Hallowed Be Your Name

The way we treat God’s name reveals whether we truly regard Him as holy. Today, R.C. Sproul helps us evaluate the attitude of our hearts toward the Lord.

God’s name is sacred, and it is to be treated not in a trivial or cavalier manner, but in a very careful and guarded way. In the Lord’s Prayer, the very first petition that Christ instructed His people to pray for was that God’s name might be regarded as holy: “Hallowed be Thy name.” And the reason for this was not some mystical or magical significance attached to a name. The reason we are to regard the name of God as holy is because it’s His name and we are to regard Him as holy. And the whole idea here is that if we have a cavalier regard to His name, that reveals—more than any of our creeds will ever reveal—the deepest attitudes of our hearts to the God of the name. So that, if we’re loose in our use of His name, that’s like wearing a placard on our chest saying that we have little regard for God.