When our Lord teaches his creatures to pray, the first petition he gives reflects a divine knowledge. He is God. He knows what is important. He sets the priority. When God hears prayer, what does he deem the most wise request? What is first and foremost in the divine mind when it comes to answering the prayers of sinful creatures? God is ruling and reigning from his Divine Throne. For what should he be aroused to act? In the first petition of the Lord’s Prayer we learn the highest priority in all the universe:
Hallowed be Thy Name
Matthew 6:10
The Glory of God
The greatest injustice is in the dishonor of God. Not only is God not revered, worshipped, thanked, praised, and adored, he is unacknowledged. Even worse, he is blasphemed. He is thought and believed to be that which he is not. It is darkness indeed where that which is omnipresent is invisible. The attributes which are exclusively in God are bestowed on the work of his hands. This is the fountain of all sin. This is the root of evil itself. All evil has this as its mother and nurse: the disregard and blasphemy of God himself. All supposed good which obscures God himself is evil.
No petition comes before this one. Should God refuse this prayer, all blessings are a hateful curse. Should he answer this prayer, all the darkness of sin and misery would vanish. Do you long for heaven? Do you wish to be perfect? Do you long for all evil to disperse? Do you long for the salvation of your neighbor? Do you long for justice in the nations? Learn this prayer.
Our Weakness
Our beliefs are the deep waters of our souls. What do we prize most highly? What do we most love? What is sacred or holy in our regard? These questions and others like them are not satisfied by mere propositional responses but by our very lives. Doctrine, then, is far from being cold and impersonal. It reaches deep into our lives. Down into our guts and our bones.
Our genuine beliefs are revealed not so much by professed loyalty to a given creed or confession but by our lives and prayers. What we say we believe and what we genuinely believe are at odds with one another. We are weak creatures. We are prone to hypocrisy and inconsistency.
How do we reckon with this discrepancy?
Prayer is both expressive and informative. In other words, we pray not merely to express or confess what we believe but to change and strengthen what we believe imperfectly. This insight into the nature of prayer has been captured by the latin phrase lex orandi, lex credendi, translated the law of worship is the law of belief.
This insight teaches us that prayer is a means of grace. Prayer would be a one way conversation and only expressive in nature if God did not answer. But he does. He hears us.
In and For Jesus Christ
The most important lesson we can ever learn about prayer is that God hears us. But why? Who are we that God should attend to our prayers? Who are we that we should even ever try to pray at all? We are sinful creatures! Many times the weight of this consideration shuts our mouths in prayer. We cannot lift our heads to look upon God in prayer.
Yet, when we consider we are taught to pray to God as our Father who sent his own dear Son to suffer and die as one of us, as a creature, we see it is a small thing in comparison for him to answer our prayers. God listens and answers our prayer for Christ’s sake.
None have made this petition with more eagerness or sincerity than Jesus Christ himself. God has heard him. Nothing has brought more glory to God than the work of Jesus Christ. No one has brought more glory to God than the Person of Jesus Christ. He glorified God’s Name in his day as no one before or since and He continues to glorify it through the ministry of the Holy Spirit. He himself is at once the petitioner of this prayer and the greatest answer to it. Hallowed be thy name indeed.
