The Lord's Prayer (Pt. 6)

 

[Jesus said] “Pray then like this: Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” (Matthew 6:9-13 ESV).

 

Jesus never promised that following him would be easy or without evil. The last petition is the answer to that challenge. Compared to the more familiar wording of “lead us not into temptation,” the updated translation of the prayer above corrects some frequent misperceptions and misunderstandings about the source of any trials that Christians face. As the Epistle of James states: “No one, when tempted, should say, ‘I am being tempted by God’; for God cannot be tempted by evil and he himself tempts no one” (James 1:13). Further, when people make the mistake of tempting or testing God, daring God to make a powerful display or interfere in a situation, they’re behaving as the Israelites did to Moses (cf. Exodus 17:2) and the devil did to Jesus (cf. Matthew 4:5-7).

 

So, what do we mean when we ask God to “save us from the time of trial”? First, it means we recognize that only the power of God can delivers us from our vulnerability to temptation. Although we cannot see these powers with the naked eye, there are forces at work in the world that seek to harm us and that clearly work against God’s purposes (cf. Ephesians 6:10-13). Some Christians are so tuned into these unseen forces that they consider their life a battleground between God and the “powers and principalities.” We do not know what the future holds, but we know that God is greater than any foe or power that seeks to inflict harm. 

 

Second, it means salvation in Christ is not an immediate solution to everything that we face in our lives. The journey we walk in sanctification is a process. In seeking to live as God’s people, we still need to acknowledge our own shortcomings and weaknesses. Even the Apostle Paul knew this. He described the daily challenge this way: “I find it to be a law that when I want to do what is good, evil lies close at hand” (Romans 7:21). We have personal sins that we are reluctant to acknowledge to others, but God knows all about them. And there are enormous, mysterious forces of darkness at work all around us that exceed our imagination and comprehension. By asking God to deliver us from evil, we acknowledge that we are helpless by ourselves to follow Jesus on the path of righteousness that he modeled for us. The truth remains constant. We can only overcome through the power of Christ at work in us through the Holy Spirit.