The Lord's Prayer, line by line
The only prayer he gave word for word — and it is short on purpose.
His disciples asked Jesus to teach them to pray, and he answered with a prayer that takes thirty seconds. In Matthew it comes straight after a warning against "vain repetitions", from people who think they will be heard for their much speaking.
Here is Matthew's full text, one line at a time, and what each line asks.
The prayer, line by line
- Matthew 6:9"Our Father in heaven" — who is being addressed, and how closely
- Matthew 6:9"May your name be kept holy" — that God be known as who he is
- Matthew 6:10"Let your Kingdom come" — that God's way of ruling reach here
- Matthew 6:10"Let your will be done on earth as it is in heaven" — his will before ours
- Matthew 6:11"Give us today our daily bread" — what is needed, and only for today
- Matthew 6:12"Forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors" — forgiveness received, tied to forgiveness given
- Matthew 6:13"Bring us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one" — protection, not only strength
- Matthew 6:13"For yours is the Kingdom, the power, and the glory forever. Amen" — the ending not every manuscript has
How it begins
Pray like this: 'Our Father in heaven, may your name be kept holy.
Calling God "Father" in prayer was not the usual way, and Jesus makes it the starting point for every disciple. And it is "our", not "my": the whole prayer is plural. Nobody prays the Lord's Prayer alone, even when they are alone — it asks for our bread, our forgiveness, our protection.
What runs through the prayer
Half the prayer is about God — the name, the Kingdom, the will — before it reaches any personal request. And when the requests come, they are modest: bread for today, not for the month; forgiveness; not falling. It is a prayer for someone living one day at a time.
The only line Jesus comments on afterwards is the one about forgiveness: "For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you" (Matthew 6:14). Of everything the prayer asks for, that is the one he goes out of his way to underline.
His words, one each morning
The Lord's Prayer is the prayer he gave; Walking with Jesus is made of the rest of what he said. One teaching a day, with the moment around it, a short reflection, a prayer and one thing to carry into the day.
It is a one-time purchase, about five minutes a morning, and it never asks you to catch up on days you missed.
Questions people ask
- Where is the Lord's Prayer in the Bible?
- Matthew 6:9–13, within the Sermon on the Mount, and in a shorter form in Luke 11:2–4, in answer to a disciple's request: "Lord, teach us to pray".
- Why do some versions end with "for yours is the Kingdom"?
- That closing line, called the doxology, appears in many manuscripts of Matthew but not in the oldest ones, nor in Luke. So some Bibles print it in the text and others in a footnote, and Christian traditions differ on whether to pray it.
- Is it "debts" or "trespasses" in the Lord's Prayer?
- Matthew uses "debts"; Luke uses "sins". Many prayed versions say "trespasses", from older English translations. They all point to the same thing — what we owe to God and to each other — and to the same link between being forgiven and forgiving.