The Lord’s Prayer is the only prayer Jesus explicitly taught his disciples to pray – and the most prayed prayer in human history. It has been said at the bedside of dying soldiers, whispered by frightened children, recited in cathedrals and in kitchens, translated into more languages than any other religious text. It is short, dense, and deeper than most of the people who pray it ever fully realize. This guide walks through the prayer line by line – what each petition actually means, why Jesus taught it in this order, why the translations differ, and how to pray it today in a way that takes the words seriously. Below: the full prayer, eight sections of careful explanation, and practical guidance for making it part of your daily life.
If you came here because you say this prayer often but want to understand what you are actually praying, start here:
“This, then, 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 today 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 6:9-13, NIV
That is the prayer in full, as Jesus gave it in Matthew 6. Sixty-six words in English. Worth knowing: Jesus did not teach this prayer as a script to be recited mechanically. He taught it as a pattern – a template that names everything a person actually needs to bring to God, in the order that genuinely orients prayer rightly. The famous opening words of the surrounding teaching are blunt: “When you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words” (Matthew 6:7). The Lord’s Prayer is the opposite of babbling. It is short, deliberate, and complete.
This guide walks through the Lord’s Prayer line by line. We cover the full text in three major translations, the meaning of each petition, why Jesus taught it in this order, the historical traditions around its use, and practical guidance for making it part of your daily prayer life. For the broader foundation of Christian prayer, see our complete guide to prayer. For the daily routine in which the Lord’s Prayer most often lives, see our 5-minute daily prayer routine. They’re meant to be used.
What the Lord’s Prayer Actually Is
The Lord’s Prayer appears twice in the New Testament – in Matthew 6:9-13 (the longer, more familiar version) and in Luke 11:2-4 (a shorter version, given when a disciple asked Jesus, “Lord, teach us to pray”). The Matthew version is the one most Christians know. It is set within the Sermon on the Mount, the longest recorded teaching of Jesus, and follows directly from his instruction not to pray for show or with excessive words.
Worth knowing: the prayer was originally given in Aramaic – the language Jesus spoke – and the Greek of the New Testament is itself a translation. That means every English version is a translation of a translation. This is one of the reasons different Christian traditions render the prayer slightly differently. None of the differences are doctrinal errors; they reflect honest choices about how to render ancient phrases into modern English.
Three things make the Lord’s Prayer distinctive among all prayers. First, it is the only prayer Jesus directly taught his disciples to pray – every other recorded prayer of Jesus is one he prayed himself rather than one he commanded his followers to use. Second, its structure is comprehensive: it covers worship, kingdom, provision, forgiveness, and deliverance in sixty-six words. Third, it is genuinely shared property across the Christian tradition – Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant, and every other branch of the church prays this prayer, often as the most regularly repeated set of words in their entire worship life.
The Full Text of the Lord’s Prayer
The Lord’s Prayer is most often prayed in one of three forms in English. All three appear below, with notes on how they differ.
The Traditional Version (KJV-derived, used in most Protestant liturgy):
Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever. Amen.
The Modern English Version (NIV, Matthew 6:9-13):
Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today 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. Amen.
The Catholic Version (English, with the doxology said separately):
Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Amen.
The main differences worth knowing: “trespasses” (KJV-derived) versus “debts” (NIV, closer to the Greek) versus “sins” (some modern versions); “evil” (more literal) versus “the evil one” (a defensible interpretation of the Greek tou ponerou); and the doxology (“For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory”) which is present in some traditions and absent in others. We’ll return to the doxology in its own section.
“Our Father in heaven” – The Invocation
The prayer begins by naming God in a way that was radical in Jesus’ time and remains theologically dense. Two words do most of the work.
“Our” – not “my.” The Lord’s Prayer is corporate before it is personal. Even when prayed alone, it is prayed in the plural – “our Father,” “give us,” “forgive us,” “lead us.” This shapes the entire posture of the prayer. You are not approaching God as an isolated individual making private requests. You are joining a community of people that stretches across two thousand years and every continent, all praying the same prayer to the same Father. That communal dimension is not incidental. It is built into the very first word.
