Matthew 6:9 to 13 · Doctrine · Featured Study
The Lord's Prayer
Jesus taught the prayer in the Sermon on the Mount, and Luke records a shorter form of it.
Tertullian called the prayer an epitome of the whole Gospel, and the Didache bids it be prayed three times a day.
- First taught
- Matthew 6:9 to 13 “So then, this is how you should pray:…”
James Tissot, The Lord's Prayer, 1886-1894. Public domain.
Summary
Jesus gave his disciples one prayer to pray, and it asks first for the honour of God and then for the needs of those who pray it.
- Matthew and Luke give the prayer in two settings and in two forms.
- Calvin counts six petitions, three for the glory of God and three for our needs, and Augustine counts seven.
- The petition for the kingdom asks for a reign Jesus had already begun and has yet to bring in full.
- The church has taught the prayer as words to be prayed as well as studied, and its teachers differ on whether it is a set form or a pattern.
Two Gospels, Two Settings
Matthew's form of the prayer runs to five verses, and Luke's to three.
In Matthew the prayer stands at the centre of the Sermon on the Mount, in the chapter on giving, prayer and fasting done in secret (Matthew 6:1 to 18). Jesus gives it straight after he warns against babbling on like pagans, because the Father knows what his children need before they ask (Matthew 6:7 to 8).
So then, this is how you should pray: ‘Our Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name. Your kingdom come, Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.’Matthew's form is the one the church has prayed, with the address to the Father in heaven and the petition for his will on earth.
One day in a place where Jesus had just finished praying, one of His disciples requested, “Lord, teach us to pray, just as John taught his disciples.” So Jesus told them, “When you pray, say: ‘Father, hallowed be Your name. Your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread. And forgive us our sins, for we also forgive everyone who sins against us. And lead us not into temptation.’”Luke's shorter form, set beside Matthew's, shows what each Gospel includes.
Luke's form opens with Father alone, asks for bread each day, and says sins where Matthew says debts. It ends with the request about temptation, and it has no petition for God's will on earth and none for rescue from the evil one. Augustine reads Luke's brevity as a guide to Matthew, since God's will is done where his name is hallowed, and to be kept from temptation is to be delivered from evil (Enchiridion, chapter 116).
Luke's form in the King James Version1 paragraph
The King James Version gives Luke's prayer the address, the third petition and the last petition as Matthew has them, while the Berean text prints Luke's shorter form. John Gill, on Luke 11:4, notes that Luke has no doxology and no Amen. He adds that the oldest copy Beza owned reads debts in place of sins.
Debts and sins1 verse, 1 paragraph
Alfred Edersheim says that debts is the Hebrew way of naming guilt as a debt owed (The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah, book IV, chapter 11). The term passed into the Jewish liturgy. Gill, on Matthew 6:12, finds sins called debts throughout the Jewish writings.
For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive yours.Jesus comments on the fifth petition alone, and he ties the Father's forgiveness to ours.
From evil, or from the evil one1 paragraph
The Greek of Matthew 6:13 ends apo tou ponērou, which can be read as evil in general or as the evil one. The King James Version reads deliver us from evil, and the Berean text prints the evil one. Adam Clarke, on Luke 11:4, calls the King James rendering inadequate and gives the literal sense as deliver us from the wicked one.
The Shape of the Prayer
Calvin divides the prayer into an address and six petitions, and each petition takes up a verse Israel already prayed.
The prayer turns from three petitions for God's name, kingdom and will to three for our bread, our debts and our rescue.
The division is John Calvin's, Institutes of the Christian Religion 3.20.35 (1559). Augustine counts seven petitions in Matthew, three for eternal blessings and four for the wants of this life, and five in Luke.
Bread for the Day and the Evil One
Israel ate manna for forty years, until the people reached the border of Canaan (Exodus 16:35).
Manna left until morning bred maggots and began to smell, so Israel gathered it each morning (Exodus 16:20 to 21). Only the double portion of the sixth day was kept, for the Sabbath (Exodus 16:23 to 24), and the request for bread is made one day at a time.
The serpent of Genesis 3:1 is the first deceiver in the Bible, and the last petition asks to be kept from the evil one.
