Category: The Words of Jesus

The Lord’s Prayer; A Prophecy Fulfilled?

I have written several posts in the past about the Sermon on the Mount, specifically addressing the fact that it is NOT a set of guidelines for living the Christian life.  But I also don’t believe we should just dismiss it as an old covenant message for an old covenant audience.  I think much of what Jesus said in the sermon is prophetic regarding what is coming in the new covenant.  The beatitudes in particular I think point forward to the promise of the new covenant regarding our pure heart, the fact that we will never hunger and thirst for righteousness after we believe the gospel, we will be peacemakers, etc.

Add to this how many times Jesus spoke in parables and mystery and it leaves me wondering, could the Lord’s prayer portion of the Sermon on the Mount have been a prophetic prayer pointing forward to its fulfillment in the new covenant?  Could it be that the Lord’s prayer is not a model for us today, a prayer of longing for us to repeat.  What if it is prophetic and has already been fulfilled in Jesus?  If you enjoy this kind of study, look over these thoughts on the Lord’s prayer and let me know what you think.

First the familiar prayer,

“Our Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name.  ①Your kingdom come.  ②Your will be done ③on earth as it is in heaven.  ④Give us this day our daily bread.  ⑤And forgive us our debts, ⑥as we forgive our debtors.  ⑦And do not lead us into temptation, ⑧but deliver us from the evil one.  ⑨For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever.  Amen” (Matthew 6:9-13).

Let’s compare, line by line, Jesus’ prayer to its fulfillment in the new covenant.  The individual phrases from the Lord’s prayer are in bold and the fulfillment text from the New Testament is in italics.

“Our Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name …”

①“Your kingdom come.” 

“Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the gospel of God, and saying, ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand’ “ (Mark 1:14-15).

Nobody knew it yet at the time of Matthew chapter 6, but the kingdom of God HAD come.  The kingdom of God was “at hand.”  The kingdom of God had arrived with Jesus.

②“Your will be done.”

“For this is the will of My Father, that everyone who beholds the Son and believes in Him will have eternal life” (John 6:40).

God’s will is that we believe in Jesus.  This has happened all over the earth for the last 2000 years.

③“On earth as it is in heaven.”

God’s kingdom arriving with Jesus, and we on earth believing His gospel mean that now, today, God’s kingdom has come to earth and His will is being “done on earth as it is in heaven.”

④“Give us this day our daily bread.”

 “Jesus said to them, ‘I am the bread of life; he who comes to Me will not hunger, and he who believes in Me will never thirst’ “ (John 6:35).

Our “bread” has arrived.  Jesus said that by believing in His gospel message, we would never be spiritually hungry or thirsty again.

⑤“And forgive us our debts.”

“When you were dead in your transgressions and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He made you alive together with Him, having forgiven us ALL our transgressions, having canceled out the certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us, which was hostile to us; and He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross” (Colossians 2:13-14).

The entirety of our sin debt was taken care of at the cross.  If we believe the gospel message of Jesus Christ, we are completely and forever forgiven.  There is no need to keep asking God to forgive us our sins.

⑥”As we forgive our debtors.”

“Be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving each other, just as God in Christ also HAS forgiven you” (Ephesians 4:32).

After the cross, we are to forgive others BECAUSE we have been forgiven, not in order to be forgiven.

⑦”And do not lead us into temptation,”

“Let no one say when he is tempted, ‘I am being tempted by God,’ for God cannot be tempted by evil, and He Himself does not tempt anyone” (James 1:13).

God does not lead new covenant believers into temptation.  We are led to temptation when, of our own volition, we walk according to the flesh.

⑧”But deliver us from the evil one.”

“We know that everyone who has been born of God does not keep on sinning, but He who was born of God [Jesus] protects him, and the evil one does not touch him” (I John 5:18).

We who are born of God have been delivered from the evil one.

⑨“For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever.”

Miracle of miracles.  The kingdom (the kingdom of God is within you, Luke 17:21) and the power (the power of God is within you, Ephesians 3:20) and the glory (the glory of God is within you, John 17:22) of God now reside in you forever!  Amen.

