If you wish to get folks in a tizzy, begin speaking concerning the alleged omissions in trendy Bible translations. Should you examine a Bible printed within the King James Model with the NIV, NET, CSB, ESV, NASB, and practically each different translation from the final 70 years,1 you’ll discover a handful of verses that don’t seem inside the primary physique of the textual content.2
I’m not a giant conspiracy principle man, particularly the place there’s nothing nefarious at work. These verses, which seem within the footnotes of many translations, aren’t included in the primary textual content as a result of they’re not discovered within the oldest manuscripts we’ve out there to us. They appear to be additions. Generally, I admire this strategy to those contested verses. Besides, there’s a worth to studying these—particularly when one particularly provides to our expertise of the textual content.
The place did the Doxology within the Lord’s Prayer Come From?
Whereas engaged on an project for my seminary program, I spent a while researching and reflecting on the Lord’s Prayer (Matthew 6:9-13). This passage additionally consists of what some see as a lacking verse:
“For Yours is the dominion and the ability and the glory perpetually. Amen” (Matthew 6:13b NKJV).
This phrase is a doxology, an expression of reward, paraphrasing 1 Chronicles 29:11 (“Yours, Lord, is the greatness and the ability and the glory and the majesty and the splendor, for all the things in heaven and earth is yours” [NKJV]).3 Whereas that may not be all that shocking to a lot of you studying this, it’s a reality I hadn’t thought-about till lately. Why would later manuscripts, like these discovered within the Textus Receptus, embody this doxology?
The quick model? As a result of the early church did. They didn’t add it to the textual content of Scripture, so far as we all know. However they did make the connection within the Didache, a first-century abstract of the Apostles’ instructing.4 There, believers are commanded to wish the Lord’s Prayer thrice day by day—together with this doxology:
“Our Father, who artwork in Heaven, hallowed be thy Identify, thy Kingdom come, thy can be executed, as in Heaven so additionally upon earth; give us as we speak our day by day bread, and forgive us our debt as we forgive our debtors, and lead us not into trial, however ship us from the Evil One, for thine is the ability and the glory for ever” (Didache 8.2).
So it appears affordable to say that the doxology discovered its manner into later manuscripts of Matthew due to this custom.
The Doxological Nature of Prayer
Though this early look doesn’t imply that it ought to be thought-about canon, the doxology’s presence is a reminder of the general nature of the prayer. From starting to finish, the Lord’s prayer is a name to “hallow” the Lord’s identify. Its thought, construction, and composition middle our hearts on a want to see God’s holiness made recognized to all folks, in every single place.5
Fairly than studying every line of the prayer as unbiased clauses, we must always see the prayer as a complete. Each “your” assertion builds one on prime of the opposite, doubling down on the holiness of God, with each petition serving the higher finish of declaring that each one energy and glory and honor belong to him.
How the “Lacking” Verse Leads Me to Worship
This class project got here at simply the proper time for me. I’ve shared elsewhere that 2024 has been some of the difficult years we’ve had in a very long time. A number of deaths. Well being scares. The interpersonal earthquakes brought on by folks we love being despatched out to comply with their calling. It’s been quite a bit. There have been many days once I haven’t had greater than a groan for what I can pray.
Studying the Lord’s Prayer with this in thoughts takes my focus off my wants. It makes the prayer a gateway for worship. To focus much less on my “day by day bread” and extra on God’s will being executed. And whereas I don’t at all times have the phrases I want to wish, I do have these phrases. And so I’ve discovered myself praying these phrases Jesus taught and the Holy Spirit impressed. For God’s identify to be hallowed. For his kingdom to come back, and his will to be executed on earth as it’s in heaven. I want him to offer for our wants. I need to be a conduit of grace. And I would like the testing of my religion would result in his identify being hallowed ever extra.
That is the angle I want on this explicit season. And that’s the reward that this “lacking” verse gave me.
Photograph by Tim Wildsmith on Unsplash
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