Author: Dr Jito Vanualailai

In this  essay, I have tried to show that while the Lord’s Prayer is most certainly an eschatological prayer, it is also much more than that. It is also a typological prayer, a messianic prayer, and a Davidic prayer. That is, it is rooted in the eschatology of the Old Testament, which held that God would act in the future in ways that would parallel how he had acted in the past.

Dr. Brant Pitre is Distinguished Research Professor of Scripture at the Augustine Institute, Graduate School of Theology. He earned his Ph.D. in Theology from the University of Notre Dame, where he specialized in the study of the New Testament and ancient Judaism. His paper can be downloaded here.

In both the Old Testament and the New Testament there is a climatic point: a passage, I mean, which so epitomizes all the teaching of that section of our Bible that we should be eager to save it were all else to be destroyed. In the Old Testament it is the Ten Commandments, which form a foundation of civil society.  Society would go to pieces were not the Ten Commandments understood and usually obeyed. In the New Testament it is the Lord’s Prayer which lays foundations for the harmonious inner life as the Ten Commandments do for the outer.  Here speaks the aspiring spirit to its Maker. This is the love-song of the Christian world. 

The Lord’s Prayer is the authentication, the signature, the demonstrating formula of all his teaching; it is the master-recipe for producing his demands, for reproducing his acts, for adopting not only his method but, if we will make the system our life, his nature. Here, in epitome are the essential means and ends of his faith. Here is the practice, the exercise, whereby he was able to call himself the Son of Man, at last Man as God wills, and to call us through the same exercise and practice to rise to such sonship. By this prayer we may and must judge all Christianity, whether it is the millennial record of the Church or our own acts and thoughts of the last half-hour.

Henry FitzGerald Heard (6 October 1889 – 14 August 1971), commonly called Gerald Heard, was a British-born American historian, science writer, public lecturer, educator, and philosopher. He wrote many articles and over 35 books. He studied history and theology at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, graduating with honours in history. After working in other roles, he lectured from 1926 to 1929 for Oxford University’s extramural studies programme.

In Psalm 46:2-3, we read: God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth change.

The identifier of this verse is 135.

Permutations of the set {1,3,5} give us the prescribed prayer times of the Lord’s Prayer.

CONCLUSION: When we pray the Lord’s Prayer, we acknowledge the Father as our refuge and strength.

A similar conclusion can be reached after studying the verse Isaiah 40:29: He gives power to the weak and strength to the powerless. The identifier of the verse is 92, noting that the Book of Isaiah is the 23rd book in the Bible. The number 92 has 6 divisors {1, 2, 4, 23, 46, 92}. These are the numbers that can divide 92 to get an integer. The sum of divisors is an important property of numbers. For the number 92, we get 1+2+4+23+46+92=168, which is the identifier of the Lord’s Prayer in the Gospel of Luke.

CONCLUSION: When we pray the Lord’s Prayer, the Father will give power to those of us who are weak and strength to those of us who are powerless.

We refer to Psalm 34:11, when David told his people that he would teach them to fear God: Come, ye children, hearken unto me: I will teach you the fear of the Lord.

In his blog “Sin, Christians, and the Fear of God“, John W. Ritenbaugh wrote:

There is no doubt that God wants us to fear Him. Notice that Psalm 34:11 says that the fear of God is a quality that we must learn, indicating that we do not have this characteristic in us by nature. The fear of God, then, is different from the fears we normally have in life. Thus, it must be learned.

Now, Romans 8:12-13 tells that we have an obligation to fight sin.

¹² Therefore, brothers and sisters, we have an obligation—but it is not to the flesh, to live according to it. ¹³ For if you live according to the flesh, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live.

It is the Holy Spirit who we will help us in the battle against sin, as we read further in verses 14 and 15:

¹⁴ For those who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God. ¹⁵ The Spirit you received does not make you slaves, so that you live in fear again; rather, the Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship. And by him we cry, “Abba, Father.”

The identifier of Romans 8:14-15 is 135.

A permutation of the set {1,3,5} is {1,5,3}. Hence, we arrive the following conclusion: When we pray the Lord’s Prayer, we beseech the Holy Spirit to help us in the battle against sin.

The essence of this is that we implore the Holy Spirit to teach us how to fear God, for it is the fear of God that motivates one to consciously confronts sin on a daily basis. Indeed, we see that the value of the Hebrew word אֲלַמֶּדְכֶֽם׃ (’ă-lam-meḏ-ḵem), which means “I will teach you” in Psalm 34:11 is also 135.

CONCLUSION 1: When we pray the Lord’s Prayer, we beseech the Holy Spirit to teach us how to fear God and therefore to help us in the battle against sin.

When we pray the Lord’s Prayer, the Holy Spirit will reveal all hidden evils to the world. How is this possible? We refer to Luke 12:1-3:

12 In the mean time, when there were gathered together an innumerable multitude of people, insomuch that they trode one upon another, he began to say unto his disciples first of all, Beware ye of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy. ² For there is nothing covered, that shall not be revealed; neither hid, that shall not be known. ³ Therefore whatsoever ye have spoken in darkness shall be heard in the light; and that which ye have spoken in the ear in closets shall be proclaimed upon the housetops.

The identifier of Luke 12:1-3 is 168.

But 168 is the identifier of the Lord’s Prayer in the Gospel of Luke.

CONCLUSION 2: When we pray the Lord’s Prayer, the Holy Spirit will reveal all hidden evils to the world.

This is enough to fear our God and to stop all hidden evils in our life.