The Lord's Prayer

The Lord's Prayer, also called the Our Father, is the prayer Jesus taught his disciples when they asked him how to pray. Here it is in the King James Version as Matthew records it in the Sermon on the Mount, followed by the shorter form in Luke 11. Where the KJV says debts, many churches pray trespasses, the word Jesus uses two verses later in Matthew 6:14. Both words mean sin, and both versions of the prayer are the same prayer.

Matthew 6:9-13

9After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name.

10Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.

11Give us this day our daily bread.

12And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.

13And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen.

King James Version

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Luke's shorter version

Luke 11:2-4

2And he said unto them, When ye pray, say, Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, as in heaven, so in earth.

3Give us day by day our daily bread.

4And forgive us our sins; for we also forgive every one that is indebted to us. And lead us not into temptation; but deliver us from evil.

The Lord's Prayer in plain English

Where it comes from

Jesus teaches this prayer in the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5 to 7. He has just warned against praying to be seen by others and against vain repetitions, as if more words made a prayer more likely to be heard. Then he says, After this manner therefore pray ye, and gives these few lines as a pattern. Luke 11 records a shorter form, given when one of the disciples asked, Lord, teach us to pray.

What each line means

Our Father which art in heaven
Jesus invites his followers to speak to God as a father. The word is our, not my: this is a prayer said with others as well as alone.
Hallowed be thy name
Hallowed means treated as holy. The first request asks nothing for ourselves, only that God be honoured.
Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven
A request that the world be put right, that what God wants would happen here as fully as it does in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread
A request for what is needed today, not a store for years ahead. Many read bread as standing for every daily need.
And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors
Sin is pictured as a debt. The prayer ties receiving forgiveness to giving it, a link Jesus spells out straight afterwards in Matthew 6:14 and 15.
And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil
A request to be kept through testing and protected from harm. The World English Bible reads deliver us from the evil one, since the Greek can be taken either way.
For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen
A closing line of praise that hands everything back to God.

Why churches say it differently

Many churches pray trespasses rather than debts. That wording goes back to William Tyndale's translation and came into wide use through the Book of Common Prayer. Both words mean sin.

The closing line, For thine is the kingdom, is in the Greek text the King James translators worked from, but not in the oldest surviving manuscripts of Matthew, so many modern Bibles move it to a footnote. Churches differ on where it goes. At Catholic Mass it is said after a short prayer by the priest, while most Protestant churches say it as the end of the prayer itself.