“Hallowed Be Thy Name”

“What’s in a name?” wrote Shakespeare in Romeo and Juliet, “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” By this he intimated that the name of an object is not really too important, since the name by which we call things does not alter their character or essence. To call them by some other name would really make no essential difference. This may be true of the names of objects, but when it comes to the names of persons, it is a different matter. This reasoning is especially untrue when it comes to the name of God.

We begin to realize the importance of that name when we consider that the Lord taught us to pray, “Hallowed be Thy name.” Why not, “May we hallow Thee?” It would help us to understand the reason for this petition if we first realize that God called Himself by various names in the Scriptures in order to reveal to us the nature of His character and attributes. These revelations were made for the purpose of instilling within us the proper concept of God, and the proper attitude toward Him.

A name is the summary of a person. It is the catchword that supersedes the necessity of interminable descriptions and renders amplification needless by setting before us the whole person—his face, form, and properties. Its use instantly recalls to us the person, figure, and distinctive characteristics in one. In a sense, then, the name is the person. By it, the absent, distant, inaccessible man is made present and comprehensible to us. As with the use of the human name, so also it is with the name of God.

One of the first names by which God called Himself in the Old Testament, and the name by which He particularly revealed Himself to the Jews, was Jehovah (the Latinized version of the Hebrew YHWH). This is often translated in English Bibles as “LORD”, using all capital letters to distinguish it from another Hebrew word, Adonai, also translated “Lord”. Jehovah is the name of God most used in the Old Testament, occurring 6,283 times. The name is rooted in the Hebrew word hayah, which means “to be” or “being”. Thus the name signifies “the self-existent One,” the one who in Himself possesses essential life, permanent existence. He is the “I AM”.

Moses Maimonides, the most noted Jewish commentator of the Middle Ages, said of this name, “All the names of God which occur in Scripture are derived from His works except one, and that is Jehovah; and this is called the plain name, because it teaches plainly and unequivocally the substance of God.”

Robert Girdlestone, in his Old Testament Synonyms, wrote, “God’s personal existence, the continuity of His dealings with man, the unchangeableness of His promises, and the whole revelation of His redeeming mercy gathers round the name of Jehovah.”

God said of the Patriarchs, “By my name Jehovah was I not known unto them” (Ex. 6:3). What does this statement mean, in view of the fact that the name of Jehovah is first used as early as Genesis 2:4, and that it is used many times throughout the whole book? The meaning is not that they had never heard the name, or known it in that sense, but that they had not understood the significance of it.

In Exodus 33:18-34:7, we read of one particular occasion when God revealed Himself, His character, and His attributes through His name. In verse 18 of this passage, Moses prayed, “I beseech thee, shew me thy glory.” He was told that to see the face of God was impossible, but that he would be privileged to look upon God’s “back” after He had passed by in all His glory. Exodus 34:5-7 says that the Lord descended, passed before him, and in answer to that prayer for a sight of His glory, “proclaimed the name of the Lord.”

What was that name? Was it the “Jehovah”, the “I AM”, of the original revelation? As we read verses six and seven, we see that the name of God as given here is actually the sum of God’s attributes: “The Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty….” God, such as He is—in mercy and righteousness, in boundless compassion, and in just judgment—that is His “name”.

One name cannot comprehensively describe, of course, the qualities, or even the chief quality, of a complex human character. How much less, then, can one name demonstrate the complex and incomprehensible character of God? And yet, there is one name that expresses to those of us who are God’s children the highest and fullest comprehension of all His attributes and of His character. It is that name which brings Him nearer to us than any other, the name of “Father”.

Would it surprise you to learn that not everyone can truly hallow God’s name, or even truly pray, “Hallowed be Thy name”? Actually, “hallow” doesn’t mean “to make holy,” but “to exhibit as holy.” The Greek word used here is hagiastheētoō, hagios, which means “separated” or “saint”, but it involves the idea of separation because of purity. There is a distinct moral connotation to the term. It’s something that is set apart as different from what is around it.

Our first concern in prayer is that everything which takes place contributes to the realization that God is pure, undefiled, and holy. He permits nothing in answer to prayer that will be a cause of the desecration of His character as it is observed by all His creation. Therefore, God will not answer our individual petitions for anything of which the end result is not the recognition by the whole universe of the holiness of God. God is essentially holy in His being. The idea is not that we make Him more holy—that would be impossible. It is rather that we recognize that holiness on our part and seek to exhibit it to all others.

To “hallow” means also to “treat as holy.” The name of God—which stands for the character of God—must be treated as holy. The first petition certainly knocks down any temptation for us to treat God with vulgar familiarity just because He is our Father. Remember, our Lord didn’t tell us just to say, “Our Father,” but “Our Father, who art in heaven.”

True, there is the closest relationship between Himself and us, as a result of Christ’s work on the cross. Nevertheless, He is still to be considered as being far above us. In order to enforce that concept of His utter superiority, the Lord gives us the first petition, so that our primary concern in prayer is immediately established: to preserve and exhibit His holiness among all people.

When the Lord say, “I will sanctify My great name” (Ezek. 36:23), He meant, “I will exhibit it and make it be seen in its true holiness.” On the other hand, when we read, “They shall sanctify My name, and sanctify the Holy One of Jacob” (Is. 29:23), the meaning is, “They shall recognize Me as holy, and treat Me accordingly.”

This twofold use of the word “hallow” may be illustrated by the corresponding twofold use of the word “glorify” (in the Greek, doxazō), though that’s a word of lesser meaning, being applicable also to created beings and things, whereas to be “hallowed” or “sanctified” is unique to God. “To glorify” in Greek means “to recognize one for what he is.” The verb doxazō is derived from dokeō, which means “to form an opinion,” but it doesn’t speak of the state of being. However, when the words “hallow” or “sanctify” (hagiazō) are used, there is an actual declaration of what God is. He is holy. That holiness ought to be recognized and exhibited by all.

Only God’s children recognize holiness or moral perfection in the character of God. The inanimate universe speaks loudly of the majesty and glory of god, but never of His moral perfection. Anyone could sing “How Great Thou Art” but only the true Christian can sing, “Holy, Holy, Holy” with any true appreciation of its sentiments and meaning.

Every flower by its fair hue, every leaf by its delicate tracery of veins, every insect by its wonderful structure, every star by its individual radiance, glorifies God—declares His glory and magnificence. As the Psalmist asserts in Psalm 19, “The heavens declare the glory of God” the Creator: His power, His magnificence, His grandeur, His skill, and His wisdom.

But the only mirror in which God’s holiness is reflected is the hearts of His children. Their hearts and souls “venerate and adore Him, and lie low before Him,” in conscious homage. God’s image is reproduced in the believer by Jesus Christ. “The new man,” says Paul in Colossians 3:10, “is renewed in knowledge after the image of Him that created him.”

The petition “Hallowed be Thy name,” therefore, carries the idea of rational moral agents who have acquired—by virtue of creation, as in the case of elect angels, and by virtue of redemption, as in the case of believers—a capacity to truly comprehend and appreciate the holiness of God. Only such as these can truly pray, “Hallowed be Thy name.”

Looking directly and fixedly at God dazzles and bewilders human reason, even as looking directly and fixedly at the sun dazzles and disables the human eye. We simply cannot comprehend God or His holiness within the faculty of natural human reason. Reason will never be able to ascertain a moral, unified, perfect, holy purpose in the seeming hodgepodge of providential events in our lives.

This is why purely nominal Christians never pray first that God’s name be hallowed, even though they may repeat the words of the Lord’s Prayer. Before they could pray in such a way, it would first be necessary for them to recognize His holiness. But such a recognition is impossible without help from God Himself. Just as your child can never understand your character as a father from your corrective actions, so we can’t possibly understand God simply by judging Him from His actions in response to our selfish petitions. Someone once wisely wrote, “Judge not God’s heart of love by His hand of providence.” It takes a father’s willingness to explain to his child in understandable language why he does what he does, in order for the child to learn to attribute kindness or moral rightness to the father.

This is exactly why God revealed His holiness to us through His unique Son who had always been in the bosom of the Father (John 1:18). This is why the Lord Jesus said, “He that hath seen me hath seen the Father” (John 14:9). Understand Jesus and you understand God’s holiness. Receive Jesus and you receive His holiness. Only then can you exhibit God’s holiness. The character of Christ is the character of God, reflected in the mirror of a redeemed humanity.

Originally published in 1980 as part of the book The Lord’s Prayer from AMG Publishers

Dr. Spiros Zodhiates (1922-2009) served as president of AMG International in Chattanooga, Tennessee for over 40 years, was the founding editor of Pulpit Helps Magazine, and authored dozens of exegetical books.