If we ourselves do not know the once-for-all pardon for sin and the acceptance we have with God on the basis of Christ’s judicial satisfaction and his righteousness imputed to us in salvation, then all the ‘bread’ in the world will be worthless to us. There is no life apart from God. Only in union with Christ Jesus as ‘the living Bread who comes down from heaven’ do we have the key to life and the ability to enjoy God’s daily provision as we ought.

The Lord’s Prayer is, without question, the best-known prayer of all time. Embedded at the very heart of the prayer life of God’s family, but also shared and treasured by those nations and empires through the ages that have espoused the Christian faith as their official faith – albeit nominally. Yet, for all its familiarity, there is a depth and richness to its wording that never ceases to both thrill and probe the souls of God’s people at one and the same time. The apparent simplicity of the words Jesus taught his disciples to feed and fuel their prayer life belies the depth of their meaning and relevance.

We see this not only in the individual requests or ‘petitions’ contained in the prayer, but also in its overall landscape and contours – how the prayer itself fits together. So, far from subliminally atomising its various parts, we need to see their unity and integrity. Each individual component is intimately bound up with all the others in a way that reflects the wholeness of what it means to be a Christian and to be in union and communion God as his people.

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