What is the Lord’s Prayer?
Short answer
The Lord’s Prayer is the prayer Jesus taught when a disciple asked to learn how to pray. It appears in two versions: Matthew 6:9-13, longer and used in the liturgy, and Luke 11:2-4, shorter. The petitions run from the name of God to the bread of the day, to forgiveness and to protection.
- Written by
- Raphael Navarro Schmitt
- Reviewed by
- Maria Luisa Navarro Schmitt
- Published on
- Reading time
- 3 min read
The prayer is born of a concrete request. In Luke, a disciple sees Jesus praying and asks him to teach, as John the Baptist had taught his own. The answer is not a lecture about prayer: it is a finished prayer, short enough to be memorised on the first hearing.
The structure has a hinge in the middle. The first half speaks of God — the name, the kingdom, the will. The second speaks of the one praying — today’s bread, forgiveness, protection in the face of trial. That order is the content: it starts with God and only then reaches the needs of the one praying, which inverts the natural sequence of any request.
The two versions do not match, and that is visible to any reader who compares the pages. Luke’s is leaner and Matthew’s is the one that entered the liturgical use of the churches. The current explanation among scholars of both traditions is simple and does not require choosing between the Gospels: Jesus taught it more than once, and each community kept the form it prayed.
There is also the ending many people learned, the one ascribing to God the kingdom, the power and the glory. It is not part of Matthew 6:13 in the edition this site publishes, nor does it appear in the oldest manuscripts of the Gospel; it comes from the liturgical use of the early church, which added it when praying. That is why some churches say it and others do not, and why some Bibles carry it in a footnote. The difference is one of textual history, not of doctrine.
One detail of the petition about forgiveness tends to slip by: in Matthew, it is the only one that gets a comment right after the prayer. Jesus returns to it in the next two verses and ties the forgiveness received to the forgiveness given. Anyone praying the whole Lord’s Prayer is taking on that condition out loud.
What the passages say
1And it happened that, while he was in a certain place praying, when he ceased, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray, as John also taught his disciples.”
2And he said to them: “When you are praying, say: Father, may your name be kept holy. May your kingdom come.
3Give us this day our daily bread.
4And forgive us our sins, since we also forgive all who are indebted to us. And lead us not into temptation.”
The shorter version, together with the scene that prompts it. Comparing this with Matthew’s is the quickest way to see that the church received two forms of the same prayer, and not one closed formula.
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.
8Therefore, do not choose to imitate them. For your Father knows what your needs may be, even before you ask him.
What comes immediately before the prayer, and it changes how the prayer should be read: Jesus had just advised against piling up words. The Lord’s Prayer is presented as the opposite of that — short, and sufficient for exactly that reason.
9Therefore, you shall pray in this way: Our Father, who is in heaven: May your name be kept holy.
10May your kingdom come. May your will be done, as in heaven, so also on earth.
11Give us this day our life-sustaining bread.
12And forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors.
13And lead us not into temptation. But free us from evil. Amen.
The version the liturgy settled on. Note the hinge: the first petitions are about God, the last about the one praying — and the bread asked for is today’s, not the month’s, which stops the prayer from becoming insurance against the future. This edition ends at "free us from evil", with no doxology.
14For if you will forgive men their sins, your heavenly Father also will forgive you your offenses.
15But if you will not forgive men, neither will your Father forgive you your sins.
The comment Jesus adds immediately afterwards, dealing with a single petition of the prayer. It is the only line in the passage that establishes a condition, and it falls on the forgiveness the one praying extends to others.
15And you have not received, again, a spirit of servitude in fear, but you have received the Spirit of the adoption of sons, in whom we cry out: “Abba, Father!”
Explains why the prayer begins by calling God Father, and not Lord or Creator. Paul describes that word as a mark of adoption and as the opposite of fear — which makes the first word of the Lord’s Prayer the strongest claim in the whole prayer.