God's name is holy, reflecting His inherent holiness. We bear His name as sons of God, baptized into it, and the Third Commandment measures our spiritual cleanliness by the quality of our witness to all that His name implies. We must not take His name in vain, for the Lord will not hold us innocent if we do. In the Lord's Prayer, the first request is "Hallowed be Your name," a plea for God to take action to hallow His name, as only He can enable us to do so through His work in us. Where His name is truly hallowed, there is peace, harmony, unity, prosperity, joy, creativity, and endless life. God's holiness, described as "holy, holy, holy" in Isaiah, reveals His transcendent purity, setting Him infinitely apart from us in every quality. This holiness is not just an attribute but enhances all others, making His love, mercy, and justice uniquely holy. We are called to holiness, to be set apart and reflect purity in our relationship with Him, treating each other with deference as those separated by God, regardless of our current state of heart or conduct. Only God can sanctify and make something holy, lifting it from the commonplace to the special, as He has done with us by calling us out from the crowd. True holiness in us must be experiential, developed through obedience and a relationship with Him, enabled by His Spirit, to transform us into His likeness.

Jesus' Model Prayer begins with a salutation to the Father in heaven, including the unique request, "Hallowed be Your name," which stands alone in its desire for an increase in the true worship of God. This phrase echoes a reverence for God's name, emphasizing holiness and a call to treat it as sacred. To hallow something means to separate, consecrate, or regard as holy. In the context of God's name, it implies that humans should treat it with reverence, recognizing its sanctity as God Himself has sanctified certain things, like the Sabbath, which He commands to be kept holy. God desires that His name be treated as holy because it represents His essence and character. His names identify His traits, and revering them means taking seriously the pursuit of Him and His way of life with profound aspiration. One can hallow God's name by placing Him in an exalted category without rivals, acknowledging His sovereign position over all things. This involves coming to a true understanding of God, following His teachings, and keeping Him at the center of life through praise and obedience in every word and deed. Ultimately, the request "Hallowed be Your name" expresses a deep desire to please the Father in every aspect of life and to witness His glory to the world.

God's name is holy because He Himself is holy, a truth that undergirds the third commandment's prohibition against taking the name of the Lord in vain. This holiness demands that His name be kept clean, held in awe, reverence, and regard for all that it implies, rather than being trampled through profanity, carelessness, or ignorance. The psalmist declares that the Lord is great in Zion and high above the peoples, calling for praise of His great and awesome name because He is holy, a refrain repeated in connection with His justice, forgiveness, and vengeance. No one is holy like the Lord, for He stands in a class apart, incomparable, unique, and transcendentally separate from all others. The first request in the model prayer is that God's name be hallowed, placed ahead of the petition for His kingdom, indicating that the kingdom will come to those who first regard Him and His name as holy. Where His name is so regarded, peace and beauty prevail, as in heaven; where it is not, violence, evil, and every form of imperfection fill the earth. This holiness touches every facet of life because God's lordship extends to all creation, leaving nothing outside its reach. As witnesses chosen to know and believe Him, believers must proclaim before the world that He alone is God, declaring His majestic works so that others may understand His uniqueness and trust Him. Redemption itself serves this purpose, granting deliverance so that His people may serve Him without fear in holiness and righteousness all the days of their lives. The command to be holy as He is holy requires that holiness become an issue in every aspect of conduct, not as an optional feeling or outward appearance but as the essential character of genuine service and worship. Even when confronted by the overwhelming power of God's holiness, as Isaiah and others were, the response is recognition of personal uncleanness and a call to reflect the divine likeness through choices that produce purity and separation unto God. Holiness thus measures the quality of witness for God and shapes the conception of Him that directs all of life.