The Lords Prayer Matthew 6 9-13 Explained

Matthew 6:9-13 is not a prayer Jesus asked to have recited so much as a shape he asked to have copied. He gave it inside a sermon criticising long, showy public prayer, and its striking feature is its size: about sixty words in Greek, six or seven petitions depending on who is counting. The order is the argument. God’s name, God’s kingdom, God’s will, and only then bread, forgiveness and rescue.

Why did Jesus give this prayer at all?

It arrives as a correction. Four verses earlier Jesus describes people praying on street corners to be admired; immediately before the prayer he names a second failure, quieter and more common.

In praying, don’t use vain repetitions, as the Gentiles do; for they think that they will be heard for their much speaking. Therefore don’t be like them, for your Father knows what things you need, before you ask him.
Matthew 6:7-8 (WEB)

That last clause creates an obvious problem. If God already knows, why ask? Jesus never answers. He hands over words short enough to prove his point, and they imply the answer: prayer here is not a briefing delivered to an uninformed God. It is the slow work of coming to want what he wants.

What are the actual words?

Pray like this: ‘Our Father in heaven, may your name be kept holy. Let your Kingdom come. Let your will be done, as in heaven, so on earth. Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors. Bring us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. For yours is the Kingdom, the power, and the glory forever. Amen. ’
Matthew 6:9-13 (WEB)

That closing line about the kingdom and the power and the glory is missing from the oldest Greek copies of Matthew. It turns up in later manuscripts and in early Christian worship, which is why some Bibles print it, others footnote it, and congregations differ on whether to say it aloud. No doctrine rests on it. If your church says it and your neighbour’s stops a line earlier, neither of you has lost anything.

Why does Luke’s version read differently?

Luke reports the same prayer on a different occasion, prompted by a disciple asking to be taught, and the wording is not identical.

He said to them, “When you pray, say, ‘Our Father in heaven, may your name be kept holy. May your Kingdom come. May your will be done on earth, as it is in heaven. Give us day by day our daily bread. Forgive us our sins, for we ourselves also forgive everyone who is indebted to us. Bring us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.’”
Luke 11:2-4 (WEB)

Two versions is itself an interpretation. Debts in one, sins in the other; today in one, day by day in the other. Had the exact syllables carried the power, the church would have been handed one text and told to guard it. Jesus said pray like this, not pray these words.

What does “may your name be kept holy” actually ask for?

It is not a compliment paid before the real requests start; it is a request. A name in the Old Testament stands for a reputation, and this petition treats God’s as damaged and needing repair. You are asking him to act publicly so that he is rightly known.

Which quietly implicates you. Reputations are made by the people who carry the name, and asking for God’s to be honoured volunteers you to stop being one of the reasons it is not.

What are you asking for when you say “your Kingdom come”?

A kingdom here is a reign rather than a place, so the second petition asks for the arrangement you live under to end — and some of what would have to go is yours. The third sets the standard: as in heaven, so on earth. Whatever holds where God is unopposed, ask for it here. Neither line can be prayed selectively.

Why does the prayer ask for bread and nothing else?

The word translated daily is one of the strangest in the New Testament, barely attested anywhere else in Greek, and translators disagree about its sense. The size of the request is not in doubt, though: small, and for today. An older prayer runs on the same instinct.

Remove far from me falsehood and lies. Give me neither poverty nor riches. Feed me with the food that is needful for me; lest I be full, deny you, and say, ‘Who is Yahweh?’ or lest I be poor, and steal, and so dishonor the name of my God.
Proverbs 30:8-9 (WEB)

This petition trains you to ask for less than you want and come back tomorrow. It carries no promise of abundance and no guarantee against hunger. Christians who prayed it have starved. It refuses to let provision come first, or to grow larger than a single day.

Does God’s forgiveness really depend on mine?

This is the line people flinch at, and it is the only petition Jesus doubles back to explain once the prayer is finished.

For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you don’t forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.
Matthew 6:14-15 (WEB)

Christians have read that link two ways. Some hear a plain condition: the forgiveness you withhold is the forgiveness you forfeit. Others hear a diagnosis: refusing to forgive does not cancel mercy so much as show it was never taken. Neither reading lets you off. Wanting your own debt cancelled while holding everyone else to theirs misunderstands the request, and the prayer makes you say so in your own voice.

Two honest limits. Cancelling a debt is not the same as trusting the debtor again, and nothing here requires you to give someone a second chance to harm you. Forgiveness releases a claim; it does not restore access. And if you are being hurt by the person you are told to forgive, the question is safety, not accounting. In the United States the domestic violence hotline is 1-800-799-7233. Forgiveness can wait. Getting somewhere safe cannot.

Does God lead anyone into temptation?

The letter of James says flatly that he does not.

Let no man say when he is tempted, “I am tempted by God,” for God can’t be tempted by evil, and he himself tempts no one.
James 1:13 (WEB)

So the sixth petition has been argued over, and Christians genuinely disagree about how to say it. The Greek noun covers both enticement to sin and ordeal or testing. Some churches have revised the line to do not let us fall into temptation, on the grounds that the older wording makes God sound like the tempter. Others keep the traditional words and hear a plea to be spared the ordeal altogether. Scripture does not settle the English. It settles the direction: deliver us from the evil one is a request for rescue, not a theory about God’s motives.

What does this prayer not promise?

It does not promise the answer you want. The man who taught it prayed his own third petition out loud, hours before he was executed.

He went forward a little, fell on his face, and prayed, saying, “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass away from me; nevertheless, not what I desire, but what you desire.”
Matthew 26:39 (WEB)

He asked to be spared. He was not spared. Praying let your will be done is signing a document you have not been allowed to read, and the prayer puts that signature three lines above bread, before you ask for anything you actually need.

How do you pray it without it going flat?

Slow it down and stop at the seams; one breath per petition is a different experience from twenty seconds of recitation. Use it as an outline, not a script: under your Kingdom come, name one situation; under daily bread, one bill; under our debtors, the person you have been carefully not naming.

Then notice the pronouns. Our, us, we, and not one I anywhere in it. Jesus gave a prayer that is hard to say alone without praying for somebody else, so take a line and mean it for someone who is not you.

And if you are praying it in grief or panic or the flat grey of a bad month, say it as given and do not wait to feel it. If the grey does not lift, tell a doctor or a counsellor as well; this prayer was not built to do their work. It was handed to people about to lose nearly everything — twenty seconds, the shortest possible answer to the largest possible question, and they spent the rest of their lives finding out how much was inside it.