LCMS Convention Workbook St. Louis, Missouri — 2013, Page 360

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360

THEOLOGICAL DOCUMENTS­­—COMMISSION ON THEOLOGY AND CHURCH RELATIONS
the wilderness (Matt. 4:1), he identifies the connection of temptation to battle
with Satan. This prayer then reflects “Jesus’ wilderness combat with Satan, in
a sort of grim-faced, realistic fashion. It will be the Father’s purpose at times
to bring Jesus’ disciples into confrontation and conflict with Satan and his
temptations.”171
The sixth petition reflects an “alien work” of God who kills and makes
alive (Deut. 32:39), and who
. . . does not want us to follow the example of the Manichaeans
and imagine that there are several gods: one, the source of all
good; the other, the source of all evil. God wants us to regard
the evils that we experience as coming to us with His
permission. If He had not permitted it, the devil would never
have afflicted Job so fearfully (Job 1:12). God permits evils to
come to us; for it is His will that, when we have been chastened,
we cast ourselves on His mercy.172
Even God’s good Law is a temptation of sorts to us. It is too good for
us sinners. As God leads us to know His truth about how we are to live, we
are easily intimidated because He is too high and holy—His Law is too pure
for us sinners. Like Adam and Eve, we want to flee from His overwhelming holiness, only compounding our unholiness. This paradox influenced
Luther to understand the strange twelfth verse of Psalm 2, “Kiss the Son lest
he be angry with you,” as an invitation to flee toward God’s forgiving embrace
in the person of the Son, rather than away from His just judgments. “There is
great force, then, in the word ‘kiss’; for it indicates that we should embrace this
Son with our whole heart and see or hear nothing else than Christ, and Him
crucified.”173
We will face temptation of every sort, and we are no match for any of it.
Our Lord has us pray in light of our weakness and not from foolish brava174
do. We “cast ourselves on His mercy” because we are helpless by ourselves
against temptations even to obvious sins—disrespect toward authority, violence, lust, greed, dishonesty, envy, and jealousy. How much more are we
utterly hopeless in the face of temptation to sins we do not even recognize:
remaking God according to our desires, ignoring His Word, profaning His
name, and despising His Gospel and the means by which the Spirit makes His
truth known to us? These are the sins that lead to the “great shame and vice”

171

Gibbs, 344. His discussion of the sixth petition is on pages 337–345.

172

AE 13:135.

173

AE 12:88.

of “false belief” and “despair”175 and would separate us from faith in our only
Savior. These are the greatest dangers humanity faces. “For this is exactly what
temptation means: to allow oneself to be torn away from God.”176
We learn to pray “Lead us not into temptation” from the only one who has
both faced and withstood every temptation (Heb 4:15). We pray with the faithful: “Set a watch before my mouth, O Lord, and guard the door of my lips. Let
not my heart incline to any evil thing. Let me not be occupied in wickedness
with evildoers” (Ps. 141:3–4a).177

The Seventh Petition: But deliver us from evil178
The first word of this petition, “but,” means the sixth and seventh petitions are inseparable. “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from
evil.”179 We are not defenseless in the face of temptation’s traps and snares, for
a final deliverance from all evil is promised—such confidence is ours as we
pray in and with Christ. “Evil” is left undefined by our Lord in His prayer. It
can be personal, as “the evil one, Satan,”180 or viewed in the context of sin, or
generalized as all that is contrary to good. Rather than quibble about a specific
sense of “evil,” it seems wisest to accept with simplicity Christ’s invitation to
cry out for help in the face of a life where evil of one kind or another is never
absent.
Death is the surest sign of evil’s presence. As such, “Deliver us from
evil” echoes the prayer from the cross: “Father, into your hands I commit my
spirit” (Luke 23:46). So The Small Catechism reminds us that we are asking
our Father to “give us a blessed end.”181 Yet, even when death seems far off,
this petition condenses all of Christian prayer into a phrase. We pray because
evil surrounds us and invades us. The sunniest day is fraught with the power
of sin, death, and Satan. Unlike the optimists of every age, there is no illusion
in the Christian faith about everyone and everything being “basically good.”
There is no one, no time, no place exempt from the evil one and his power. Evil
175

Luther’s Small Catechism with Explanation, 21.

176

Thielicke, 119.

177
Translation is from Evening Prayer, Lutheran Book of Worship (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1978),
145. The office and same translation are also found in Lutheran Worship (St. Louis: Concordia
Publishing House, 1982), 254 and LSB, 246.
178
The brief version of the Lord’s Prayer, from Luke, does not include this petition. Just as the
SC treated the third petition of a summary of the first and second petitions, Luther treats the
seventh as a summary of the whole prayer.
179
See comments on the sixth petition and Gibbs, 344. Chemnitz points out that the adversative
can rightly be understood to connect the last two petitions into one central thought, presented
negatively and then positively.
180
The use of the definite article in the original Greek may indicate that “the evil [one]” is
intended.

