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Hallowed be Your name! by Jean-Louis Coraboeuf "And when you pray, you shall not be as the hypocrites are. For they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the corners of the streets, that they may be seen by men. Verily I say unto you, they have their reward. But you, when you pray, enter into your closet, and when you have shut your door, pray to the Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret shall reward you openly. But when you pray, use not vain repetitions as the Gentiles do, for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking. Be not like them, for your Father knows what things you have need of before you ask Him. So this is the way you should pray: Our father who is in heaven! Hallowed [hagiazo] be Your name; may Your Kingdom come; may Your will be done on earth as in heaven" (Matthew 6:5-10). The Greek verb hagiazo means to make holy, purify, separate from profane things, and to dedicate to God; according to the dictionary, to sanctify, is to place God above everything. In heaven, God does everything that He wishes (Psalm 115:3), but He has given the earth to the sons of man (Psalm 115:16) so that they can accomplish His will there, in order that His Name may be sanctified. "God blessed the seventh day, and made it holy [qadash], because on that day He rested [shabat] from all His work that He had created to make" (Genesis 2:3 Interlinear). The Hebrew verb qadash means to make holy, to put aside as sacred, to consecrate; and so God made shabat the seventh day because He had created all the works that man had to accomplish on the earth. When the works, God has prepared in advance, were carried out by His people, His name was made holy. That is why when the Israelites no longer took care of His work, His people were taken captive to Babylon (Isaiah 5:12-13), and the name of the Lord was profaned among the nations. But after 70 years, God remembered them and brought them back into the Promised Land so that His name might again be sanctified in the eyes of the nations (Ezekiel 36:16-23). Jesus said to His Heavenly Father, "I have glorified You on the earth, I have finished the work that You gave Me to do" (John 17:4), and Paul wrote, "For we are His handiwork, having been created in Jesus Christ for good works, that God prepared for us in advance, in order that we might carry them out" (Ephesians 2:10). Jesus sanctified the Name of God by accomplishing all His work on the earth, and so shall we sanctify His Name by accomplishing His work that will lead us into peace for "all that we do is the Lord who has accomplished it for us" (Isaiah 26:12 Interlinear). So we are called to do the same works as Jesus, and even greater ones, to glorify God (John 14:12-13), for "when His children see in the midst of them the work of His hands, they will sanctify His name; they will sanctify the Holy One of Jacob, and they will fear the God of Israel" (Isaiah 29:23). That is why Jesus in His prayer dealing with the sanctification of the Name of God, associated the sanctification with the actual accomplishment of God’s will on earth. |