Lord's Prayer: Deliver Us From EvilSample

We come to the final piece of the Lord’s Prayer. Jesus says to pray like this: “Deliver us from evil.”

Some people think they’re unlucky. Others assume bad things are all just random. Jesus sees it differently. He believes evil is real and an evil one is active in this world. So he tells us to ask God to deliver us!

Some translations of the Lord’s Prayer say “Deliver us from evil.” Others, “Deliver us from the Evil One.” The Greek construction is ambiguous and can be translated either way. Catechisms and Bible scholars tend to prefer the latter. In his Large Catechism, Martin Luther writes: “It seems that the petition is speaking of the devil as the sum of all evil in order to direct the total weight of our collective prayers against our archenemy.” The Catechism of the Catholic Church says: “In this petition, evil is not an abstraction, but refers to a person, Satan, the Evil One… The devil is the one who throws himself across God’s plan and his work of salvation accomplished in Christ” (para 2851).

Evil. Evil One. They are intertwined and in service to each other. Regardless of whether the evil you’re experiencing is coming from the sinfulness of people, the fallenness of the world, or directly from the Evil One, follow what Jesus says and pray for God to deliver you.

Consider this today…

What evil do you see in the world? Pray for God to deliver you and anyone afflicted from this!