This last line, number ⑨, is my favorite.  Just think about it.  We always see this crescendo of praise in the last line to be to God alone, and, yes, it is a praise He richly deserves.  But now, by our unbreakable union with Him, the kingdom and the power and the glory live in you RIGHT NOW!!!

Jesus instructed His first century disciples to pray this prayer, seeking these things.  But under the new covenant, our seeking is over.  Jesus did it.  Jesus fulfilled it.  We are no longer seekers.  Do you know what we are?  We are finders!!!

“Take Up Our Cross”

“And Jesus summoned the crowd with His disciples, and said to them, ‘If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me’ “ (Mark 8:34).

The idea that we must deny ourselves, take up our cross, and follow Jesus as an over and over or ongoing exercise is one of the most popular discipleship teachings.  So it behooves us to ask the question, “Is this really the point of Jesus’ words?”

Jesus introduced us to His gospel message in Mark chapter 1, “The time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel” (Mark 1:15).  “Repent” (change your mind about how one is made right with God) “and believe in the gospel” (the good news that we are made righteous and our sins are forgiven when we believe that Jesus died in our place).

With this introduction, let’s return to the three parts of our red letter saying.

“Deny himself.”  How do we deny ourselves?  By no longer believing in ourselves to save us.  No longer trusting our ability to follow the Law or muster up enough self-righteousness to be saved.  By trusting only in Jesus, we deny ourselves.  We deny our self-effort as being enough to attain salvation.  It is a one-time choice to believe the gospel.

Remember, the requirement if you are going to do it on your own is perfection (Matthew 5:48).  We can’t do perfection.  But Jesus can and Jesus did for us.  We deny ourselves when we say and believe, “I can’t, but Jesus did.”

If you believed the gospel message of Jesus Christ, your self is now fused with Christ.  You are called to embrace, not deny, this self; your new self created in the likeness of God, holy and righteous.  “And put on the new self, which in the likeness of God has been created in righteousness and holiness of the truth” (Ephesians 4:24).  Why would you be called to deny this self?  When you have placed your faith in the finished work of Jesus on the cross, you no longer need to deny yourself.  Instead, you now have an incredible freedom to be yourself; to live into all the newness of your new self, your new united identity with Jesus.

“Take up his cross.”  We often see “taking up our cross” as bearing some kind of burden in this life; a suffering of some sort.  An uneasy sacrifice to be made.  But to Jesus’ first century hearers, a cross was much more serious.  A cross only had one purpose.  It was an instrument of death.  Jesus is foretelling something we only see clearly in the apostles’ later teaching.  “Come join me in My death.”  A cross can only mean one thing; death.

How do we join Christ in His death?  “Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death?  Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.  For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection, knowing this, that our old self was crucified with Him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin;  for he who has died is freed from sin” (Romans 6:3-7).

The invitation to take up our cross is the invitation to our salvation experience.  You took up your cross when you believed the gospel message.  You took up your cross when you died and were buried with Christ.  You are now described as “he who has died”.  Cross = death.  And we don’t die over and over.  We don’t die daily.  It’s done.  It happened the minute we were saved.

Finally, “And follow Me.”  Following Jesus was a fact of life for Jesus’ first century disciples.  Jesus called many of His early followers with the simple command, “Follow Me.”  After the day of Pentecost, however, we no longer see the writers of the rest of the New Testament using “Follow Me” language.  That’s curious.  What happened at Pentecost?

The Spirit came and indwelt the disciples of Jesus.  And since His coming, we are no longer Christ followers.  “Following” suggests a separation or a distance between you and Jesus.  Jesus is up ahead and we follow behind.  But there is no separation.  Since the coming of the Spirit, your spirit is fused with Jesus.  We are now “Christ living His life through us-ers.”  I develop this idea in much more detail at this link.  Here is a short summary to whet your appetite.

