The Lord’s Prayer and the Human Form

The words “lead us not into temptation” can help us understand our relationship with the world of the senses. When Adam and Eve yielded to temptation, it is said, “and their eyes were opened.” Since that time our senses have again and again been the source of temptation. Every sense impression can lead our desires either towards or away from a right deed. The senses can lead us to an acceptance of the sense world as an end in itself; hen we are being led into temptation, but by whom? Not by our Father, who is in the heavens. We may experience temptation in the sense world, but we may also experience in it the revelation of the divine. Then we accept the leadership of our Father who is in the heavens, and we are led away from temptation.

At last we reach the words “deliver us from the evil”, and we realize that we are related in a fourth way to the world around us. Not only do we digest, breathe and sense the world, but we also have a direct link to the world through our ego being. We act upon the world, we feel about the world, and we think the world.

In our thoughts, feelings, and deeds evil is present simply through the fact that we are on the earth. We can put our best effort into overcoming the evil, but ultimately we must acknowledge that we need help in the face of the evil which besets us. Our acceptance of the fact is the first step towards receiving and accepting the help that is available from the divine world.

Through the first part of the Lord’s Prayer we have seen the image of the archetypal human being arise before us. Through the second part we have followed the human being into incarnation on the earth. We may read in Genesis how God said: “Let us make man in our image.” As human beings we are then images of the divine archetype, which can arise for us. If we imagine the human being who in incarnation receives daily bread as a gift from God, who has perfected the capacity for offering and receiving forgiveness, who sees in the sense world the revelation of God, and who accepts the help of God against the power of evil in thinking, feeling and will, then we have before us the essence of what Paul expressed in the words “not I but Christ in me.” The Lord’s Prayer, if we take it up in earnestness, takes us on the way that will transform us into Christ-bearers.