“Father” – Aramaic Abba. Worth knowing: in Jesus’ time, addressing the God of Israel as “Father” was almost unheard of in personal prayer. The God of the Hebrew Bible was addressed as Lord, as Almighty, as the Holy One – not as a familial relation. Jesus’ choice of the word “Father” – and especially the Aramaic Abba, which carried real intimacy – was a substantive theological move. It claims that the relationship between God and the person praying is the relationship of a parent to a beloved child. That is the whole foundation of Christian prayer.
“In heaven” – the necessary qualifier. “Our Father” alone could be misread as casual familiarity. “Our Father in heaven” preserves what theologians call the dialectic of the prayer: intimacy and transcendence, held together. The God being addressed is genuinely a Father – close, attentive, loving. He is also enthroned in heaven – sovereign, holy, larger than every dimension of creation. Both at once. Lose either and the prayer collapses.
“Hallowed be your name” – The First Petition
“Hallowed” is an archaic English word meaning “made holy” or “treated as holy.” The Greek verb is hagiazo – to set apart, to honor as sacred. This is a petition: a request that God’s name be honored as holy in the world. It is not a description of something that already happens reliably; it is a prayer that something more would happen.
Worth knowing: the petition is doing two things at once. It is asking that God’s name be honored in the world more broadly – that he be recognized, worshipped, given the regard he is due across every culture and people. It is also asking that God’s name be hallowed in the person praying – that you yourself would treat God’s name and character as sacred rather than as a casual reference point. Both meanings are present in the petition. Neither cancels the other.
This is the first petition for a reason. Before the prayer asks for anything for the one praying – bread, forgiveness, deliverance – it asks for something for God: that his name be honored. That orientation is not accidental. The Lord’s Prayer is structured so that the first three petitions are about God (his name, his kingdom, his will) before any of the petitions about human need begin. Worship comes before requesting. That order is meant to shape the rest of the praying.
“Your kingdom come, your will be done”
These two petitions belong together. They name the second and third concerns of the prayer – that God’s reign would extend more fully into the world, and that what God wants would actually happen here.
“Your kingdom come.” The word “kingdom” in the New Testament – basileia in Greek – does not mean a geographic territory. It means God’s reign, God’s rule, God’s active sovereignty. To pray “your kingdom come” is to ask for the increase of God’s rule in the world – in hearts, in communities, in systems, in places where his reign is currently obscured or actively resisted. It is also a prayer that looks forward to the final consummation, when the kingdom will come fully and finally. The petition is both present-tense (let your kingdom come here, today, in this situation) and eschatological (let your final kingdom come at the end).
“Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” The will of God is done perfectly in heaven, by every being who exists there. It is done very imperfectly on earth. This petition asks that the gap be closed – that what God wants would actually happen here, in this world, as it happens there. Worth knowing: this is the petition that aligns the one praying with God’s will, rather than asking God to align with the one praying’s preferences. That is a substantive shift. It is one of the most important and most often missed moves in the Lord’s Prayer.
The phrase “on earth as it is in heaven” can be applied to all three of the first petitions – let your name be hallowed on earth as it is in heaven, let your kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven, let your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Reading the phrase that way deepens the prayer further.
“Give us today our daily bread”
This is the first petition for the one praying – and notice what it is. Not wealth. Not success. Not the achievement of dreams. Bread. Daily. Enough for today.
Worth knowing: the Greek word translated “daily” is epiousios – and it is one of the rarest words in the entire New Testament, appearing only here. Translators have debated its precise meaning for centuries. It most likely means either “for the coming day” or “sufficient for today.” Both readings produce the same practical posture: a prayer for today’s provision, not next year’s accumulation. The prayer asks for enough, not for more than enough. That is one of the most consistently counter-cultural elements of the Lord’s Prayer in any age.
The petition also has older roots. It echoes the daily manna in Exodus 16 – the bread God provided to Israel in the wilderness, one day at a time, with no instruction to accumulate. The lesson of the manna was the lesson of daily dependence: you cannot store God’s provision for the future; you can only receive what you need today, today. The Lord’s Prayer carries that lesson forward.
Practically, “daily bread” includes more than literal food. It covers everything a person actually needs to live well today – physical provision, but also strength, patience, presence of mind, the resources for the actual day. Praying this petition is the practice of bringing your today’s needs to God rather than letting them be a private anxiety.
