Jesus' disciples were watching Him praying. When he ceased, they asked Him to teach them also how to pray - maybe like He did. We may wonder what it was that they saw in Him that made them want to emulate their Master. I think it may have been His approach to such a holy God. Maybe they were reminded of the seraphim in Isaiah's vision (Isa 6).
In the phrase we are thinking of this week, Jesus focused on His Father's Name: ‘Let Thy Name be hallowed’ (made holy, venerated, sanctified). Personal names in the Bible convey the nature, character or calling of the person. So Jesus was placing as pre-eminent this aspect of His Father: His holy nature, His pure character, His Name, which should be kept holy in the lives of all His disciples.
The One True God is…Holy, Holy, Holy
God has hundreds of names in Scripture, all of which reflect aspects of His being, His character and His nature. The first name mentioned (Gen 1:1) is the plural name of the One true God - Elohim1 - the all-powerful one, who created all things (Isa 45:21; Eph 3:9).
We see this aspect of God's nature in Isaiah's vision of the seraphim above God's throne, continually praising His thrice-holy Name – “qadosh, qadosh, qadosh” (Isa 6:3), a word derived from qadash, meaning ‘beyond, separate from, totally-other-than’. God's essence is more than and beyond description – words fail us, and we fall in worship. In modern terms, He is utterly special.
This great and awesome Name is a person – He is HOLY (Ps 99:1-3). This tells us of two central features of His Name: His total transcendence, and His perfection. He truly is infinite, awesome, and alone worthy of our worship.
We Too Are to Be Holy
Yet He desires that we take something of His Name upon ourselves. Three times He says that we too are to be holy: “Be holy, because I am holy”, and then, “Be holy, because I the Lord your God am holy”; and again, “Be holy to Me, because I the Lord am holy” (Lev 11:45; 19:2; 20:26). Can you see the difference, the goal? We are to be holy to the Lord, our awesome God.
But how can we know such a holy God? Only through His self-revelation. He revealed His Name and His nature in fullness in His Son, Yeshua (Col 1:19, 2:9), so we can know His holy Name in His Son Jesus, who confirms this: “No-one comes to the Father except through Me” (John 14:6). He alone is the Way to know the Father.
He Would Have Lives Set Apart from the World and to Him, for All to See His Nature
The Father desires that we partake of His holy nature to make His Name known to the world, that all may see Him in His Son, Messiah Jesus. In the same way that He set apart His chosen people Israel from other nations (Deut 7:6; Lev 20:26 - to be My own), He also calls believers in Jesus to be separated from the world's values and separated to the Lord.
We should seek to distinguish between the sacred and the profane, the divine and the ordinary, the holy and the common, and to embrace His Name in our daily lives. In the Tanakh this is shown as not wearing mixed clothing of linen (symbol of purity and separation) and wool (symbol of worldly sweat) (Deut 22:11; Lev 19:19; Ezek 44:17). Jesus encourages us through the cleansing of His Word to obey Him, both to remain humbly in the Lord Jesus (in His holy Name) and to allow Him to remain in us, bringing His holy nature into our lives. The fruit of this will be that people may see in us a reflection of the holy God, and bring the Father glory (John 15:3-5, 8). God's holy nature in Jesus was seen by His disciples, and those that we meet can know His holy Name (His nature and character) through the holy lives that we live.
But rather than blind obedience, God desires relationship. To draw near to Him, we need to know before whom we stand, and be transformed by the renewing of our mind (Rom 12:2), yielded to our Lord Jesus, walking His way in holiness, so that we may worship (= serve) God acceptably with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire (Heb 12:28-29).
Will We Show His Name to be Hallowed?
These are some more Names of our awesome God: He is Omniscient (He knows all things - past, present and future - and cannot be deceived), Omnipotent (He is all-powerful and cannot be overcome), Omnipresent (He is always with us and cannot be avoided) and Transcendent (He is beyond description and cannot be excelled) - all aspects of His holiness - and He is the only most holy God.
The question is: to know Him, how much of ourselves will we give Him? Jesus is the Way, the Truth and the Life, so we need look no further. He says, simply, “Anyone who has seen Me has seen the Father, for I and the Father are one” (John 14:9, 10:30); “Come to Me…and I will give you rest - learn from Me” (Matt 11:28, and thus of My Father); and, “I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full” (John 10:10).
We hallow God's Name when we seek the Lord Jesus, when we live lives that honour Him and when we serve His desire to draw people into the Kingdom of His Son. Time is short now, for He is coming back, as He promised. Be blessed in this precious search for Life.
Author: Greg Stevenson
References
1 Hebrew nouns have a dual form for 'two' items, and a plural form for 'three or more'. The Bible progressively reveals God as a unity of three persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. In the Hebrew Bible (the Tanakh), when the reference is to the One True God, the plural noun Elohim uses a singular verb - God is echad - one, and indicates both unity and intensification in the subject.