NEW TESTAMENT CONTEXTUAL COMMENTARY

by Dr. Robert R. Seyda

GOSPEL OF MATTHEW

CHAPTER SIX

Part III

When it comes to this kingdom, let us look at what Daniel of the Old Testament saw: “During the time of the kings of the fourth kingdom, the God of heaven will set up another kingdom that will continue forever. It will never be destroyed. And it will be the kind of kingdom that cannot be passed on to another group of people. This kingdom will crush all the other kingdoms. It will bring them to an end, but that kingdom itself will continue forever.”¹ His vision concluded with this statement, “Then God’s holy people will rule over the kingdom and all the people from all the kingdoms of earth. This kingdom will last forever, and people from all the other kingdoms will respect and serve them.”² It is for this kingdom to take shape and begin to influence the world that Jesus encouraged His followers to pray. We know it could not be initiated until Jesus died and rose from the dead and ascended back to the father. So He wanted His followers to pray that nothing would prevent that from happening. And this would be facilitated if they continued to abide by His teachings and do His will. As Jesus’ royal ancestor, king David, said, “My God, I am happy to do whatever you want. I never stop thinking about your teachings.”³

Just as Jesus came to do the will of His Father in heaven, and to declare the message His heavenly Father gave Him, so Jesus wanted His followers to do on earth what was conceived in heaven. David recognized this in his song, “The Lord set his throne up in heaven, and He rules over everything. Angels, praise the Lord! You angels are the powerful soldiers who obey His commands. You listen to Him and obey His commands. Praise the Lord, all His armies. You are His servants, and you do what He wants. Everything the Lord has made should praise Him throughout the world that He rules! My soul, praise the Lord!”⁴ This is what Daniel saw in his vision of the kingdom to come, “God rules forever! His kingdom continues for all generations. People on earth cannot compete with Him. God does what He wants with the powers of heaven and the people on earth. No one can stop His powerful hand or question what He does.”⁵

This then was not a new concept to the Jews, nor should it have been to the disciples. Even their Rabbis prayed: “Do Your will in heaven above, and grant relief to them that fear You below and do that which is good in Your eyes.”⁶ Once the acknowledgment of God’s kingdom in heaven, and the desire that as He rules there He should rule here on earth, then the petition for daily needs is addressed. And of course the reason for God’s rule on earth is that His will for mankind can function and bring honor and glory to His name. The Jews recognized that God was in control from heaven. For instance, we read where the people were told what one Rabbi did to show respect to his master, and then said: “May it be the will of God that you become leader of the whole city.”⁷

Verse: 11 Then Jesus goes on to say: “Give us the food we need for today.” It should be noted that the prayer points to the immediate need for today. In one Jewish prayer book we find this prayer: “O God, give for me my nourishment and daily bread – my Messiah will come to His City – O reveal soon your redemption to your people – bring the Savior to Zion, let the Branch shoot up, Elijah the prophet and Messiah the king.”⁸ So we can see that Jesus may have been repeating what was already part of a Jewish prayer before a meal.

When God sent manna from heaven to the Israelites in the wilderness, He ordered: “Each of you should gather what you need”.⁹ One Jewish commentator noted that: “As the entire phenomenon was of supernatural character, a gift directly from God, it was logical that it should be distributed evenly among all the people”.¹⁰ This same Jewish Rabbi goes on to say that in the gathering of the manna, another miracle took place: “Both the ones who thought that they had collected more than the amount instructed and the ones who did not think they had collected that amount found that they had each collected the same amount”.¹¹ And we know what happened to those who tried to horde, “They saved their food for the next day. But worms got into the food and it began to stink”.¹² So in a way, our Lord was teaching that we should ask only for what is needed today because tomorrow may never come.

One Psalmist had a unique way of putting it: “God, I ask you to help me with two things for the rest of my life. Don’t let me tell lies. And don’t make me too rich or too poor—give me only enough food for each day. If I have too much, I might deny that I need You, Lord. But if I am too poor, I might steal and bring shame to the name of my God.”¹³ Later on in verse 34 of this chapter, Jesus emphasizes this same point. But our Lord knows that none of us are perfect, we often come up short in meeting God’s standards. This concept of praying for one’s daily needs was not foreign to the Jewish people. One Rabbi taught: “May it be Your will, O Lord our God, to give to each one the sustenance they need, and make up for what they lack.”¹⁴ So Jesus tied God’s provisions for daily needs to His will as did the Jews in their prayer. John Gill tells us that Rabbi Jose in the Zohar says that all the children of faith seek “every day to ask their food” of the Lord, and to pray a prayer for it.¹⁵

We must also examine the linguistics of this verse as it relates to the use of the word “bread.” One Jewish commentary defines the words “my food” as literally “my bread.”¹⁶ He goes on to say: “All food is called “bread”, as when Belshatzar the king gave a great “banquet” (breads),¹⁷ and adds: “Let’s destroy the tree with its ‘fruit’, it literally says ‘bread’.”¹⁸ In the Jewish Prayer Book, the Morning Blessings prayer goes like this: “Blessed are You, God our Lord, King of the universe, Who has provided me with my every need.”¹⁹ So Jesus is not advising that we only ask only for bread, but all of our daily needs for nutrition.