If we keep thinking of Jesus as outside of us, then we will think we have to do something to get to Him, to stay with Him, and to follow Him.  But if we think of Him as He is, happily at home inside us, then we will look for Him there.  And the sheer beauty is that when we look for Him there, we will find Him.  We will find Him in us full of life and love and joy; a life, love, and joy that we have the pleasure of expressing as He lives His life through us.  Christ is the one who came to us and who stays with us.  There is no following at a distance, no matter how small.

Seeing with Clear Eyes

Understanding the Red Letters   Bonus

I have written previously about the challenge of interpreting the Sermon on the Mount in this series about the red letters.  To be clear, the message of Matthew chapters 5 through 7 is not a set of guidelines for living the Christian life.  But neither do we just cast it aside as an old covenant message for an old covenant people.  It appears to me to be an intertwined mix of three threads in Jesus’ teaching to His Jewish audience.  Jesus is preaching old covenant Law, Jesus is preaching Law 2.0 (an updated version of the Law), and last, Jesus is giving us a glimpse of life under the new covenant.

A passage that I didn’t cover previously because I really didn’t know what to make of it is Matthew 6:22-23.  Could these words of Jesus be a glimpse of the coming new covenant?  “The eye is the lamp of the body; so then if your eye is clear, your whole body will be full of light.  But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness.  If then the light that is in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!” (Matthew 6:22-23)

Think of it this way.  The eye … the eye is how we perceive the world around us.  Jesus came preaching, “Repent and believe the gospel.”  Repent, as we know is “changing one’s mind.”  Another way to say it is “changing one’s perception.”  We perceive with the eye.  Jesus spoke often about truly “seeing” the gospel.

… is the lamp … the lamp illuminates what we see with our eye … of the body … the body is our earthly experience.  What we perceive with our eyes will illuminate our earthly experience.

If your eye is clear … if your perception is seeing correctly, … your whole body will be full of light … the light is the kingdom of God inside you.  This is a preview of what is coming in the new covenant; the light of the kingdom of God will shine in us.  It will shine in us who repent (change our perception to see clearly) and believe the gospel of Jesus Christ.

If your eye is bad … if you are not perceiving and receiving God’s offer of salvation … your whole body will be full of darkness … you will experience the total darkness that comes with being a lost person, outside of the kingdom of God.  Or said another way … If then the light that is in you is darkness … Wait a minute, how can the light in us be darkness?

Jesus said to the Pharisees, even as they were not believing in Him, “The kingdom of God is within you” (Luke 17:21).  How could Jesus say that?  Because the kingdom of God was available to the Pharisees just as it is to all men.  But they refused to believe, they denied the kingdom available to them.  That is how the light in us can be darkness.  We reject the light when we reject the gospel message of Jesus Christ.

When the light goes out because of one’s unbelief, … how great is the darkness! … the darkness is great because it is literally the difference between life and death.  The light is life.  The darkness is death.  The darkness is spiritual death.  And the darkness is total.  There is no partial darkness for the lost.

In the gospel of John, Jesus speaks often about light and darkness signifying saved to eternal life and those who are lost.  And this passage, a bit obscure in Matthew chapter 6, is a preview of the salvation offer that is being announced by Jesus throughout the gospels, “Repent and believe the gospel.”  If you have believed the gospel message of Jesus Christ, your eye is clear and you are full of light.  Shine on, my friends.

Closing Thoughts on the Words of Jesus

Understanding the Red Letters   Part 43

Today, we wrap up our series on understanding the red letters of Jesus.  There is much more that could be said about the words of Jesus, but I hope you have gotten a taste of the beauty of Jesus’ words in the gospels.  The first four books of the New Testament describe a transition from the age of the old covenant to the coming of the new covenant.  And it can lead to confusion about which of Jesus’s words we should take to heart and which we should leave behind in the world of the old covenant.

I have tried to show in this series that not all of Jesus’ words were meant for us, new covenant believers.  Jesus was sometimes speaking old covenant to His Jewish audience.  Remember how many times Jesus used the phrase, “The Law and the Prophets”, to refer to the old covenant time or message (Luke 16:16 and elsewhere)?  But there is a bounty of new covenant in Jesus’ teaching as well and we will miss it if we just lump everything Jesus said into old covenant because it was said before the cross.

