Matthew 6:9-13 · Prayer, Dependence on God, Kingdom, Forgiveness
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"Pray then like this:
Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.
Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day 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 evil."
— Matthew 6:9-13 (ESV)
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When the disciples asked Jesus to teach them to pray, they were asking for something that felt beyond them. They had seen him pray — early in the morning, through the night, with tears, with joy. They wanted to know how to enter what he seemed to enter so naturally. And his answer was this prayer.
It is short. In its original form, without the traditional doxology, it takes about thirty seconds to pray aloud. But in those thirty seconds is a complete vision of what prayer is and what life with God looks like. Every phrase opens a door.
Our Father in Heaven
The prayer begins with relationship. Not "O Almighty God" or "Most Holy One" — our Father. The word Jesus uses (abba in Aramaic) was the intimate family word for father — the word a child would use with a parent, close and unselfconscious. Paul writes that the Holy Spirit enables us to cry "Abba! Father!" (Rom. 8:15; Gal. 4:6) — the same intimacy Jesus had with the Father, now given to us through adoption.
"Our" — not my, mine alone. This prayer is communal at its first word. It sets us in relationship not just with God but with every other person who prays it. When I say "our Father," I am acknowledging that every other believer is my brother or sister before the same God.
"In heaven" — not as a way of saying God is far away, but as a way of saying he is above all things, sovereign over all things. He is intimate enough to be called Father and great enough to rule heaven and earth.
Hallowed Be Your Name
Before any request, there is praise. "Hallowed be your name" — may your name be treated as holy, regarded with reverence, honored as the sacred thing it is. In the ancient world, a name was more than a label; it expressed the character and being of the one who bore it. To hallow God's name is to recognize him as the Holy One he is.
This shapes everything that follows. Prayer that begins with the holiness of God is oriented correctly from the start. We're not coming with a list of requests to an order-fulfillment service. We're entering the presence of the Holy One, acknowledging who he is before we say anything about what we need.
Your Kingdom Come
"Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven."
This is one of the most radical prayers a person can pray, because it is the surrender of our agenda to God's. It is asking God to rule — not just in our devotional life, not just in church, but in the full scope of human reality. On earth as it is in heaven means the complete alignment of earthly reality with heavenly reality. It means asking for the day when there is no more death, no more injustice, no more separation from God.
It is also a prayer for right now — for God's kingdom to advance, for his will to be done in this situation, this relationship, this city, this community. When we pray this, we're also aligning ourselves: to pray "your will be done" is to offer to be part of the answer.
Daily Bread
"Give us this day our daily bread."
After the cosmic sweep of the kingdom petition, this one feels almost mundane. Our daily bread. But that's exactly the point. The God who is sovereign over all of creation cares about what you eat today. He is the provider of ordinary things as much as extraordinary ones.
The phrase "daily bread" captures something about the nature of dependence. Not weekly bread, not annual bread — daily. Each day, a new request. Each day, a new provision. God kept Israel alive in the wilderness with manna that came one day at a time; it could not be stored up (Exod. 16:4-5). The lesson was the same: you need me every day. Come to me every day. The prayer teaches us to live in daily dependence.
Forgive Us
"Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors."
This is the most uncomfortable phrase in the prayer. We ask God to forgive us in the same way we forgive others. Jesus follows up the prayer with an explanation: "For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses" (Matt. 6:14-15).
This is not saying our forgiveness earns God's forgiveness. It is saying that genuine reception of God's forgiveness produces in us the capacity to forgive. If we refuse to forgive, we reveal that we have not truly understood or received what God has done for us. The person who knows the weight of what they've been forgiven cannot hold their neighbor's smaller debt against them.
Lead Us Not into Temptation
"And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil."
This petition acknowledges our vulnerability. We are not strong enough on our own. We need God to guide us away from the situations and impulses that would pull us toward sin, and we need him to rescue us from the evil that surrounds and assails us.
"Deliver us from evil" — or, as some translate it, "from the evil one." Either way, it is an acknowledgment that we are in a world where evil is real and our resources are not sufficient. We need deliverance that comes from outside ourselves.
This Is How Jesus Prayed
What strikes me most about this prayer is that every word of it is something Jesus himself could pray. He hallowed the Father's name. He prayed for the kingdom to come. He depended on the Father for provision and guidance. He was delivered from evil in the wilderness.
He taught us to pray the way he prays. He brought us into his own relationship with the Father and gave us words to speak there.
These words are ours now. They are a door into the presence of the One who made us, and we are invited to walk through it — every day, with empty hands and open hearts — and meet our Father there.