Cyprian: “When we thus pray that we may not enter into temptation, we are cautioned by
this prayer of our own infirmity and weakness, lest any presumptuously exalt himself. . . .” The
Lord’s Prayer, §17, 192.
174

181
Luther’s Small Catechism with Explanation, 22. Chemnitz (The Lord’s Prayer, 93) adds: “We ask
that we may not die carelessly in our sins, unprepared without repentance (John 8:24), but that
he would grant us a godly and saving end of this life. We ask to die in the Lord (Rev. 14:13).”

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poisons even our best, Spirit-given intentions: “the evil that I do not want is
what I keep on doing” (Rom. 7:19).
This is not the way our culture ordinarily thinks of evil. Our era tends to
see evil only in other forms: environmental degradation, warfare, terrorism,
corporate misbehavior, and political opponents. We are less able to see the
sub-surface of evil: rebellion against God and His Law, spiritual deceit, and
Satan. Often such things are viewed as nothing more than the left-over relics
of unenlightened medievalism. Yet, “Just because we do not see a thing or
have forgotten how to see it does not mean that it no longer exists.”182 The evil
that compels our prayers is surely both the grim realities that we see and also
those we do not see. In the historic Litany the church rightly prays to be delivered from “all evil,” everything from “pestilence and famine” to “everlasting
death.”183 None of our human systems has resolved economic evils; how much
less have we defeated the ultimate evils of sin, Satan, and hell!184
Our weakness compels our prayers; it does not constrict them. To pray
for God’s deliverance is bigger and richer than our imagination. It certainly
is not escapist in tone. Paul reminds us that the force of evil is so great that it
can be faced only by those who are “strong in the Lord and the power of his
might,” protected by “the full armor of God” (see Eph. 6:10–17). Note how
Paul’s urgent appeal ends:

we learn to pray not only “O Lord, how many are my foes. . . . deliver me,
O my God” (Ps. 3:1, 7, NIV), but also, “Help us, O God of our salvation, for the
glory of your name; deliver us, and atone for our sins, for your name’s sake!”
(Ps. 79:9, emphases added).
Evil is all too overwhelming, and yet we are not overcome. “Do not be
overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good” (Rom. 12:21). Not our paltry
personal good, but only the good that is Christ and is ours in Him. Christ, and
Christ alone, is the good who overcomes evil and so is our courage and confidence. “But having said, Deliver us from evil, there remains nothing beyond for
us to ask for, after petition made for God’s protection from evil; for that gained,
we stand secure and safe, against all things that the Devil and the world work
against us.” 187 Even in the face of evil’s awesome power, our prayers are confident. He who did no evil (Luke 23:22) has overcome it for us. Christ is our
confidence for He “gave himself for our sins to deliver us from the present evil
age, according to the will of our God and Father” (Gal. 1:4, emphasis added). In
such a way the Lord’s Prayer takes us from the ebullient confidence of a little
child whose heavenly Father is listening, to that seasoned serenity of aging
saints whose confident, “Deliver us from evil,” means that they are also ready
to “depart in peace” because they have seen the Father’s salvation in the face
of Jesus Christ (Luke 2:29; 2 Cor. 4:6).

And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers
and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on
praying for all the saints. Pray also for me, that whenever I
open my mouth, words may be given me so that I will fearlessly
make known the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an
ambassador in chains. Pray that I may declare it fearlessly, as
I should.185
Because of evil we pray with fellow saints and for them—for the Gospel
to be fearlessly proclaimed. Evil’s depth is great, but so is its breadth. We
pray in plural, “deliver us from evil,” praying for all the church and for the
world that needs to know “the mystery of the gospel.” “My situation is not
the only situation covered by this prayer. I suddenly find myself confronted
by an infinite society of sufferers in which I am but a drop in the ocean.”186
Here again praying the psalms enriches the content of our prayers. There
182

Thielicke, 93.

183

LSB, 288.

Evil is so great that Luther rightly calls the seventh petition the “summary” of prayer,
Luther’s Small Catechism with Explanation, 22. He also argues that this petition rightly comes at
the end, not the beginning of prayer, lest we seek merely a deliverance of our own definition
and forget “God’s honor, his name, and his will.” AE 42:75.
184

185
Eph. 6:18–20 NIV. Commenting on these verses, John Koenig suggests that praying in the
Spirit means “praising and thanking God in the name of Jesus.” Koenig, 157.
186

187

Ebeling, The Lord’s Prayer, 105.

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2013 Convention Workbook

Cyprian, The Lord’s Prayer, §18, 192.

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