Jesus’ promise of life; new life, forgiven life, resurrection life, abundant life, eternal life, are all new covenant promises.  Jesus’ pronouncement that His kingdom has arrived introduces us to the coming of the new covenant.  Jesus’ parables often describe what life will be like in His new covenant kingdom.  And His sermon in the upper room expanded on all kinds of new topics about our new covenant experience.

One of the best ways to interpret Jesus’ words in light of the new covenant is to read them through the lens of His kingdom message; its arrival and what life in His kingdom will look like.  The kingdom in us that He brought to us is all part of the promise of the new covenant.

Another helpful way to read Jesus’ words is through the lens of all the new covenant explanation given to us by the apostles in their letters.  Jesus promised them that the Holy Spirit would bring His words to their minds as needed.  We believe that their writings are a direct result of this leading of the Spirit.

Finally, read Jesus’ words through the lens of rest and connection.  If you believe that your relationship with the Father is one of separation, felt as a fragile and shaky connection, then you will interpret Jesus’ words as a confusing mix of complicated commands.  And you will be weighed down by guilt, shame, and condemnation; looking for some price that still needs to be paid for your sin.  Jesus paid the price in full, once and forever.  Your connection to Jesus and the Father and the Holy Spirit is unbreakable, unshakable, rock solid, and never-ending.

And that forever forgiven and connected to the Father starts and never ends the minute you believe the gospel message of Jesus Christ.  Understanding the time and place and meaning and point of Jesus’ words in the gospels sets us free from guilt and shame.  And it points us to rest, peace, comfort, and joy.  The words of Jesus that apply to you as a new covenant believer are not in the gospels to raise your stress or angst or worry level.  They bring you rest in His finished work on your behalf.  Enter His rest, my friend, and find rest for your soul.

Awash in the Love of God

Understanding the Red Letters   Part 42

For the past several days, we have been sharing thoughts from the Sermon in the Upper Room.  Jesus’ last message to His disciples before His death lays the foundation for what life under the new covenant will look like.  And unlike the Sermon on the Mount, this message is pure new covenant.

One of the interesting things I find in Jesus’ upper room discourse is the lack of commandments.  This is one of the most significant differences between the two covenants, the old and the new.  The old covenant, the Law, was ALL about keeping the commandments.  The new covenant, on the other hand, is about who you are; a new creation, a child of God with an unbreakable connection to your heavenly Father.

A covenant is a promise.  And one of the promises of the new covenant is that you are a totally forgiven, fully accepted, and deeply loved child of God.

You see, when you know who you are as a reborn child of God, you know what to do.  You don’t need a list of commandments because grace is teaching you “to deny ungodliness and worldly desires and to live sensibly, righteously and godly in the present age” (Titus 2:12).  Your new nature is guiding you.  And your new indwelling of Christ’s Spirit is empowering you.  Can I say it again?  When you know who you are, you know what to do.

Is doing what you know to do automatic?  No, it is a maturing process to live into your new identity; to live according to who you are.  And “Christ in you” is an endless supply of power to grow into who you are.  The key to how the “who you are” translates into the “knowing what to do” is recognizing the reality of Christ living in you; the power source for doing what needs to be done.

Now the Sermon in the Upper Room is not command-free.  It does contain one commandment.  Jesus calls it “a new commandment.”  I call it “a new commandment for a new covenant.”  “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another” (John 13:34).

The focus of the Sermon in the Upper Room is two-fold.  First, it is about who you are as a child of God.  You are “vine and branches” close with the Father.  And second, how we live.  We are to love one another.  And the sheer beauty of it all is that the who you are – complete with a new heart, new Spirit, new nature, new life, new self, new power, new identity, and new freedom – is the HOW you keep the commandment to love.  You love as God loves because of who you are; filled with the love of God because He lives in you.

Can you tell I love these upper room chapters in John’s gospel?  And I love this new covenant message.  And even from afar, I love you, my friends!