Other texts read beside each petition1 table or figure
Each row names further texts and prayers of the synagogue and the early church that speak the language of one petition.
| Petition | Read beside it |
|---|---|
| The address | Deuteronomy 32:6; the synagogue's litany Our Father, our King (Simeon Singer, The Authorised Daily Prayer Book) |
| The name | The Kaddish of the synagogue |
| Debts | Deuteronomy 15:2; Matthew 6:14 to 15 |
| Temptation | Psalm 141:4; James 1:13 |
| The evil one | Genesis 3:1 |
| The closing praise | The Didache, chapter 8 |
David's words behind the doxology1 verse, 1 paragraph
Yours, O LORD, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the splendor and the majesty, for everything in heaven and on earth belongs to You. Yours, O LORD, is the kingdom, and You are exalted as head over all.David blesses the LORD before the whole assembly at the gifts for the temple, and the closing praise of Matthew 6:13 in the King James Version takes up his words.
The King James Version reads the close of Matthew 6:13 as “For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen.” The Berean text of Matthew does not carry these words, and their place in the text is a question of the manuscripts.
The Prayer's Hard Words
Readers have long asked what daily bread means and how God can lead anyone into temptation.
The word rendered daily in Matthew 6:11 and Luke 11:3 is epiousios. Adam Clarke, on Matthew 6:11, says it is found in no Greek writer before the evangelists, and he reports Origen's judgment that they formed it. Strong's lexicon gives its sense as tomorrow's or, more probably, needful.
“In the Gospel, entitled The Gospel according to the Hebrews, 'supersubstantialis' is rendered 'mohar,' that is 'to-morrow's;' so that the sense would be, Give us today to-morrow's bread; i. e. for the time to come.”
Jerome · Catena Aurea by Aquinas · on Matthew 6:11Patristic
James 1:13 says that God tempts no one. Adam Clarke, on Matthew 6:13, reads the sixth petition as a plea to be spared sore trial, and he notes that several of the early fathers added which we cannot bear. God tested Israel in the wilderness (Deuteronomy 8:2) and tested Abraham (Genesis 22:1), and he leads no one to sin.
“Watch and pray so that you will not enter into temptation. For the spirit is willing, but the body is weak.”Jesus gives the sixth petition to his disciples again in Gethsemane, on the night he was betrayed.
The word epiousios1 paragraph
Epiousios is Strong's G1967. It stands twice in the New Testament, in Matthew 6:11 and Luke 11:3. Clarke counts more than thirty explanations of it. Jerome, in the Catena Aurea, renders it supersubstantialis and reads it of Christ, the living bread of John 6:51.
The manna and its question1 verse
When the Israelites saw it, they asked one another, “What is it?” For they did not know what it was. So Moses told them, “It is the bread that the LORD has given you to eat.The people named the manna by the question they asked, because they did not know what it was.
The Synagogue's Rhythm, Made New
Devout Israel prayed at fixed hours, and the synagogue had set prayers for those hours.
Now when Daniel learned that the document had been signed, he went into his house, where the windows of his upper room opened toward Jerusalem, and three times a day he got down on his knees, prayed, and gave thanks to his God, just as he had done before.Daniel keeps his three times a day of prayer after the king's decree has made it a crime.
The psalmist cries out morning, noon and night (Psalm 55:17), and the synagogue filled those hours with set prayers, among them the Kaddish and the Eighteen Benedictions, the Amidah. The Kaddish opens “Magnified and sanctified be his great name” and asks “May he establish his kingdom during your life and during your days” (Simeon Singer, The Authorised Daily Prayer Book, 1890).
The Didache, an early manual of church order, gives the prayer in Matthew's words and says to pray it thrice in the day (chapter 8). The church kept Daniel's three hours and gave them these words.
Edersheim on the Rabbinic parallels1 paragraph
Edersheim grants that single phrases of the prayer have Rabbinic parallels. He holds that the prayer is unique in its spirit, its combination and the succession of its petitions (book III, chapter 18). Its hearers knew its language, and no earlier prayer joined these requests in this order.
A Jewish prayer against temptation1 paragraph
The Talmud gives a prayer for the night that asks God not to lead the one praying into error, into iniquity or into temptation (Berakhot 60b, in the William Davidson edition at Sefaria). Gill, on Matthew 6:13, says such a petition often occurs in the prayers of the Jews.
What the Text Leaves Unsaid
The Gospels leave three things about the prayer unrecorded.
The Gospels do not record what prayer John taught his disciples, and Tertullian says its words were not preserved (On Prayer, chapter 1).
Neither Gospel records Jesus himself saying the prayer with his disciples, and the petition for forgiveness of debts is one he gives them to pray.
The texts do not say what epiousios meant to its first hearers.
