The Lord's Prayer--Salutation

Our Father, who art in heaven.

"Every person who prays is praying to the same god." Do you believe this statement? Many people do. They believe that God has revealed Himself in different ways to different cultures throughout the centuries, but that any religion ultimately puts you in touch with the same Creator of the universe. They claim that the Christian who is baptized into the name of the Triune God is actually praying to the same god as the Muslims, the Buddhists, and the Mormons.

The question facing us today is, who are we supposed to pray to? When the disciples asked Jesus to teach them how to pray, our Lord replied This, then, is how you should pray: Our Father in heaven (Matthew 6:9). But who precisely does Jesus mean? In Matthew chapter 11 Jesus said, no one knows the Father except the Son, and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him. In St. John chapter 10 Jesus asserted, the Father is in me, and I [am] in the Father. And later on in chapter 14, Jesus added: Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father.

Jesus makes it clear that no one can know God the Father except through His Son; in John chapter 14 He says quite bluntly: No one comes to the Father except through me. God is holy; He permits nothing sinful to come before Him. We, on the other hand, have been steeped in sin since birth; we cannot see how to approach God, and we would not dare to do so even if we could. In order to address this problem, the Father chose His son to do what we could not—repair the broken relationship that separated us from Him. Jesus did this by suffering the Father’s punishment for our sins as our representative. Only the Son of God could endure the suffering demanded by every human sin; only the Son of God could, by Himself, make right every wrong of human history. John writes, God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life…Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God's one and only Son (John 3:16-18).

What then can we say about the prayers of Jews or Hindus? They do not believe that Jesus is God’s representative; therefore, their prayers are not heard by Jesus’ Father. What can we say about the prayers of Mormons or Muslims? They do not accept that it is through Jesus that the Father has set us free from sin; their prayers are thus not acceptable to Jesus’ Father. If a person does not entrust his prayers to Jesus, he is not praying to Our Father, who art in heaven.

When Jesus gave the example of beginning prayer with the words our Father in heaven, He intended to teach us three things about praying. The first is this: we should address God as our Father, not as Lord God Almighty. Terms like "Lord", "God" and "Almighty" remind us of power, holiness and majesty, whereas "Father" calls to mind love, kindness and closeness. "Father" is the word that Jesus used to indicate His own close relationship with God; the first words of Jesus recorded in holy Scripture are: Didn't you know I had to be in my Father's house? (Luke 2:49) When Jesus taught, He declared: I and the Father are one (John 10:30). In the garden of Gethsemane, Jesus prayed: My Father…may this cup be taken from me (Matthew 26:39). While suspended on the cross, His first words were, Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing, and his last words were, Father, into your hands I commit my spirit (Luke 23:34 & 46).

Jesus encourages us to use this comforting form of address. We can do this because God is our Father in every sense of the word. He is our Father because He gave us life. St. Paul told the Athenians, in Him we live and move and have continuing existence (Acts 17:28). Without God’s activity we would not be; He is our real Father, the Father standing behind our human fathers.

God is also our Father because He given us new life through Christ. In Romans chapter 8 we are told, all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. So you should not be like cowering, fearful slaves. You should behave instead like God's very own children, adopted into his family--calling him "Father, dear Father." For his Holy Spirit speaks to us deep in our hearts and tells us that we are God's children. Our sinfulness had separated us from our Father, but through Jesus we have been brought back into His family. And it is because we are secure in the knowledge that God is our Father that we are able to pray with confidence that we will be heard.

A second point to notice is that Jesus taught us to pray "our Father"—not my Father, but our Father. Because the Father has adopted us as His children, we are all brothers and sisters to each other. In Ephesians chapter four Paul reminds us, We are all one body, we have the same Spirit, and we have all been called to the same glorious future. There is only one Lord, one faith, one baptism, and there is only one God and Father, who is over us all, and in us all, and living through us all. When we pray our Father, we are praying for and with each other, whether we are Christians in America or Russia, Germany or Mexico, Great Britain or Japan, Scandinavia or the Middle East.

It is a mistake to narrow the focus of our prayers to ourselves alone. Jesus commanded us to see to the welfare of our neighbors, and the best help you can give to others is to lift them up to the Father in prayer. James advises, is any one of you in trouble? He should pray. Is anyone happy? Let him sing songs of praise. Is any one of you sick? He should call the elders of the church to pray over him and anoint him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well; the Lord will raise him up. If he has sinned, he will be forgiven. Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective (James 5:13-16). When you pray our Father, pray for others—for your parents, your spouse, your children, your friends, your neighbors. Our fellow Christians all around the world are also praying our Father; we are praying for them, and they are praying for us. That’s what knits us together, gives us strength to keep fighting against all that opposes God, and gives us comfort in every trial.

Every day, the sun traverses 24 time zones as its light moves around the world; therefore, during every hour of every Sunday there are Christian congregations greeting the new day with the joyous words our Father. An elderly lady, who was confined to her home for years, once said: "I am always glad when Sunday comes, because on that day I know that some Christian congregation is praying for me every hour of the day." A comforting thought indeed.

The third point to notice is that Jesus tells us to include the words, who art in heaven. This reminds us that the Father we are praying to is Lord over everything and has the power to give us more than we can even think of requesting. Our earthly fathers are limited in what they can do for us—sometimes they are too poor to fully care for the needs of their children; other times, what their children need is beyond any man’s ability to give. Our Father in heaven, however, can address the needs of any prayer. The angel Gabriel asserted, nothing is impossible with God (Luke 1:37). And Paul assures us, the…Lord is Lord of all, and richly blesses all who call on him (Romans 10:12). Our Father in heaven is the God who saved Noah from the flood and the Israelites from slavery in Egypt; He produced bread from the morning dew of the desert floor and issued water from a rock; He sent a raven to bring Elijah food and fed over 5,000 people with a few loaves a bread and a couple of fish. Our Father in heaven is able to give us anything for which we pray.

Who art in heaven also reminds us that God loves us and is attentive to our needs. When we think of heaven, we tend to think of a place far above the problems of this world. We picture our Father seated up above with an unhindered view of everything going on in our lives. Heaven is not a place where God hides from us in our time of need; the ancient Greeks used to complain that their gods were on Mt. Olympus feasting and getting drunk while their earthly worshippers were crying out for food and a few simple pleasures. They felt that their gods did not love them. But our Father in heaven is not like that; Psalm 103 says, as a father has compassion on his children, so the LORD has compassion on those who fear him. In Romans chapter eight Paul makes this point: since God did not spare even his own Son but gave him up for us all, won't God, who gave us Christ, also give us everything else?

In addition, we don’t need to worry that our Father will make a mistake and give us something that turns out to be bad for us. A Christian father once complained bitterly, "Where I made my mistake was when I gave my boy that new car." Earthly fathers make mistakes. Our Father in heaven, however, never makes mistakes. He knows what requests to fulfill and what requests to refuse. This means that we can pray with confidence, knowing that even if our requests are flawed, God’s answers won’t be.

To sum up: the word our should remind us to pray for each other; the term Father should move us to pray with confidence; the phrase who art in heaven ought to remind us that we are speaking with the most powerful Person in the universe, who can and will give us everything we ask for which will benefit us in the long run. To pray to our father who art in heaven is to pray with faith and confidence.