"Deliver Us From Evil"

*Edited October 7, 2015.*

Before I started my Lutheran confirmation classes, I read the entire Book of Concord and one of the things that really struck me was what Luther said about the last petition of the Lord’s Prayer.  In this petition, many English translations read, “but deliver us from evil.”  For those who can read Greek, this is what it says in the original language:  ἀλλὰ ῥῦσαι ἡμᾶς τοῦ πονηροῦ, which translated correctly, says, “but rescue [or deliver] us from the evil one.  As Luther points out, “It looks like Jesus was speaking about the devil, like He would summarise every petition in one” (Large Catechism, Part 3, The Lord’s Prayer, 113).  Before, when I would recite the Lord’s Prayer or read it, when I got to this seventh petition I would think of deliverance from evil things of the world, but now that I look at the Greek it’s not just those things (for the evil things of the world are Satan’s instruments of evil).  Luther says that temptation is of three kinds:  the flesh, the world, and the Devil (LC, Part 3, 101).  Satan uses all these methods as a means to an end to deceive and, as he hopes, to defeat us.  Like Luther, it intrigues me that Jesus uses this petition of deliverance from the evil one as the last petition.  We are to pray for all the other six petitions, which Luther explains in detail in his Small and Large Catechisms, but this one petition in particular is asking to be delivered from Satan specifically.

Praying for such deliverance can deliver us from any of his means — the flesh, the world, and even the Devil himself and his demons.  I won’t discuss it at length, but in the past I have faced a lot of demon attacks, and so I’ve come to regularly pray for deliverance from Satan and his demons.  Every time I do, God never fails to deliver me from evil, and the attacks cease until the next time I sense their presence.  I don’t recite the Lord’s Prayer when I do this like a ritualistic Pharisee because ritualism is often not genuine and sincere and it’s not what God asks for our teaches us to do, but I pray with my own words and genuineness, using the Lord’s Prayer as a guideline, and God never fails me.  As Luther describes, “There is also included in this petition whether evil may happen to us under the devil’s kingdom:  poverty, shame, death, and, in short, all the agonising misery and heartache of which there is such an unnumbered multitude on the earth.  Since the devil is not only a liar, but also a murderer [John 8:44], he constantly seeks our life” (LC, Part 3, 115).  That’s why we often have to pray to be delivered from him.  All the methods that Satan uses have the same end goal:  our destruction.

Although Satan uses the evil things of the world as a method to bring our lives to an end, since they all derive from him, that is not the only thing we must pray against.  We must pray against the evil one himself, “for he is an enemy that never stops or becomes tired” (LC, Part 3, 109).  Therefore, we must be ever vigilant and maintain situational awareness and never take off the armour of God (Ephesians 6:11-18).  Pray against all your fleshly temptations, all your worldly temptations and tribulations, and ultimately against the Devil himself and his demons.  Christ put this petition last because “if we are to be preserved and delivered from all evil, God’s name must first be hallowed in us, His kingdom must be with us, and His will must be done” (LC, Part 3, 118).  All Christians face spiritual attacks from the Devil in multiple ways.  Because this is never ending, Christ exhorts us to pray as He taught us (Matthew 6:9-13), not as a ritualistic pattern (hence, “Pray like this”), but as a perfect guideline so that we may be delivered from all evil and its master.

References

McCain, Paul Timothy., W.H.T. Dau, and F. Bente. Concordia: The Lutheran Confessions: A

     Reader’s Edition of the Book of Concord. St. Louis, MO: Concordia Pub. House, 2006.