Matthew 6:8: if God already knows, why ask?
8Therefore, do not choose to imitate them. For your Father knows what your needs may be, even before you ask him.
The sentence has two halves and the second is the reason for the first. The argument is not about how effective prayer is, but about the picture of God that prayer assumes — and that changes everything which follows.
Short answer
Matthew 6:8 says God knows what you need before you ask, and uses that to correct prayer which piles up words to persuade. The conclusion is not to stop asking: the very next verse is the Lord’s Prayer. What falls away is the idea of informing God, or of wearing him down.
- Written by
- Raphael Navarro Schmitt
- Reviewed by
- Maria Luisa Navarro Schmitt
- Published on
- Reading time
- 2 min read
This is the verse that produces the oldest objection about prayer, and it produces it on purpose. The answer is not an explanation: it is what Jesus does in the next sentence.
Where this verse appears
We are in the Sermon on the Mount, in a stretch where Jesus corrects three religious practices — almsgiving, prayer and fasting — always by the same test: who they are being done for.
The previous verse describes prayer that runs long in the belief that a quantity of words persuades. That is what this verse answers, and the contrast is between two ways of picturing the one who listens.
Immediately afterwards, with no transition, comes the Lord’s Prayer — short, and full of requests. The sequence is the key to reading it.
What it says
The claim is simple: God does not need to be informed. That removes one whole motive for praying, which is to deliver information, and another, quieter one, which is to keep pressing until resistance gives way. Neither survives the sentence.
What remains is what the text actually keeps. Jesus does not conclude that prayer is unnecessary; he concludes that prayer is something else. Prayer appears here as a relationship rather than a transaction — which is why the word chosen for God in this verse is Father, and not judge or master.
It is worth marking what the verse does not say. It does not promise that the known need will be met, or met on your timetable. It asserts knowledge, and knowledge is not the same as consent. Confusing the two is the source of a great deal of frustration blamed on prayer.
What to do with it today
In practice the verse relieves anyone who freezes for lack of the right way to pray. If a request does not have to be well formed to be understood, then the clumsy sentence, the short list and the silence all work. Rhetorical quality is not the measure.
And it dismantles a familiar pressure: repeating the same request until it works. Repeating out of trust is one thing; repeating to win by exhaustion is another, and it is the second that this text discards.
What the passages say
7And when praying, do not choose many words, as the pagans do. For they think that by their excess of words they might be heeded.
The verse immediately before, describing the practice being corrected: many words, in the hope of being heard for that reason. Without it, verse 8 becomes an abstract thesis about omniscience.
26And similarly, the Spirit also helps our weakness. For we do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit himself asks on our behalf with ineffable sighing.
Paul carries the same idea forward: there are days when a person does not know what to ask for, and he treats that as a normal part of prayer rather than a failure in it.
A prayer to carry with you
Father, you already know what I lack before I open my mouth. Free me from praying as someone who has to persuade, and teach me to pray as someone already known. Amen.