I still remember the small sign my aunt and uncle once had
hanging on their wall. It read, “If everything seems to be going
well, you have obviously overlooked something.”
I doubt that those who made the sign intended to convey a spiritual
truth. But they did. For only those who know they are in peril pray to
be delivered.
The final petition of the Lord’s Prayer, which begins, “And
lead us not into temptation,” and ends, “but deliver us from
evil,” constitutes a single request. We pray to be delivered from
temptation to avoid becoming, or remaining, enmeshed in evil.
Our last study looked at temptation. The next will address the reality
of evil. Here we will consider God’s gracious provision of
deliverance.
Deliver us
The Greek word translated “deliver” in this petition is
rhusai,
a word used infrequently in the New Testament, always with God as the
deliverer. It denotes rescue from danger, with the implication that the
danger is acute and severe.
The only other time this verb is used in Matthew’s Gospel is when
Jesus is hanging on the cross and mocked with the words “He trusts
in God; let God
deliver him now, if he desires him” (Matt.
27:43).
Paul uses this verb in describing his ongoing struggle against his own
sinful nature, “For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being,
but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my
mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members.
Wretched man that I am! Who will
deliver me from this body of
death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (Rom.
7:22-25).
Deliverance
Paul gave thanks for the fact that, in David Jeremiah’s words, “God
is in the deliverance business. It was God who delivered Israel out of
Egypt. It was God who delivered Daniel from the lion’s den. It was
God who delivered Esther from the evil Haman. … It was God who
delivered the daughter of the Syro-Phoenician woman from demonic forces.
It was God who delivered Peter from drowning and from prison. And it was
God who delivered Paul from perils of every imaginable kind.”
Of course, as with our forbearers in the faith, our deliverance may take
a very different form than that which we expect or desire.
For example, being delivered from evil may not mean being removed from
the evil that immediately threatens us. Daniel, no doubt, prayed for
deliverance before being thrown into the lion’s den. Certainly God
could have kept him out of that dangerous place. Instead, he delivered
Daniel by keeping the lions in the den from harming him.
That’s a good model to remember. As long as we live in this world,
we will never be free from the presence of evil. Temptation will always
lurk nearby. Fortunately, God will be nearer.
We also do well to remember that praying for deliverance from evil doesn’t
put us in a passive position. To say the least, it would be hypocritical
to pray “And lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil,”
then intentionally head for an evil place, one where we know from past
experience that we are likely once again to yield to temptation.
Knowing our need
William Willimon and Stanley Hauerwas offer an important perspective on
this petition when they write, “When you pray to be saved, to be
delivered from the test, you are acknowledging that you are not in
control of your fate, that there really is something in the world worth
resisting, that this world and its rewards are not enough and that you
answer to some greater power than that which the world bows before.”
If we think that, because we are Christians, we don’t need to be
delivered, we need to think again. If we believe that, because of our
faith in Jesus Christ, we are now somehow immune to every evil and
temptation that surrounds us, we are in fact exposing ourselves to
considerable spiritual peril.
If instead we pray, “Deliver us from evil,” we confess that
evil is real and that temptations trouble us. We admit that we are
vulnerable to forces outside us, forces that are stronger than we are in
ourselves. In short, to pray the Lord’s Prayer is to acknowledge,
again and again, our need for a Deliverer.
And having prayed as Jesus taught us we can also pray with Paul, “Thanks
be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!”
Additional
Resources
David Jeremiah, Prayer: The Great Adventure (Sisters, Ore.:
Multnomah, 1997); William H. Willimon and Stanley Hauerwas. Lord
Teach Us: The Lord’s Prayer and Christian Life (Nashville:
Abingdon, 1996). |