“Forgive us our debts, as we have forgiven our debtors”
The fifth petition is the most demanding line in the prayer, and the one most worth pausing over. It asks for God’s forgiveness – and ties that forgiveness, directly and explicitly, to the forgiveness we extend to others.
The word “debts” in the NIV is the most literal rendering of the Greek opheilemata – actual financial debts, used metaphorically to mean moral wrongs. The KJV’s “trespasses” comes from a different Matthew passage where Jesus uses a different Greek word. Some modern translations use “sins” for clarity. All three refer to the same reality: the moral failings, the wrongs done, the harms caused – both by us and to us.
Worth knowing: the connection between God’s forgiveness and our forgiveness of others is the only point in the entire Lord’s Prayer that Jesus immediately stops to expand on. Right after teaching the prayer, he adds: “For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins” (Matthew 6:14-15). That comment, attached directly to this petition, is one of the most pastorally weighty teachings in the entire New Testament.
The petition does not say “forgive us because we have forgiven others” – as if our forgiveness earned God’s. It says “as we have forgiven” – pointing to the deep theological connection: the kind of person who has received God’s forgiveness is a person who extends it to others. The two are not transactionally linked. They are organically linked. The presence of one tends to produce the other. The absence of one is evidence that the other has not yet taken root.
If there is someone you have not forgiven, this is the petition that surfaces it. Praying the Lord’s Prayer honestly will, over time, do that surfacing. It is one of the most reliable spiritual diagnostics in scripture.
“Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil”
The last two petitions belong together – and the first of them is one of the most discussed lines in the entire Lord’s Prayer.
“Lead us not into temptation.” The honest theological question this raises is whether God would ever lead someone into temptation – James 1:13 says clearly that God tempts no one. The most widely accepted reading is that the petition is asking God not to bring us to the moment of testing, or to keep us out of situations where we would be vulnerable to falling. It is a humble petition: rather than confidently asking for tests in which to prove our virtue, the prayer asks to be spared the testing wherever possible. The 2018 revision of the Italian Catholic liturgy renders this petition as “do not abandon us to temptation,” which captures the meaning more clearly for modern English speakers.
“But deliver us from evil.” The Greek tou ponerou can be translated either as “from evil” (the abstract noun) or “from the evil one” (a specific reference to Satan). Both readings have ancient support. The petition asks for deliverance – rescue, protection, removal – from the genuine evil that operates in the world, whether read abstractly or personally. It is a real petition. The world is genuinely dangerous, both morally and spiritually, and the prayer ends with an honest request for God’s protective intervention.
Together these two petitions name the Christian’s vulnerability to spiritual struggle and ask for God’s active help. They are not optional – Jesus put them at the end of the prayer for a reason. The Christian life involves real temptations and real evil. The prayer Jesus taught his disciples assumes both and asks for help with both.
“For thine is the kingdom” – The Doxology
The doxology – “For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever. Amen” – is one of the most commonly discussed elements of the Lord’s Prayer. Most Protestant traditions include it. The Catholic Church separates it from the prayer itself, saying the doxology only at certain points in the liturgy. Worth knowing: the reason for the difference is historical and textual.
The doxology does not appear in the earliest and most reliable Greek manuscripts of Matthew. It does appear in a slightly different form in 1 Chronicles 29:11 – a Hebrew Bible passage that some early Christians appended to the Lord’s Prayer in worship, perhaps as early as the first or second century. The Didache (an early Christian document from around 100 AD) includes a version of the doxology. By the time the King James Bible was translated in 1611, the doxology had been part of the prayer for so long that the translators included it. Modern Bible translations based on older manuscripts often omit it from the verse but note its widespread liturgical use.
The honest answer for praying use: the doxology is theologically beautiful and ancient, even if it was not part of Jesus’ original words. Saying it does not change the meaning of the prayer – it amplifies the closing worship that the rest of the prayer points toward. Many Protestants pray it as part of the Lord’s Prayer. Many Catholics say it separately in the Mass. Both practices are honoring traditions that go back nearly two thousand years.
How to Actually Pray the Lord’s Prayer Today
The Lord’s Prayer can be prayed in three meaningfully different ways, and most people benefit from using all three at different times.
