IN BRIEF
Matthew 6:9–13
Luke 11:2–4
Teaching on prayer
c.27–29 CE The Sermon on the Mount (in Matthew), a mountainside in Galilee. Luke says only that Jesus teaches the prayer “in a certain place.”
Jesus The Messiah and Son of God during His ministry in Galilee and Judea.
Jesus’s disciples A group of Jewish men and women who travel with Jesus during His ministry, and spread the word about Him and His teachings after His death.
Christianity’s most famous prayer, which was taught to the disciples by Jesus Himself, starts on a striking note: “Our Father.” By opening what became known as the Lord’s Prayer with those two words, Jesus was encouraging His disciples to enter into an extraordinary intimacy with God—similar to the one that He Himself enjoyed.
The image of God as a loving parent was not unknown in the Hebrew scriptures. As early as Exodus 4, the Lord refers to Israel as His “firstborn son.” Nowhere in the Old Testament, however, is the idea of God as the Father as central as it is in Jesus’s teachings. In telling His followers to say “Our Father,” He encourages them to approach God boldly, just as a child would approach a parent whose care, provision, and protection they otherwise take for granted.
Translations
The oldest known English versions of the Lord’s Prayer date from before 1000 CE. John Wycliffe, leader of the reformist Lollard movement, translated it into English (along with the rest of the Bible) in the 1380s, and William Tyndale followed suit in the 1520s and 1530s. After the English Reformation, Tyndale’s version of the Prayer was included with a few changes in the new Church of England’s Book of Common Prayer, compiled by Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, and first published in 1549. This has survived with only a few modifications as the traditional form of the prayer in English, which is still the most familiar version for many people.
The doxology (a short verse praising God) at the end of the prayer—“For thine is the kingdom …”—is not found in the Bible, but versions of it have been used for hundreds of years, particularly in the Eastern and Orthodox Church. In its present form, the doxology is mostly used by Protestants.
Learning to pray
In Luke’s Gospel, Jesus gives the prayer in response to a request from one of the disciples: “Lord, teach us to pray, just as John [the Baptist] taught his disciples.” Of the prayer is more pared down than Matthew’s and includes just five petitions. In Matthew’s Gospel, the prayer is the focal point of the Sermon on the Mount and includes the salutation and seven petitions familiar to Christians today. Different religious traditions had their distinctive prayers, and Jesus intended the Lord’s Prayer to be for His followers to say. The early Christians recited it three times a day in the same way that Jews recite the 18 Benedictions.
“The Lord’s Prayer is the most perfect of prayers. … This prayer teaches us not only to ask for things, but also in what order we should desire them.”
Thomas Aquinas
Seven petitions
The prayer has become central to Christian liturgies, but it is also seen as a “school of prayer.” The opening salutation stresses the person’s membership in a family of fellow children of God: “Our Father.” Three so-called “you-petitions” follow—hallowed be your name; your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven’—succeeded by four “we-petitions”: give us our daily bread; forgive us our trespasses; lead us not into temptation; and deliver us from evil. While the you-petitions concern God’s desire for love and justice among people, in the we-petitions the believer grapples with the challenges of living out that vision: the need for material and spiritual sustenance, forgiveness, mercy, and the ability to persevere.
In both Matthew’s and Luke’s Gospels, the prayer is followed shortly afterward by other famous pronouncements of Jesus: “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you …” Through the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus repeatedly demonstrates His belief in making petitions to God, thus encouraging people to pray.
See also: The Origin of Prayer • The Divinity of Jesus • Sermon on the Mount • Parables of Jesus • The Nature of Faith