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The Gospel of Luke Chapter 11:1-26 How to Pray 11:1 Now Jesus was praying in a certain place. When he stopped, one of his disciples said to him, "Lord, teach us to pray, just as John taught his disciples." The disciples had been listening to the effective and personal way in which Jesus Christ prayed to God and were impressed by it so much that after he had finished they asked him to teach them how they might pray in the same way. They had seen how an attitude of prayer had been instilled in the lives of John’s followers, and thought perhaps Jesus might want them to be people of prayer too. 11:2 So he said to them, "When you pray, say: Father, may your name be honored; may your kingdom come. They were right, of course, and the fact that Jesus did as they asked indicates that he does indeed want us to pray to God in the same way that he did. Jesus began by showing how it is necessary to have a right relationship with God before we can pray; through Christ we have been given new birth and so God is our Father. It is this relationship which undergirds the entire prayer and which must be acknowledges at the start of it – God is our ‘Father’1. The nature of God as Father surpasses that of any earthly father. Moreover, whilst the relationship is intimate, Jesus insists that it must never become informal; by which I mean we must always remember that God is holy and that his Name is to be revered above all else. We are to pray that the reign or rule of God shall be extended, first of all in terms of obedience in our own lives and then throughout the world in the hearts and lives of men and women—resulting ultimately in the coming
1
Some manuscripts have πατερ ημων and some have simply πατερ, but in either case the context demands the sense ‘our father’ if not the words. The texts which prefer πατερ ημων actually read πατερ ημων ο εν τοις ουρανοις, the latter part meaning ‘who is in heaven’. This variant reading is perhaps the best known, as it occurs in the KJV, and emphasises the spiritual relationship between God and the petitioner. Our new birth is of a spiritual nature (e.g. John 1:12-13; 3:6; 2 Peter 1:4).