As a recitation. The most common use. Pray the prayer as Jesus gave it, in whatever translation feels most natural to you. Use it as a daily anchor – at morning prayer, before meals, at bedtime, or at any moment when you need to ground yourself in something larger than the current concern. Worth knowing: the repetition of the same words across years tends to deepen their meaning rather than dilute it. Words prayed daily for a decade begin to do something at depth that words prayed only occasionally never reach.
As a pattern. Use the prayer as a structure for longer praying. Pray “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name” – then spend a moment in worship. Pray “your kingdom come, your will be done” – then bring before God the situations in your life where you are asking for his rule and his will. Pray “give us today our daily bread” – then bring your actual needs for today. Pray “forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors” – then confess what you need to confess and forgive what you need to forgive. Continue through the prayer this way. The Lord’s Prayer becomes a fifteen-minute prayer rather than a fifteen-second one. Many of the great prayers of the Christian tradition have been built on this approach.
As a personalized version. Write your own version of the Lord’s Prayer, keeping the structure but bringing in the specifics of your life. “Our Father in heaven, you are the God of my morning and my evening. Hallowed be your name in our house today. Your kingdom come in the conversation I have with [name] this afternoon. Your will be done in the decision I am facing. Give us today the bread we need – the patience, the energy, the steadiness for what is ahead. Forgive me for [specific failure], and help me forgive [specific person]. Lead me not into temptation in the place where I know I am vulnerable. Deliver us from evil. Amen.”
An expanded daily version, drawing on each petition:
Our Father in heaven, you are the one I belong to. Help me live like it today.
Hallowed be your name in everything I do and say.
Your kingdom come, in the parts of my life that have not yet yielded to it.
Your will be done, even where I do not yet see what your will is.
Give me today everything I need – and the contentment not to need more than that.
Forgive me for [name what needs forgiving], and let me forgive [name what needs forgiving] in the same measure.
Lead me not into the temptations I know I cannot resist. Deliver me from what would harm me today.
For yours is the kingdom, the power, and the glory, forever.
Amen.
For broader guidance on building a prayer practice the Lord’s Prayer can anchor, see our how to pray for beginners. For prayer with morning anchors, see our morning prayers. For the ACTS prayer pattern that pairs well with the Lord’s Prayer’s structure, see our ACTS prayer method.
Why Jesus Taught This Specific Prayer
The disciples’ question in Luke 11:1 – “Lord, teach us to pray” – was not a random request. They had seen Jesus pray, and they wanted to learn how. His response was this prayer. Three things stand out about why he gave them this particular one.
First, the prayer is short. In a religious culture where elaborate prayer was associated with spiritual seriousness, Jesus gave his disciples a prayer of sixty-six English words. The implicit teaching is that prayer is not measured by length. Brief, honest, complete is what Jesus taught.
Second, the prayer is structured to orient the person praying rightly. The first three petitions are about God – his name, his kingdom, his will. Only after that orientation does the prayer address human need. The structure itself is the teaching: prayer that begins with God’s name and reign is healthier prayer than prayer that leads with one’s own concerns. The order is not arbitrary.
Third, the prayer is universal. It does not address the specific concerns of one disciple or one community. It addresses the things every human being needs – bread, forgiveness, deliverance. It uses the inclusive “our” rather than the individual “my.” Two thousand years and every language later, the prayer still works for every situation a Christian might pray in. That universal applicability is part of why it has outlasted nearly every other piece of religious teaching from the ancient world.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does the Lord’s Prayer mean?
The Lord’s Prayer means what it says – but with each petition carrying more weight than a casual reading reveals. It is a prayer of worship (hallowing God’s name, asking for his kingdom and will), provision (asking for daily bread), forgiveness (both received and extended), and protection (from temptation and evil). The prayer is structured to orient the one praying rightly: God first (the first three petitions), then human need (the remaining three or four). It was given by Jesus as a pattern for all Christian prayer – short, deliberate, comprehensive, and universal. Every line of this guide unpacks one petition at a time.
Why are there different versions of the Lord’s Prayer?
The differences come from three sources. First, the prayer was originally given in Aramaic and recorded in Greek – every English version is a translation of a translation. Second, the New Testament itself contains two versions (Matthew’s longer one and Luke’s shorter one), so different traditions have drawn from different source texts. Third, some traditions include the doxology (“For thine is the kingdom”) and some do not, based on whether they follow older manuscripts (which omit it) or later ones (which include it). None of the differences are doctrinal errors. They are honest variations across a two-thousand-year tradition of prayer. All major Christian versions say substantially the same thing.
