AnderspeaK
Lord’s Prayer 9. Some Conclusions
Dale Bruner:
The Lord's Prayer stretches from the Father at the beginning to the devil at the end, from heaven to hell, and it embraces in between everything of importance in life. The prayer originally ended with the ominous words "the evil one." But early on it was felt that this ending was too abrupt and negative, and so the more polished ending was added, "for thine is the kingdom," etc., which teaches us valuable truth. We should allow the prayer to end roughly when we pray it privately.
The Lord's Prayer is the Christian's daily companion and prayer book. In it we have Jesus' own priorities in prayer; but if we learn how to form our prayers into closer conformity to the divine will; through it we are assured that our prayers are according to the will of God and so, surely, heard.
Simone Weil:
The six petitions correspond with each other in pairs. The bread which is transcendent is the same thing as the divine name. It is what brings about the contact of man with God. The kingdom of God is the same thing as his protection stretched out over us against temptation; to protect is the function of royalty. Forgiving our debtors their debts is the same thing as the total acceptance of the will of God. The difference is that in the first three petitions the attention is fixed solely on God. In the three last, we turn our attention back to ourselves in order to compel ourselves to make these petitions a real and not an imaginary act.
In the first half of the prayer, we begin with acceptance. Then we allow ourselves a desire. Then we correct it by coming back to acceptance. In the second half, the order is changed; we finish by expressing desire. Only desire has now become a negative; it is expressed as a fear; therefore it corresponds to the highest degree of humility and that is a fitting way to end.
The Our Father contains all possible petitions; we cannot conceive of any prayer not already contained in it. It is to prayer what Christ is to humanity. It is impossible to say it once through giving the fullest possible attention to each word, without a change, infinitesimal perhaps but real, taking place in the soul.
Lord’s Prayer 8. Lead us not into temptation
David Hill
The original Aramaic was probably “and cause us not to enter,” the causative having a permissive force(“allow us not to enter”); and the question whether God directs toward temptation is hardly involved. It may well include reference to the final testing of God’s people before the consummation of God’s Kingdom(see MT 24 and Rev. 3:10).
Dale Bruner:
The petition for bread was a prayer for the present, the petition for forgiveness is a prayer for the removal of a bad past, and now the prayer for leading is a prayer for a good future. When we ask for forgiveness we almost instinctively ask next to be kept from the very temptations and evil that made our prayer for forgiveness necessary at all.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer:
Many and diverse are the temptations that beset the Christian. But the disciple is conscious of this weakness, and does not expose himself unnecessarily to temptation in order to test the strength of his faith. Christians ask God not to put their puny faith to the test, but to preserve them in the hour of temptation.
Simone Weil:
The only temptation for man is to be abandoned to his own resources in the presence of evil. His nothingness is then proved experimentally. Although the soul has received supernatural bread at the moment when it asked for it, its joy is mixed with fear because it could only ask for it for the present. The future is still to be feared. The soul has not the right to ask for bread for the morrow, but it expresses its fear in the form of a supplication. It finishes with that. The prayer began with the word “Father,” it ends with the word “evil.” We must go from confidence to fear.
Confidence alone can give us strength enough not to fall as a result of fear. After having contemplated the name, the kingdom, and the will of God--after having received the supernatural bread and having been purified from evil, the soul is ready for that true humility which crowns all virtues. Humility consists of knowing that in this world the whole soul, no only what we term the ego in its totality, but also the supernatural part of the soul, which is God present in it, subject to time and to the vicissitudes of change. There must be an absolute acceptance of the possibility that everything natural in us should be destroyed. But we must simultaneously accept and repudiate the possibility that the supernatural part of the soul should disappear. It must be accepted as being something utterly horrible. We must be afraid of it, but our fear must be as it were the completion of confidence.
From the Westminster Catechism:
We pray that God would either keep us from being tempted to sin or support and deliver us when we are tempted.
