But Deliver Us from Evil
Wrestling With the Word: The Question
It happened again. I was praying the Lord’s Prayer along with my congregation on Sunday when a line took hold of me that would not loosen its grip:
Lead us not into temptation,
But deliver us from evil…
Our prayer had followed a long moment of silence during which we corporately held the grief of families in Texas impacted by the recent mass shooting.
I mumbled the rest of the prayer with a furrowed brow and churning thoughts:
“But deliver us from evil? Why are you asking us to pray this when evil is so clearly wreaking havoc in our world? Is this the result of praying for deliverance from evil: a mass shooting that could have been even worse, even more evil? Where are you going with this, God?”
It disturbed me when I realized I do not know what it means to pray, “Deliver us from evil.” So when I returned home from church, I sat down at the kitchen table with my laptop and began to research what Jesus could have possibly meant by it. Deliver us from evil is easier to pray when our lives feel relatively safe, untouched by blatant and oppressive works of darkness. But there is something about evil being in our own backyard that makes us pause.
We are accustomed to brokenness and struggle as part of our everyday lives. We try to make sense of it by saying, “This is the result of a fallen world, a world waiting for redemption.” But it seems to me that the line between the natural entropy of sin and brokenness and the prevalence of pure, unadulterated evil is becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish.What is the point of praying for deliverance, when acts of evil are a common inevitability in our times? As I pondered, I wondered if the preceding line in the Prayer might give me some clues:
Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
Lead us not into temptation is inextricably linked with deliver us from evil by the word “but.” So we have two lines that seem to indicate the relationship between two undesirable forces: temptation and evil.
But how are they related in this prayer, and why?
I’ve been wrestling with these two lines ever since Sunday, and I was not able to draw any conclusions until—thanks to the Holy Spirit and the power of deductive reasoning—I realized that it just might be helpful to look at the life of Jesus for answers. After all, Jesus is the One who gave us this prayer in the first place. There are two distinct occasions which come to mind in which Jesus faces temptation overcomes evil: Jesus’ temptation in the desert, and Jesus’ temptation on the cross.
Lead Us Not Into Temptation: The Desert
After Jesus was baptized, he was led into the desert for 40 days to endure testing and temptation at the hands of the evil one. In a fascinating article titled “Lead Us Not Into Mistranslation,” the author reveals that the language used to describe Jesus’ being “led into temptation” in the book of Matthew are the same Greek words Jesus uses a few chapters later in the prayer he gave to his disciples: “Lead us not into temptation.”
Isn’t it striking that Jesus invites us to pray against being led into temptation as he was? Jesus knew what temptation was like, and he also knew what was required to defeat it. He knows that we are human, and that we are all too prone to succumb to the lure of comfort, power, and prestige. I love how the author of Hebrews describes this:
For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin. (Hebrews 4:15)
When we pray lead us not into temptation, we essentially pray Have mercy on us, God. Do not give us more than we can bear. I wonder if Paul had Jesus’ prayer in mind when he wrote these words of encouragement to the Corinthians:
And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can endure it.
(1 Cor. 10:13)
In our lives with God, we are free to pray that we will not experience testing like Jesus did. We are also encouraged to trust that because of Jesus—our high priest who was also tempted—any temptation we do face will not destroy us. As we see in the desert as well as on the cross, the life of Jesus is the connection between lead us not into temptation and but deliver us from evil.
But Deliver Us From Evil: The Cross
The Greek word for “deliver” in the Lord’s Prayer is rhýomai , which contains a two-part action: to draw out of and to draw unto. For example, when God’s chosen people crossed through the Red Sea, God was both drawing them out of the evil oppression of slavery and unto himself as a holy, set-apart people. I think of a mother who sees her child in danger, runs to swoop her up, and cradles that child close to her heart instead of simply picking the child up and putting her down ‘over there.’
Just like a loving Mother, God draws us out of danger for the purpose of drawing us unto God’s self. This tells me that God is not a distant lifeguard, casually watching to make sure we don’t drown in our own foolishness. If anything, the “Our Father” to whom we address this prayer is just as concerned with holding us close as he is with holding back the forces of evil.
We see this same deliverance word (rhýomai) used again, at the end of Jesus’ life. When Jesus is hanging on the cross, his scoffers mock his claim to divinity:
“He trusts in God; let God deliver him now, if he desires him. For he said, ‘I am the Son of God.’”
…
“You who are going to destroy the temple and build it in three days, save yourself! Come down from the cross, if you are the Son of God!”
(Matthew 27:43; 39-41)
The mockers dare Jesus to call upon his God to deliver him—to draw him out of the horrendous crucifixion and unto his supposed reign as the Son of God. But Jesus persevered through the temptation to prove his identity and his power—and God delivered him from evil. Not only did God deliver his child out of the grave, but God also drew Jesus unto himself, where Jesus now sits at the right hand of his father as the first of the ransomed.
For Yours Is the Kingdom: The Resurrection
The Son stands first in the line of humanity he restored.
(Romans 8:29, MSG)
Beloved, this too, is our end: ultimate deliverance out of evil and death unto eternal life with the One who draws us close. Considering my original question, “What did Jesus mean when he taught us to pray but deliver us from evil?” I offer this:
Nothing about “but deliver us from evil” makes any sense apart from the temptation Jesus faced in the desert and on the cross.
We pray lead us not into temptation because Jesus was tempted with comfort, power, and prestige in the desert but did not yield. He understands our human condition and has mercy on us.
We pray but deliver us from evil because Jesus overcame the temptation of comfort, power, and prestige once more on the cross. God delivered him from evil three days later, and Christ’s victorious death delivers us out of evil and unto resurrection.
Just as Jesus persevered through temptation and entrusted himself to God’s deliverance when facing the evil of the cross, so can we bet our lives on the reality of God’s faithfulness to one day make all wrong things right.
Praying this prayer is not merely a request; it is a bold act of faith as we assume the sacrificial posture of Christ.
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I do not know why God allows children to be killed, wars to ravage entire communities, people to starve. I don’t even know if “allow” is the right word; I suspect there is something more complex at work than God operating as a cosmic moral referee. I do know that God’s response to our experience of temptation and evil was to join us in it and deliver us from it—drawing us unto himself through his own child’s death.
Given this, perhaps what we mean most when we pray but deliver us from evil can be distilled into a single word:
Jesus.
Jesus, whose very name means “God Saves.”
Jesus, the one who delivers us from evil.
Sisters and brothers, there is coming a day when the prevalence of evil will mock us no more. And on that day we will sing with the redeemed, “Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?”
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As a final benediction, I offer Eugene Peterson’s translation of the Lord’s Prayer. May it strengthen us with the hope of deliverance and the promise of resurrection.