in a few sermons in local churches and more fully in a three month Sunday school class in my church. But I feel a compulsion to share this more widely. If this is as important as I think it is then it should become a part of the common worldview of the church. Of course it is possible that I have taken a minor theme, well documented in the tradition of the church, and blown it out of proportion because it is new to me. Either way this blog is the next step for me to put these thoughts out there to be spread and/or corrected.