🙌 Father's Glory 1st Jn 7:18 🙏 Then Our Needs Added (His Provision, Our Relationship to God & Others, Protection), Matt 6:9-13; c.f., Matt 6:33...

[Chrysostom]

You set the petitions in perfect order, seeking first the glory of God before the needs of the body. This is wisdom. Yet let us examine the plea for daily bread. There is a snare hidden in that request for many, a subtle shift by which provision for the flesh becomes provision to fulfill its lusts. Do not imagine the heathen alone stumble here. There are Christians who do evil, I know, while some outside the Church appear temperate by nature; but nature is not virtue. The man who can endure the violence of passion and remain chaste, the man who, threatened with hell and promised a Kingdom, still struggles to stay upright, such a one understands the battle.

The body needs care, as the Apostle granted Timothy a little wine for his stomach’s sake. That is health. But when you light up the flame, when you make the furnace powerful with excess in food, drink, or soft living, you are no longer asking for bread but for fuel. You are kindling desire, not sustaining life. Such a request turns the sacred prayer into a petition for your own ruin. The present life is a sleep, and the things in it no different from dreams. The man who grows rich in a dream wakes to find it profitless. So too, the one who pampers the body for wantonness will find, even before the Day dawns, that those dreams have flown away, leaving only the shame, which is immortal.

As for deliverance from evil, you ask rightly, but understand the deliverance. Paul was rescued from the lion’s mouth of Nero, yet he was also delivered from a fiercer lion, the devil himself, by being kept from yielding to sin. To resist unto blood, striving against sin, is a preservation greater than escaping death. When you pray, "Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil," you are asking not merely for a life free of trouble, but for a soul that does not harden. See how sin produces unbelief. A man falls into a depth of evils, becomes contemptuous, and then cannot even believe, freeing himself from fear by denying the Judge. The fool says in his heart there is no God, and becomes abominable in his doings. Guard against this. Exhort one another daily while it is called today. So long as a man lives, let him not despair, but let him recover himself.

Finally, when you encounter those who speak evil of the Way, learn from Paul. When men hardened themselves and spake evil, he did not remain to kindle their envy or trade insults. He departed, separating the disciples. The time comes when persisting only scatters the peace God so desires. Do not give the devil ground by contentious striving with revilers who have refused the light. Prune away all that entangles, spend your industry on spiritual things, and by this you will rouse yourself from sleep. For you have put on Christ, and the goal of your deliverance is that you might receive the adoption, becoming a son who cries out with a true spirit, not a servant making requests for the flesh.

 

[Silas]

Your prayer rightly begins with the glory of the Father, and that is the surest foundation. When our first longing is for His name to be honored and His kingdom to come, everything else finds its proper place. We must understand that the fear of the Lord, which is the beginning of wisdom, is fundamentally to hate evil. It means learning to detest what God detests and loving what He loves. This is not a passive distaste but an active separation. The wisdom of Scripture pleads with us: do not go in the way of evil men; avoid it, turn from it, pass it by. Put away a perverse mouth and let your eyes look straight ahead, pondering the path of your feet. Removing your foot from evil is the practical outworking of that reverent fear.

This is intimately connected to the work God’s Spirit is doing within us. With unveiled faces, we behold the glory of the Lord as in a mirror, and we are being changed from glory to glory into His very image. That is the core of our transformation. It is not a sudden achievement but a daily process as we fix our gaze on Jesus Christ. The Spirit works this change, conforming us to the image of the Son, so that the excellency of the glory may be of God and not of ourselves. As this subjective work deepens, it becomes objective; what God works in us begins to flow through us for the benefit of others.

Your petition for daily bread and for forgiveness is perfectly ordered. We come to a Father whose forgiveness is total and complete. He blots out our transgressions in such a way that, as far as He is concerned, the past sin does not exist. We stand justified, just as though we had never done it. This is the example we are called to follow. Because we have been so loved and so freely forgiven, we are to walk in that same forgiving love toward others. The grace we have received becomes the grace we extend.

The prayer to be led not into temptation and delivered from evil meets a world fraught with darkness. We are kept not by our own strength but by the power of the One who commissioned His servants to open eyes, to turn people from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God. The cross of Jesus Christ is the place where that victory was secured. It was there God’s love was manifested, and through it, the Son, who shared the Father’s glory from before the world began, opened the way for us to receive forgiveness of sins and an inheritance among the sanctified. Because of that finished work, we can take the helmet of salvation and stand against the attacks of the enemy, knowing that we have been saved from the tyranny of a life mastered by the flesh.

The glory Jesus prayed for was not only the heavenly glory He had with the Father from the beginning but also the glory that would be revealed through the cross. Even now, we are in a time of preservation, and our hope is set on the day when God’s glorious righteousness will spring forth upon the earth. That day is coming, when the kingdom, power, and glory are fully manifested, and violence is heard no more. Until then, we are His earthen vessels, carrying a glorious treasure, being changed daily as we behold Him. Your prayer is answered in the person of Christ, who is your righteousness, your provision, your forgiveness, and your deliverer. Rest in the total nature of His grace, and let the Spirit continue the transforming work of hating evil and walking in love, from glory to glory.