One of the earliest church scholars, Cyprian (AD 200-258), bishop of Carthage, had this to say about our Lord’s inclusion of bread in this prayer: “As the prayer goes forward, we ask and say, ‘Give us this day our daily bread.’ And this may be understood both spiritually and literally, because either way of understanding it is rich in divine usefulness to our salvation. For Christ is the bread of life; and this bread does not belong to all men, but it is ours. And according as we say, ‘Our Father,’ because He is the Father of those who understand and believe; so also we call it ‘our bread,’ because Christ is the bread of those who are in union with His body. And we ask that this bread should be given to us daily, that we who are in Christ, and daily receive the Eucharist for the food of salvation, may not, by the interposition of some heinous sin, by being prevented, as withheld and not communicating, from partaking of the heavenly bread, be separated from Christ’s body, as He Himself predicts, and warns, ‘I am the bread of life which came down from heaven. If any man eat of my bread, he shall live for ever: and the bread which I will give is my flesh, for the life of the world.’ When, therefore, He says, that whoever shall eat of His bread shall live for ever; as it is manifest that those who partake of His body and receive the Eucharist by the right of communion are living, so, on the other hand, we must fear and pray lest any one who, being withheld from communion, is separate from Christ’s body should remain at a distance from salvation; as He Himself threatens, and says, ‘Unless ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink His blood, ye shall have no life in you.’ And therefore we ask that our bread—that is, Christ—may be given to us daily, that we who abide and live in Christ may not depart from His sanctification and body.”²⁰

Here we can see where within just two hundred years after our Lord spoke these words, the church had already began to find some spiritual way of interpreting what Jesus said, especially about bread, which Cyprian tied to the Eucharist from this prayer. Most Protestant scholars do not see this connection, in that it would require having communion everyday. However, eventually the Roman Catholic church did institute this practice in the seventh century, especially in the monasteries and rural parishes in France, and we can see where the roots for this practice may have begun. This is only one example of how the words of Christ were detached from their intended meaning so that men could have more control over how His teachings were instituted in the church. We see this in the writing of Origen on this Lord’s Prayer where he speaks of “supersubstantial”²¹ bread, as well as Jerome in his commentary on Matthew.

However, Chrysostom seems to strike a different note when he says: “What is daily bread? That for one day. And because He said, Your will be done in earth as it is in heaven, but was speaking to men clothed with flesh, and subject to the necessities of nature, and incapable of the same impassibility²² with the angels: – while He enjoins the commands to be practiced by us also, even as they perform them; He lowers expectations in what follows, due to the infirmity of human nature. Therefore, He says that He requires the holiest conduct, but not that which is free from emotions, because the laws of nature do not permit it: for it requires necessary food. But mark, I pray you, how even in things that are bodily, that which is spiritual abounds. For it is neither for riches, nor for exquisite living, nor for costly clothing, nor for any other such thing, but for bread only, that He has commanded us to make our prayer. And for daily bread, so as not to take thought for the morrow.²³ Because of this He added, daily bread, that is, bread for one day. And not even with this expression is He satisfied, but adds another saying afterwards, Give us this day; so that we may not, beyond this, wear ourselves out with the care of the following day. For that day, the interval before which you know not whether you will see, why should you submit to its cares? This, as He proceeded, He enjoined also more fully, saying, Take no thought for the morrow. He would have us be on every hand unburdened and winged for flight, yielding just so much to nature as the compulsion of necessity requires of us.”²⁴ So it appears that the great orator did not see this as anything more that asking God for bodily sustenance each day, whether it be provided as a result of our labors or by His generosity.

Verse 12: Then, as we are asking God to give to us for our physical needs, Jesus says we should ask Him for our spiritual needs. “Forgive us what we have done wrong, as we too have forgiven those who have wronged us.”

The Greek word used here, opheilēma, is translated into English as “trespasses” and “debts,” and is only used twice in the N.T. Once here and again in Romans 4:4. It can either be used literally to indicate “indebtedness,” or figuratively as a metaphor for an “offense against.” We find this concept addressed when the people of Israel were instructed: “Here is how every seventh year release is to be done: every creditor is to give up what he has loaned to his fellow member of the community — he is not to force his neighbor or relative to repay it, because Adonai’s time of remission has been proclaimed.”²⁵ In other words, as you are forgiven your debt, you automatically forgive those who owe you a debt.