Is it “trespasses” or “debts” in the Lord’s Prayer?
Both are legitimate, and both have ancient roots. The Greek word in Matthew 6 is opheilemata, which most literally means “debts” – used metaphorically to refer to moral wrongs. The NIV translates it that way. The KJV uses “trespasses,” which comes from Matthew 6:14-15 (the immediate follow-up to the prayer) where Jesus uses a different Greek word, paraptoma, meaning “trespass” or “transgression.” Both words capture the same reality: the moral wrongs that need forgiveness. Some modern versions use “sins” for clarity. Use whichever word your tradition uses – none of them is wrong.
What does “hallowed be thy name” mean?
“Hallowed” is an archaic English word meaning “made holy” or “treated as holy.” The Greek verb is hagiazo – to set apart as sacred, to honor as holy. The petition is asking that God’s name be treated with the reverence it deserves, both in the world more broadly (let everyone honor your name) and in the person praying (let me treat your name and character as sacred rather than casual). It is the first petition of the prayer for a reason – before any request for human need, the prayer asks for something for God. That orientation is meant to shape everything that follows.
What is “daily bread” in the Lord’s Prayer?
“Daily bread” is a request for today’s provision – physical food, yes, but also everything else a person actually needs to live well today: strength, patience, presence of mind, the resources for the actual day ahead. The Greek word translated “daily” is epiousios, one of the rarest words in the New Testament, most likely meaning “for the coming day” or “sufficient for today.” The petition echoes the daily manna in Exodus 16 – God’s provision given one day at a time, with no instruction to accumulate. The lesson is daily dependence: today’s needs, brought to God today. Not tomorrow’s worries. Not next year’s accumulation.
Why does the Lord’s Prayer connect forgiveness given to forgiveness received?
“Forgive us our debts, as we have forgiven our debtors” – the connection is one of the most theologically weighty in the entire New Testament. Jesus immediately stops to explain it: “If you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins” (Matthew 6:14-15). The connection is not transactional – God’s forgiveness is not earned by ours. It is organic: the kind of person who has genuinely received God’s forgiveness is the kind of person who extends it to others. The absence of one is evidence that the other has not yet taken root. Praying this petition honestly tends to surface the people you have not yet forgiven. That is one of the most reliable spiritual functions of the Lord’s Prayer.
Should the doxology be part of the Lord’s Prayer?
It depends on your tradition. Most Protestants include the doxology – “For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever” – as part of the prayer. The Catholic Church says the doxology separately from the prayer itself in the Mass. Both practices have ancient roots. Worth knowing: the doxology does not appear in the earliest Greek manuscripts of Matthew, but it does appear in the Didache (an early Christian document from around 100 AD), suggesting it was being added to the prayer in worship from the first century onward. Saying the doxology does not change the meaning of the prayer – it amplifies the closing worship the rest of the prayer points toward. Use whichever your tradition uses.
How often should I pray the Lord’s Prayer?
The Didache (around 100 AD) instructed Christians to pray the Lord’s Prayer three times a day – morning, midday, and evening. That practice has continued in various forms across two thousand years. Many Catholics pray it multiple times a day in the rosary and other devotions. Many Protestants pray it once a day, often in morning prayer or as part of a weekly church service. There is no required frequency. Worth knowing: the repetition of the same words across years tends to deepen their meaning rather than dilute it. Pray it daily, at minimum. Pray it more often when you can. The cumulative effect of praying the same prayer Jesus taught – for a lifetime – is one of the most formative practices available to a Christian.
The Lord’s Prayer is the prayer Jesus taught – sixty-six words that hold everything a Christian needs to bring before God, in the order that orients the heart rightly. It has been prayed at deathbeds and dinner tables, in cathedrals and in solitary rooms, by frightened children and by tired adults, for two thousand years. The reason it has endured is not that the words are magical. It is that they are true. If this guide helped you see the prayer more clearly today, pray it tonight. Pray it tomorrow morning. Pray it across the years of your life. The cumulative practice of letting these specific words shape your prayer is one of the most quietly powerful inheritances of the Christian tradition.
For more, explore our complete guide to prayer, our how to pray for beginners, our ACTS prayer method, and our morning prayers.