The Kingdom Present and Still to Come
Jesus announced the kingdom as present in his ministry and taught his disciples to pray for its coming.
The kingdom of heaven is the great subject of Matthew's Gospel, and the second petition asks for it. Jesus says the kingdom of God has come upon those who see him drive out demons by the Spirit of God (Matthew 12:28). The petition asks for a reign already begun to come in full.
The site's tradition is pre-tribulation, premillennial and dispensational. It holds that Christ will return and reign bodily on earth for a thousand years, so the full answer to the petition is still ahead. Justin Martyr told Trypho that he and many others held a thousand years in a rebuilt Jerusalem (Dialogue with Trypho, chapter 80).
Blessed and holy are those who share in the first resurrection! The second death has no power over them, but they will be priests of God and of Christ, and will reign with Him for a thousand years.This is the chapter the premillennial reading rests on, and it alone counts the years.
The amillennial reading2 paragraphs
Augustine reads the thousand years as the time from Christ's first coming, in which the Church is already called his kingdom and the saints reign with him (The City of God, book 20, chapter 9).
The site's tradition holds this reading weak. It sets aside the plain sense of Revelation 20:4 to 6 and of the restoration chapters of Ezekiel.
The kingdom present now2 paragraphs
Dallas Willard, in The Divine Conspiracy (1998), teaches the kingdom as present now and advancing through obedience to the Sermon that frames the prayer. The premillennial and the amillennial readings both hold that the kingdom is present, and they differ on whether a reign of Christ on earth is still to come.
Tertullian prays for the kingdom as the end of the age and asks that our reign be hastened (On Prayer, chapter 5). Matthew Henry reads the petition as a prayer that the kingdom John and Jesus preached as at hand would come.
On earth as in heaven1 paragraph
The angels above already carry out God's word, and the third petition asks that people below obey him in the same way.
How the Church Has Prayed It
Tertullian, Cyprian, Cyril of Alexandria, Augustine, Matthew Henry and C. I. Scofield each wrote on the prayer.
Tertullian expounds the prayer clause by clause in On Prayer. Cyprian of Carthage notes that the prayer says Our Father and give us, never my Father or give me. He reads it as public and common, made for the whole people (On the Lord's Prayer, chapter 8).
died 444 · Cyril of Alexandria
Catena Aurea by Aquinas
The quotation1 quotation, 1 paragraph
Luke 11:1 shows Jesus praying before the disciple's request, and Cyril of Alexandria asks why the Son, who lacks nothing, prayed at all.
“Now whereas He possesses every good in abundance, why does He pray, since He is full, and has altogether need of nothing? To this we answer, that it befits Him, according to the manner of His dispensation in the flesh, to follow human observances at the time convenient for them. For if He eats and drinks, He rightly was used to pray, that He might teach us not to be lukewarm in this duty, but to be the more diligent and earnest in our prayers.”
Cyril of Alexandria · Catena Aurea by Aquinas · on Luke 11:1Patristic
1662 to 1714 · Matthew Henry
Commentary on the Whole Bible
In heaven and everywhere else
The quotation1 quotation
“As our Father in heaven: so in heaven as to be every where else, for the heaven cannot contain him; yet so in heaven as there to manifest his glory, for it is his throne ( Ps. ciii. 19 ), and it is to believers a throne of grace: thitherward we must direct our prayers, for Christ the Mediator is now in heaven, Heb. viii.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible · on Matthew 6:9Puritan
Augustine's seven petitions and the Beatitudes1 paragraph
Augustine sets the seven petitions beside the seven Beatitudes and the seven gifts of the Spirit of Isaiah 11:2 (Our Lord's Sermon on the Mount, book 2, chapter 11). He runs from the fear of God that hallows the name to the wisdom of the peacemakers, who are freed from evil.
Scofield on the fifth petition1 paragraph
C. I. Scofield calls the fifth petition legal ground, because there forgiveness is conditioned on a like spirit in us (The Scofield Reference Bible, 1917, note at Matthew 6:12). He sets Ephesians 4:32 beside it as grace, where believers forgive because they have been forgiven for Christ's sake. Matthew Henry reads the same clause as a plea of grace, never a plea of merit.
How the Prayer Is Read
Christians differ on whether the prayer is a set form, whether it was taught once or twice, and whether the doxology belongs to Matthew.
