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What do you think of J. Vernon McGee's commentary on the Lord's Prayer? He said:

Notice that this so-called Lord’s Prayer could not be the prayer of the Lord Jesus. He couldn’t pray this prayer. He couldn’t join with you and me and say, “Our Father” because the relationship between the Father and the Son is the relationship in deity. It is a position, not a begetting. I became a son of God only through faith in Christ; therefore Christ couldn’t join with me in saying, “Our Father.”

“Which art in heaven.” God is not a prisoner in this universe—He is beyond and above it. He is in the air spaces, in the stellar spaces, but He is far removed from His universe today. He is more than creation! He is the One sitting upon the throne of the universe, and He has it under His control!

“Hallowed be thy name,” more correctly translated, would read, “Let thy name be made holy.” The name of God stands for God, for all that God is. In what way can you and I make God’s name holy? It is my conviction that by our lives we are to make God’s name holy. When Abraham went into Canaan, a Canaanite passing by observed that they had a new neighbor, for he had seen Abraham’s altar. Everywhere Abraham went he built an altar to God. And when Abraham began to do business with the Canaanites, they found him to be honest. They found that everything Abraham said invited their confidence. Finally, they reached the conclusion that the God whom Abraham worshiped was an holy God, and Abimelech said to Abraham, “… God is with thee in all that thou doest” (Gen. 21:22). The children of Heth said, “… thou art a mighty prince among us …” (Gen. 23:6). The entire life of Abraham revealed the reverence he felt for God. Surely the name of God was made holy in Canaan because of Abraham.

As I have indicated, this prayer is a model for our own prayers. Now I want you to notice this petition for a moment. It is a wonderful petition, so simple yet one that should come from our hearts with great enthusiasm. It speaks of our utter dependence upon God. Our bodily wants, our physical necessities, all are supplied by Him day by day. “Give us … our daily bread”—just as Israel gathered manna for the day, they gathered nothing for the morrow. They were not permitted to gather manna for the next week. They could not hoard it. This prayer gathers manna every day, “Give us this day our daily bread.” It shows man that he lives from hand to mouth. It shows man that even his bodily necessities, his basic needs, come from God.

“Forgive us our debts as we forgive those that are indebted to us” is legalistic; it is not grace. I thank God for another verse of Scripture, Ephesians 4:32, “And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you.” Today God is forgiving us on the basis of what Christ has done for us, not on the basis by which we forgive—as touching the matter of our salvation. The redemption of God is in full view when God forgives us. It does not refer to our salvation when we read, “forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.” He is speaking here to those who are already saved, those who already have the nature of God. He does not wait for you to forgive before He forgives. This is not His method of settling the sin question. He gave His Son to die, and it is on this basis that God forgives.

In some churches today where there is formal religion, liturgy and ritual, they use “forgive us our debts” while others will use “forgive us our trespasses.” Two little girls were talking about the Lord’s Prayer as repeated in their churches. One said, “We have trespasses in our church,” and the other said, “Well, in our church we have debts.” (Probably they both were right as far as the churches of our day are concerned—they have both debts and trespasses.) So which phrase is accurate? There is no difficulty here at all since all of these words refer to the same thing, and that thing is sin.

“Lead us not into temptation.” This word lead gives us the wrong impression because James says God does not tempt any man. That is true—God does not tempt any man. A better translation here would be, “Leave us not in temptation.” It does not mean to keep us out of it, but when we are in it, do not leave us there.

“Deliver us from evil”—this deliverance is from the evil one. Deliver us from the evil one—deliver us from the Devil. Satan is today an awful reality. The world has tried many times to get rid of him. They laughed at Martin Luther who threw an inkwell at him. But recently we have had a turn in events. Any man who stands for God knows the awful reality of Satan. As we work in any church we become conscious of the presence of God and also dreadfully conscious of the presence of Satan. But we have this petition, “Deliver us from the evil one.”

May I say that this is a marvelous prayer for a new believer to pray privately in learning to pray. My own mother was not saved until late in life. She didn’t know how to pray, and she began by just repeating the Lord’s Prayer. Finally she graduated from this, and she could pray her own prayer.

When we are teaching our children to pray, we begin them with, “Now I lay me down to sleep.” Then one day little Willie adds, “God bless mama and God bless papa.” That is a thrilling moment for us, because they are beginning to pray on their own. And our Lord gave the so-called Lord’s Prayer as a model. It is a glorious, wonderful prayer, and it shows us what we should include in our own prayers. He would like us to learn to pray in our own words when we talk to Him.

As the Lord Jesus said in the verses preceding the Lord’s Prayer, prayer is not to be done for display. It is a relationship between you and God, and the most effective prayer is when you enter into your closet—that is, a private place. I am not enthusiastic about public prayer meetings because of the fact that the deadest service of any in the church is the prayer meeting. As a pastor, I used to try to build up the prayer meeting, but I soon discovered that if you have fifty dead saints praying, you don’t improve it by getting a hundred dead saints. It still is a pretty dead prayer meeting. What we need is a great deal more private prayer. It should take place between an individual and God.

McGee, J. Vernon: Thru the Bible Commentary. electronic ed. Nashville : Thomas Nelson, 1997, c1981, S. 4:37-38

Response to comment [from Messianic Jew]: "Thy Word have I hidden in my heart. Better not repeat scripture back I guess. The whole book of Psalms is a song and prayer book that we should use to edify and bless our Lord with. Jesus repeated prayers all the time, like when He blessed the bread and the wine.

Let me tell what I believe Jesus meant when He said don't use repetitious words. You see the pagan religions use like a mantra like oomm in order to reach a spiritual trance and that is demonic. That's what I believe."

If the word of God pops up in our minds it seems to indicate that it has been hidden in our hearts. Do you think that we can read Psalms for example and pray with the Psalmist as we read? I imagine we experience similar things today that they experienced then.

Response to comment: "[W]e should certainly not pray that God's will be done on Earth. It definitely is not part of the program of the church. This prayer only applied to Jews up to the mid Acts gospel of Paul."

Our will should get in line with God's will. If anyone's will is wrong it is ours, not God's.