The Layman Foundations of the Faith
Deliver us
Robert P. Mills, Posted Monday, Apr 21, 2003
Suggested Scripture Readings: Psalm 3:1-8; Matthew 6:13; Romans 7:22-25 |
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). |