The First Petition

These words are a little obscure and don't translate naturally into plain speech. In our own language, we might put it this way: Heavenly Father, help us so that your name alone may be held holy. But what do we actually mean when we pray that God's name would be hallowed? Isn't it already holy? The answer is yes, in itself it is always holy, but not in the way we use it. God's name has been given to us when we became Christians through baptism; we are called children of God and we receive the sacraments, through which He binds Himself to us so closely that everything belonging to God is made available for our benefit. This places us under a serious obligation to honor His name properly, to keep it holy and most sacred, to treat it as our greatest treasure and our place of refuge, and to pray, as faithful children should, that His name, which is hallowed in heaven, may likewise be kept holy on earth, both by us and by the whole world.

So how is God's name hallowed among us? The simplest answer is this: through teaching and living in a way that is genuinely godly and Christian. Since we call God our Father in this prayer, we are obligated to conduct ourselves as His children, not bringing Him shame but honoring and praising Him. His name can be profaned through words or deeds, since everything we do on earth falls into one of those two categories: what we say and what we do. First, His name is profaned when people preach, teach, or speak in God's name using falsehoods and misleading ideas, dressing up lies to make them look like truth. This is among the most contemptible ways His name can be dishonored. His holy name is also profaned when it is invoked as cover for swearing, cursing, conjuring, and similar practices.

Beyond that, His name is profaned through openly wicked lives and actions, when people who call themselves Christians and claim to belong to God are living as adulterers, drunkards, bloated misers, consumed by jealousy and slander. In these cases, God's name is dishonored and dragged through the mud because of us. It works the same way as it does with an earthly father who has a corrupt, disobedient child whose behavior in word and deed brings scorn and reproach on the whole family. In the same way, God is dishonored when we, who bear His name and enjoy His countless blessings, fail to teach, speak, and live as the children of a heavenly Father should, and instead give people reason to say of us: these are children of the devil, not of God.

In this petition, you can see that we're praying for exactly what God requires in the Second Commandment: that His name not be taken in vain through swearing, cursing, lying, deceiving, and the like, but that it be used to honor and praise Him. Whoever uses God's name for any wrong purpose profanes and desecrates it. This is similar to how, in earlier times, a church was said to be desecrated when a murder or other crime was committed within it, or when a sacrament or sacred object was violated, making unholy by misuse what was holy in itself. This petition, then, is straightforward and clear once we understand the language: to hallow means, in plain terms, to praise and honor with both word and deed.

Now consider how urgently we need this prayer. The world is overrun with sects and false teachers, and they all use the holy name as a cover and a pretext for their corrupt doctrines. We should therefore cry out to God continually against all who preach and believe falsely, and against those who persecute and oppose our Gospel and sound teaching and seek to silence us, as the bishops, tyrants, fanatics, and others do. We also need to pray for ourselves, because even though we have God's Word, we are ungrateful for it and fail to live by it as we should. When you pray this petition sincerely, you can be certain it pleases God, because nothing is more acceptable to Him than that His honor and praise be lifted above all else, and that His Word be taught in its purity, valued, and cherished.