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confirms us in the belief that the kingdom preached by John the Baptizer of the Lord
Jesus is the great Messianic kingdom of the O.T. which combines spiritual bliss with
earthly blessings, and freedom from the attacks of the evil one.
There is a heavenly phase of the Kingdom of God which is revealed in the later
epistles. To limit God's Kingdom to either earth or heaven, as many do, is a profound
mistake. Such a view is bound to be partial and defective, for both aspects are revealed
in the Word of God (The reader is referred to the author's The Kingdom of God in heaven
and on earth where this is dealt with in detail). God's will is done perfectly in heaven by
the angelic beings and principalities and powers. What a glorious day it will be when this
blessed state of things is true of the earth! And God will not rest until this comes to pass.
Give us today our daily bread. We pass now from what relates to God to human
needs. The word translated `daily', epiousios, has given Bible scholars a good deal of
trouble. It is an extremely rare word, so much so that Origen said that it was coined by
Matthew and Luke to reproduce the idea of an Aramaic original. Moulton & Milligan
say in their Vocabulary, "the papyri have as yet shed no clear light upon this difficult
word, which was in all probability a new coinage by the author of the Greek Q (a work
purporting to give some of the sayings of the Lord Jesus) to render his Aramaic original".
This was written in 1919. Professor A. T. Robertson, whose New Testament Greek
scholarship is unquestionable, says that the word must have originated in trade and traffic
of the everyday life of the people, and this has been confirmed by A. Debrunner's
discovery of epiousios in an ancient housekeeping book (Light from the Ancient East,
New ed. 1927 p.78 and note 1). The word occurs also in three late MSS after 2Macc.1:8.
Professor Robertson says that the meaning of the word, in view of the kindred participle
(epiousei) in Acts 16: 12, seems to be "for the coming day", a daily prayer for the needs
of the next day, as every housekeeper understands.
Dr. A. Plummer's words are to the point here:
"We are not to ask for superfluities. The petition will cover what is needed for culture
and refinement, but it will not cover luxury or extravagance. What we need must not be
interpreted to mean all that we desire; sufficiency and contentment will never be reached
by that method. Contentment is reached by moderating wants, not by multiplying
possessions."
Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. The debts here are
equivalent to sins and Luke's account uses the word "sins" (Luke 11: 4). When we sin we
become liable to God. "Debt" was a Jewish way of describing sin. Here forgiveness is
asked "in proportion as" we also have forgiven those in debt to us (A. T. Robertson) a
very serious reflection. There are expositors who try to minimize this and make it square
with forgiveness of sin in the epistles, but the verses following the Prayer forbid this:
"For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will forgive
you. But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins"
(Matt. 6: 14, 15, N.I.V.).
To this must be added Mark 11: 25: