In This Christmas Season, Are You "Hallowing" God's Name as Holy? Even the Christ Child Child Who Became Incarnated and Came to Us through Bethlehem's Manger?

Christ's Name is Also To Be Hallowed!

A Devotional for the Twentieth

Day of the December 2024

“Hallowed Be Thy Name” [1]

Scripture Portion

"Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name."

Matthew 6:9

"Hallowed be thy name." The words are so simple, we have known them so well from our childhood, which it is really difficult to stop and ask what they mean. Let thy name be made holy. God's name represents himself. It is a prayer that his name, and himself as represented by his name, may be regarded as holy-spoken of as wholy-treated as holy. We have a model here in the picture given by Isaiah, the adoring Seraphs covering their faces in awe before the throne. What do they cry? Not, as often we do; great, majestic, glorious—not a word about his power, nor even about his wisdom—"Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God of Hosts." That is the central thought, which ought to be our deepest desire, that God may be regarded, and spoken of, and treated, as holy.

Oh, what a contrast between that scene of the vision, and the sights and the souls of this world in which we live. Walk the streets anywhere; listen to the talk wherever you find it, especially when men grow excited. Hear them! Hear bow that high and holy name is bandied as a jest and polluted with profanity. It is enough to make a man shiver to hear the profanity that abounds everywhere. I have shivered, literally, sometimes as I listened. But my brethren, have we nothing to do but to look with horror at other men's profanity? There are some things important to our own life here. Have a care that while you may not use in vain the sacred name of God itself, you shall not fall into the practice of using other sacred expressions lightly and irreverently. I have heard even refined ladies use phrases in a light way, which were appropriate only in solemn prayer; and to a certain extent that was irreverence, that was profanity. Have a care about indulging wit that comes from profaning the language of Scripture, and allusions to God. Bluff old Dr. Johnson once said that "a man that has any respect for himself ought to be above that kind of wit, it is so cheap: any one can do that." Yes, anyone that has any respect for himself ought to be above that kind of wit, and a man that has any reverence for God ought to shrink from it.

Have a care how you repeat the profanity of other men. You want to tell a good story and the point of it perhaps lies in a profane expression. Now is it that you should repeat that expression? Is it good for yourself to repeat it? Is it healthy? Especially is it good for that boy there that is hearing, and may not make the nice distinction that you make, when you repeat other men's profanity? I would not inculcate scrupulosity about trifles, but perchance this is not a trifle, and it seems to me that we who pray this prayer, ought to lay such things to our hearts, and shrink with horror, and cultivate ourselves into shrinking with shuddering, from anything like profanity. Oh, that God's name might always be spoken with deepest reverence. Oh, that God himself might come to be everywhere thought of, and talked about, and obeyed, as holy. Anyhow, let us try to have it so in our hearts, on our lips, in our lives.

[1] Vernon Latrelle Stanfield, ed., Favorite Sermons of John A. Broadus (New York: Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1959), 66-74.