What Does Each Section of The Lord's Prayer Mean?

Updated Dec 15, 2022
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Joe Thorn

In this series of videos, Joe Thorn takes readers through the components of The Lord's Prayer.

Why Does Jesus Start The Lord's Prayer with Our Father, Who Art in Heaven?

The following is a transcript of the video above, edited for readability.

I think it's one of the most important parts of the prayer because it sets us up to approach God in a very particular way. To start with, our Father indicates a number of things. One is relationship, another is an intimate relationship. We as Christians, through our adoption in Jesus Christ, relate to God as our heavenly Father. We can cry out to him. We call him Aba. He hears us. He is inclined to hear us. And because he has received us in Jesus, he will receive our prayers in Jesus. So there is this intimacy in prayer that we cannot forget. But he's not just our father, he's our father who is in heaven. So he is exalted, he is holy, he is transcendent, he is other. And so, we would say that there are these theological ideas that are complimenting one another here. One is transcendence. He is high and lifted up in it and the other is imminence. He is close and accessible. And so when Jesus says pray this way, our Father who is in heaven, it's putting both those ideas together, which promote both passion and humility.