‘God protects us’

In his series looking at the Lord’s Prayer, David Searle considers the words ‘Deliver us from evil’.

I WONDER how many readers will remember the English lesson at school that ‘tautology’ was to be avoided in our essays?

Tautology is saying one thing after another in different words: eg, ‘They arrived one after the other in succession’: the last two words are tautologous and are unnecessary!

However, the Hebrew language uses a literary device called ‘Semitic parallelism’.

In the poetry of the Psalms, we find couplets or triplets which appear to be repeating the same thought. But such parallel statements are not tautologous: the repeated statement adds to the statement it follows. (See Psalm 19 as an example of this.) The final petition of the Lord’s Prayer is also an example of Semitic parallelism: Lead us not into temptation is further explained by the following parallel statement, Deliver us from evil. In this final petition is amplification of what Jesus has said about temptation.

The word ‘deliver’ is one of the most important words in the whole Bible. Along with the noun ‘deliverance’ it occurs over 700 times in the Scriptures. It mainly refers to God’s mighty power reaching out to rescue those who are in distress. For example, selected at random, we read the Psalmist’s prayers, ‘Return, O Lord, deliver my soul...’; ‘O keep my soul, and deliver me...’; ‘Deliver me in your righteousness’ (Pss. 6:6; 25:20; 31:1). Sometimes the word ‘redeem’ can be a synonym for ‘deliver’.

So what is the point of this? Simply, that the whole story of fallen, flawed humanity is that we all need ‘outside help’; we need someone far stronger, wiser and infinitely greater than ourselves to intervene in our trials, to rescue us from ourselves and the mess into which at times we can make of our lives and actions. Daily we need the delivering, saving, loving, outstretched arm of the heavenly Father.

What about the word ‘evil’? Deliver us from evil. It has been suggested that Jesus had in mind ‘the evil one’. That would tie in with Jesus’ own temptations in the wilderness. Another suggestion is that it is ‘death’ that is the final enemy (as Paul has it in 1 Cor 15:26) from which we need deliverance.

Calvin comments: ‘there is no need for controversy for the sense is the same, that we are exposed to the devil and to sin, but God protects us and snatches us away.’ Indeed! The main thrust in this final petition is that in our aloneness, vulnerability and foolishness we need a strength beyond our own.

It is at this point we are praying for grace, the undeserved, gratuitous intervention of our loving, faithful God.

For these four words, Deliver us from evil, gather together into one heartfelt cry all that is contained so far in this prayer that spans the world: The blessed Name, the Son’s kingdom, the divine will, our daily provision, forgiveness and the battle with Apollyon – all are summed up in this great cry of our souls: Deliver us from evil.