But there was more too it than a simple trade-off. One Rabbi makes this comparison: “If your neighbor entertains you first with soup and you subsequently entertains him with meat, you are still indebted to him; why? Because he showed you hospitality first”.²⁶ In this case, the debt is gratitude. Paul uses it this way: “Now to the one who works, wages are not credited as a gift but as an obligation.”²⁷ We have a saying in English: when a person finishes their jail sentence and is released back into the public we often remark that they should be accepted because, “they’ve paid their debt to society.” Since this request for forgiveness stems from not giving back to God what we owe Him, especially since we just asked Him for our daily bread, then we must look into the idea of what we owe God in this sense: because He gave us life, do we not owe Him the pleasure of living it to His glory? Whatever talent and abilities, intellect and ingenuity He granted us, do we not owe using it for Him in doing His will? By the same token, if we want Him to forgive us when we fail to do what is expected of us, Jesus added that we should be just as willing to extend that same forgiveness to others for any similar trespass.

But since Matthew wrote this first in Hebrew, Jewish scholars examining this prayer have suggested that the word “debts” is better understood with the broader term “wrongs.” This was part of what the Rabbi’s taught. In one passage we read: “The collectors go their round continually every day and exact payment of men with their consent or without their consent, for they have that on which they can rely.”²⁸ Jewish commentators say that what these collectors are relying on is God’s record of the man’s debts.²⁹ And debts in this case are the repayment for sins committed, because God does not need man’s money. However, even though Luke was a Gentile and wrote his Gospel in Greek, he also understood this metaphor of “debt” being tied to God’s record of our wrong doings. So he chose the Greek word hamartia, which means: “to be mistaken, miss the mark.” That is perhaps why the King James translators rendered it “sins” in Luke.³⁰ It was not until the Book of Common Prayer was published in England in 1549, that they copied this prayer from the Tyndale Bible of 1526 which reads in old English: “And forgeve vs oure treaspasses eve as we forgeve oure trespacers” and wrote: “And forgeve us our trespaces, as wee forgeve them that trespasse agaynst us.”³¹

In the Jewish Prayer Book, in the Morning Prayers – Yehi Ratzon, we have this line: “Forgive us for all our sins, grant us atonement for all our iniquities, and forgive and pardon us for all our transgressions.”This is all well and good, but Jesus had said earlier that He wanted them to be better than those who used their prayers for their own good. Before they ask God for forgiveness, they should do the same to those who’ve wronged them. In other words, how can you ask God to forgive you when you have not forgiven others? It would be like going to the banquet table of a rich man, ready to fill your plate to the rim so you could gorge yourself, but forgetting that earlier in the day a beggar showed up at your door and asked for food but you refused to give them one morsel. Such an attitude could be dangerous in other areas of life as well.

In his Opus Imperfectum, otherwise known as the Incomplete Work on Matthew from the early 7^th century, an anonymous author has this to say: “With what assurance does that person pray who harbors animosity toward someone who has offended him? Even as he lies when he prays and says, ‘I forgive’ and does not forgive, so too he seeks pardon from God, but he will not be pardoned. Therefore, if that person who has been offended prays to God without assurance unless he pardons the very person who offended him, how do you think that person prays who not only has been offended by another but himself offends and oppresses others through injustice? But may people who are unwilling to forgive those who sin against them avoid saying this prayer. They are ill-advised, first, because the one who does not pray as Christ taught is not Christ’s disciple; second, because the Father does not graciously hear a prayer that the Son has not recommended. For the Father knows the words and meaning of His Son, and He does not accept what the human mind has devised but what the wisdom of Christ has expressed. Therefore, you may indeed say a prayer, but you may not outsmart and deceive God. And you will not receive forgiveness unless you yourself have first forgiven.”³²

Cyprian, the bishop of Carthage, taught early on that if anyone is unwilling to pardon their fellow believer, they thereby forfeit what the Lord has already pardoned them for.³³ Also, Chrysostom notes that such a prayer for forgiveness as this belongs to the believer only. Sinners cannot pray such a prayer because this is the plea of a child of God, not a child of the world.³⁴ And Augustine explains: “That may indeed be construed in this way, that when we say, Forgive us our debts, as we also forgive, then only are we convicted of having acted contrary to this rule, if we do not forgive them who ask pardon, because we also wish to be forgiven by our most gracious Father when we ask His pardon. But, on the other hand, by that precept whereby we are enjoined to pray for our enemies, it is not for those who ask pardon that we are enjoined to pray. For those who are already in such a state of mind are no longer enemies. By no possibility, however, could one truthfully say that he prays for one whom he has not pardoned. And therefore we must confess that all sins which are committed against us are to be forgiven, if we wish those to be forgiven by our Father which we commit against Him. For the subject of revenge has been sufficiently discussed already, as I think.”³⁵

Even though our Lord makes this so clear, and even astute scholars of the past and present join in their interpretation of this part of the prayer, for many believers this has become one of the most difficult parts of the prayer to abide by. But one thing I see here that has not yet been mentioned, is this, there is no demand that the offended party seek out the offender and offer forgiveness before they ask for such. It applies only when the offended party is approached and forgiveness is requested that this part of the prayer becomes mandatory. In the same way, God may have the heart and intent to pardon us for not repaying Him in love and service for all the talents and abilities He has given us, it will not be done until we approach Him and ask His forgiveness.