Words to pray as they stand2 paragraphs
John Wesley, on Luke 11:2, takes When you pray, say as a direction to use this very form of prayer as well as to imitate it. He counts the first desire of a real Christian to be the glory of God and the coming of his kingdom. Edersheim infers from the same words that the prayer gives the church its words as well as its model (book IV, chapter 11).
Jamieson, Fausset and Brown, on Matthew 6:9, find it strange to doubt that we ought to pray that very prayer. John Calvin answers that Christ does not bind his people to a prepared form of words (Commentary on a Harmony of the Evangelists, on Matthew 6:9).
A pattern for every prayer1 paragraph
Calvin, in the same place, says the prayer shows what all our prayers should seek. Albert Barnes, in his Notes on Matthew 6:9, reads it as a model of the manner of prayer and not the precise words to be used. Charles Spurgeon doubts that it was meant for universal repetition (The New Park Street Pulpit, sermon 213, The Fatherhood of God).
Taught on two occasions1 paragraph
J. C. Ryle, in his Expository Thoughts on Luke, holds that Jesus delivered the prayer twice with slight variations. Edersheim places the second giving in Peraea and says the variations come from the reporter (book IV, chapter 11). On this reading Matthew records the Sermon and Luke a later request.
One occasion, gathered into the Sermon1 paragraph
Calvin leaves the question open (Harmony, on Luke 11:1). He allows that Matthew, who collects the chief points of doctrine in close succession, may have set the prayer in the Sermon and left out the occasion Luke records.
The doxology kept1 paragraph
The Didache already closes the prayer with “for Yours is the power and the glory forever” (Didache, chapter 8). Calvin notes that the doxology does not stand in the Latin copies, and he keeps it because it fits the whole so well (Institutes 3.20.47). Wesley expounds the kingdom, the power and the glory in his Notes on Matthew 6:13.
The doxology as a later addition1 paragraph
Jamieson, Fausset and Brown, on Matthew 6:13, judge that on the external evidence the doxology can hardly be part of the original text. On this reading praying churches added David's words of 1 Chronicles 29:11 to the prayer.
Books to Read Next
Tertullian, Cyprian, Augustine, Calvin and Edersheim each wrote on the prayer, and each of these five books is free to read.
On Prayer
Tertullian · about 200
Tertullian goes on to kneeling and the other customs of prayer in the churches of his day.
Read it at New AdventOn the Lord's Prayer
Cyprian of Carthage · 252
Cyprian closes with the third, sixth and ninth hours of prayer.
Read it at New AdventOur Lord's Sermon on the Mount
Augustine · about 394
Augustine wrote two books on the Sermon, and the second covers Matthew 6 and 7.
Read it at New AdventInstitutes of the Christian Religion
John Calvin · 1559
It sets out the prayer as six petitions in book 3, chapter 20.
Read it at the Christian Classics Ethereal LibraryThe Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah
Alfred Edersheim · 1883
Edersheim compares the prayer with the prayers of the synagogue.
Read it at the Christian Classics Ethereal LibraryThe Third Petition in Gethsemane
Matthew records the third petition once more, on the lips of Jesus the night he was betrayed.
Matthew 6:9 tells the disciples to pray this way, and Matthew 6:10 gives them the petition Your will be done. The one who taught it prayed it to the end.
A second time He went away and prayed, “My Father, if this cup cannot pass unless I drink it, may Your will be done.”Jesus asks a second time, and he yields to the Father's will with the cup before him.
Sources
Scripture is the Berean Standard Bible.
- The King James Version.
- James Strong, Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible (1890), its Greek dictionary Greek text.
- John Wesley, Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament (1755)
- John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion (1559), translated by Henry Beveridge (1845)
- John Calvin, Commentary on a Harmony of the Evangelists, volume 1, translated by William Pringle (1845)
- Augustine, The Enchiridion, NPNF series 1 volume 3.
- Augustine, Our Lord's Sermon on the Mount, book 2, NPNF series 1 volume 6.
- Augustine, The City of God, book 20, NPNF series 1 volume 2.
- Tertullian, On Prayer, ANF volume 3.
- Cyprian, Treatise 4, On the Lord's Prayer, ANF volume 5.
- The Didache, ANF volume 7.
- Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho, ANF volume 1.
- Alfred Edersheim, The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah (1883)
- Simeon Singer, The Authorised Daily Prayer Book (1890), read in the edition of 1912.
- The Babylonian Talmud, Berakhot 60b, the William Davidson edition.
- C. I. Scofield, The Scofield Reference Bible (1917)
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