Our Daily Bread

A popular pastor was doing a sermon on the "Lord's Prayer, " Matthew 6:9-15, and was giving the usual talk about conditional forgiveness which I have disagreed with in the past. Our forgiveness is not conditional on our ability to forgive those who have sinned against us. This prayer was in the Old Covenant before Jesus died on the cross. Forgiveness in the New Covenant, after Christ's death, is a possession of every believer. We, in turn, forgive others with the forgiveness we have already received in Christ. However, I noticed something different today that I hadn't really thought about before. In verse 11, it says, "Give us today our daily bread." I have seen many Christians take this verse and apply it to things like daily devotions, quiet time or whatever one does for daily Bible study. There is nothing wrong with this, but if the part of the prayer about forgiveness was something that is not applicable to a believer in the New Covenant, then, perhaps, the portion about "daily bread" is not applicable either.

The entire prayer seems to be centered around asking God for different things; His will be done, our daily bread, forgiveness of sins and delivering us from evil. When it comes to the "daily bread" portion of the prayer my thoughts lead me to another passage in the Gospels. In the Gospel of John, Jesus declared, "I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty (John 6:35)." Later in the same chapter He reiterated this statement. "I am the bread of life (John 6:48)." If Jesus is the bread of life and the "Lord's Prayer" asks God for "our daily bread," then isn't safe to say that we already have our daily bread? A believer has already come to Jesus. The Holy Spirit of God, His very life, indwells a believer from the moment of salvation into eternity. In other words, we have Jesus, therefore, we have "our daily bread." And just like with forgiveness, we do not have to ask God for what we already have in Christ.

"And he took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to them, saying, "This is my body given for you; do this in remembrance of me (Luke 22:19)." When we partake in the "Lord's Supper," it is a reminder that Jesus died, the breaking of the bread, to take away our sins. But, even more important is the fact, raised from the dead, Jesus, the "bread of life," now lives inside every believer. We are the body of Christ, the temple of the Holy Spirit. We have our daily bread, Jesus, because He now indwells us. The whole of the New Covenant is a description of what we now have because of our faith in Christ. And what we have is God Himself who has restored His life to us as a free gift. God promises, "Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you (Hebrews 13:5)." If He never will leave us or forsake us this means that He will be with us on a daily basis. And if He is the bread of life, with us every day and will never leave us, we can be confident that, in Him, we have "our daily bread."

One of the definitions of bread is sustenance. And sustenance is a "means of sustaining life." Jesus is our daily bread, our means of sustaining life. That goes hand in hand with salvation, which is the restoration of the life of God. Because of Christs death, burial and Resurrection, the life of God, once lost in Adam, is now restored to those who have come to Christ by faith. And because of the eternal consequences of the cross, that life we now have is an eternal life. A life that will carry us through the rest of our natural lives, through death, and on into eternity. Our daily bread is Jesus, who sustains us by His life forever. "Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you (John 6:27)." Regular food is food that spoils, but the bread of life, Jesus Christ, is the food that endures to eternal life. As Christians we were once spiritually dead in sin, hungry for the food, spiritual life, we did not have. When we came to Jesus we will never go hungry because we have received the bread of life. Unlike the Lord's Prayer, we do not ask God for what we already have. We, in turn, feed the world with the bread of life they so desperately are in need of.