Jesus’ Model Prayer: Hallowed be Your Name: Making Holy the Name of God

“Hallowed be Your Name,” is a part of the model prayer Jesus used to instruct His disciples, and thereby us, how to pray. We know the Name of God is holy; each and every Name of God is holy. Why would we be instructed to make holy the Name of God?

Making holy the name of God is about relationship; the relationship of love, honor and respect with our Father. When we make holy the Name of God we not only acknowledge the absolutely pure holiness of our Father, we change how we see our Father, and thereby our relationship with our Father.

"Hallowed be" (37, Greek, Strong’s Concordance) means “to make holy, purify or consecrate, venerate”.

Let’s look at how this changes our view of our Father, and our relationship with Him.

To Make Holy

When we “make holy” the Name of our Father we choose to see our Father’s Name not as just another name by which He reveals Himself, but we ask Holy Spirit to help us see the “holiness” – the perfect purity, the immaculate and complete moral character – of the Name of God we are focusing on. How can this change us and how we view our Father? How did it affect Isaiah when the holiness of God was revealed to him?

Isaiah 6:1-8

1 In the year that king Uzziah died I saw also the LORD sitting on a throne, high and lifted up, and his train filled the temple.

2 Above it stood the seraphim: each one had six wings; with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he did fly.

3 And one cried to another, and said, Holy, holy, holy, is the LORD of hosts: the whole earth is full of his glory.

4 And the posts of the door moved at the voice of him that cried, and the house was filled with smoke.

5 Then said I, Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the middle of a people of unclean lips: for my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts.

6 Then flew one of the seraphim to me, having a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with the tongs from off the altar:

7 And he laid it on my mouth, and said, See, this has touched your lips; and your iniquity is taken away, and your sin purged.

8 Also I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, Whom shall I send, and who will go for us? Then said I, Here am I; send me.

When Holy Spirit reveals to us the holiness of our Father, and of His Name, we understand that it is only by the grace of God that we still live. When we understand the holiness of our Father we desire with every fiber of our being to be cleansed and holy like our Father who purposely chose to make us in His image and likeness. We desire to have all sin and iniquity (unrighteousness) purged from us. We are willing to go forward for our Father to live His will for our lives, thus fulfilling the commission of our Lord Jesus to go into all the earth preaching the Good News of our Lord and God and making disciples of all people and all nations.

Making holy the Name of God brings revelation and changes us.

Purify

To purify the Name of God is to cleanse the way we see and perceive the Name of God, casting aside all that would taint our vision. To purify the Name of God is to ask our Father to open our spiritual eyes that in seeing we may truly see our Father; not as we have been told about Him, but as He truly is. To purify the Name of God is to reject the teachings and contaminations of the world concerning who God is and to so embrace our Father and His Name that love pours out from us in such strength and measure as to leave us a heap of incense before our Father flowing in true worship of our Father, not for what He has done, but for exactly who He is: the Almighty, Self-Existent and Eternal God whose Being cannot be described in just one Name, but is lovingly encapsulated in the most precious of Names – Abba, Father.

Consecrate

To consecrate the Name of God is to choose to view and to declare the Name set apart for God, because only God is able to live up to His Name; and to also recognize that even such a magnificent name only reveals a portion of our Father’s character and who He Is. To consecrate the Name of God is also to choose to set ourselves apart for the dedicated service to our Father in the service to honor and glorify His Name. To consecrate the Name of God is to fulfill the third commandment – to not take the name of the LORD our God, our Father, in vain (as worthless, useless and evil); but to go into the world and live in a fashion, relying upon the grace of our Father and the continual help and empowerment of Holy Spirit, that honors and properly represents the Name of our Father, who has put His Name upon us as His children, His sons and daughters who carry His Name as His holy offspring.

Venerate

To venerate is to regard with respect and reverence. We must respect our Father, who is not only our Creator, but the Creator of the entire universe and all it contains; a Father who can step outside of the universe, and even holds the universe – all creation – in His very hands.

Understanding this much, we will also revere our Father. To revere our Father means to regard our Father with fear mixed with heavy doses of respect and affection. Our Father has the power to create or destroy entire galaxies with but a Word. Truly understanding this kind of power is beyond our mortal comprehension; it even makes atomic weapons look like small splashes of water spilled from a child’s cup. It is not possible to understand this type of power without the fear of what it can do.

However, as our Father’s children, we respect our Father because the Love that He Is causes Him to use such power with gentle loving care on our behalf. Our Father uses His power for our good, and against those who set themselves as enemies against us. Yet, our Father uses this power with such grace and control as to cleanly separate the flesh and blood captive from the kingdom of darkness imprisoning him/her, ministering love and grace to the captive, and destroying the darkness. Such loving and awesome control of such omnipotent power is to be deeply respected.

Furthermore, we affectionately pour out our love upon our Most Holy Father who so loves us that He sent His Son to set us free by becoming sin for us, and conquering that very sin, death, hell and the grave and being resurrected from the dead. Our Father so loves us that He has made the faith we need to believe on His Son a free gift, so that we may believe upon our Lord Jesus Christ and receive the further most expensive free gift of all: eternal life with our Father.

So now we can understand that our Jesus’ Model Prayer is not only about prayer, but also about the relationship our Father desires to have with us by grace through faith in His Beloved Son, our Lord Jesus Christ.

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All Scripture is given in the American King James Version.

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