Lord's Prayer Pt. 1 - Our Father in Heaven

Every night, Stephanie and I do devotionals with our kids. Usually I take my 12-year-old son, but about once a week I get to do the devotional with my 7-year-old daughter, Z. When it’s my turn, we read from the Jesus Storybook Bible, which is pretty great, by the way.

A few nights ago she asked if we could read the passage about the Lord’s Prayer. Evidently, that is a section she loves to read. However, before we began I asked her if she knew the actual version of the Lord’s Prayer from Matthew 6. She said no. So I began to talk with her about the first phrase.

Our Father in heaven…

I began by asking Z why the prayer doesn’t begin with “My Father”. She said that God is not just her Father, but our Father. So I asked her who ‘our’ referred to. Who is God the Father of? She said ‘us’. Everybody.

Is that the case? Is God the Father of everyone?

Many in the hyper-grace movement believe so. One author writes, apparently about everyone:

We are not solitary pilgrims looking to the heavens and calling out to God, but adopted sons and daughters looking out at the world, each other, and ourselves through God. “For ‘In Him we live and move and have our being’” (Acts 17:28, italics mine). We are already “in” Christ. We need not ascend but fall deeper into an awareness of that experience.

I can understand the heart behind such statements. As Christians, we should earnestly want everyone to be with Jesus forever. But does scripture actually teach that all people are already in Christ? Is everyone physically born into the kingdom of God, born into God’s family, and only in need of becoming aware of this truth to find salvation?

John’s Gospel was the last to be written, and was penned after all of Paul’s letters. In the first chapter John narrates that Jesus came to His own people, but they didn’t receive Him. However, to everyone who will receive Him, to those who will believe in His name, He has given the right to become children of God. Children not born by their natural parents, but born by God.

John appears to be clearly saying that no one can be naturally born into God’s family (See John 3:1-7 for further clarification). Scripture, though, can be interpreted in various ways. So what was the early Church’s orthodox position on this subject and passage?

The new man, born again and restored to his God by His grace, says “Father,” in the first place because he has now begun to be a son. “He came,” He says, “to His own, and His own received Him not. But as many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe in His name.” … Beloved brethren … observe and understand that we should call Him … our Father, that is, the Father of those who believe—of those who, being sanctified by Him and restored by the nativity of spiritual grace, have begun to be sons of God. – Cyprian 250CE, Vol. 5, p. 786-787

The early church took John 1 seriously and literally (Two other examples include Irenaeus and Justin Martyr). They believed that only those who choose to receive Jesus become born again into God’s family, and that birth brings supernatural transformation. They also believed that there is an intrinsic relationship between baptism and becoming born again as God’s sons and daughters.

I told Z that we could pray “our Father” because she, her mom and I had given our lives to Jesus because of what Jesus had done for us. And in doing so, we were now adopted sons and daughters of God. We were born again into God's family as brothers and sisters.

However, that also means that even though she and her physical brother have the same biological parents, he still needs to give his life to Jesus to be able to say “our Father” in an authentic way. Therefore, we needed to pray for Him to really understand God’s love for him, and trust in God the Father with all of his heart.

We prayed that her brother would trust that God is a heavenly Father. God is perfectly good in everything He does, and not like anyone else he had ever met. We prayed that he would see that God the Father is just like Jesus, who reflects our heavenly Father. We prayed that one day soon, our whole family would pray “our Father” all together as adopted brothers and sisters of the King.

I’d love it if you would pray about that for us too!