What is the real meaning of the Lord’s Prayer?
Matthew 6:9-13

Have you thought about the Lord's Prayer?
There are general facts which we will do well to remember about the prayer taught by Jesus Christ.

Note, first this is a prayer which Jesus taught his disciples to pray. Both Matthew and Luke are clear about that. Matthew sets the whole Sermon on the Mount in the context of the disciples (Matthew 5: 1); and Luke tells us that Jesus taught this prayer in response to the request of one of his disciples (Luke 11: 1). The Lord's Prayer is a prayer which only a disciple (a follower of Christ ) can pray; it is a prayer which only one who is committed to Jesus Christ can take upon his or her lips with any meaning.

The Lord's Prayer is not so much a child's prayer, although it is good for children to learn and become familiar with it. The Lord's Prayer is not the Family Prayer as it is sometimes called, unless by the word family we mean the family of the Church, the family of God’s people.

It is good to note the order of the petitions in the Lord's Prayer.
The first three petitions have to do with God and with the glory of God: the second three petitions have to do with our needs and our necessities. That is to say, God is first given God’s supreme place, and then, and only then, we turn to ourselves and our needs and desires. It is only when God is given God’s proper place that all other things fall into their proper places.

Prayer must never be an attempt to bend the will of God to our desires; prayer ought always: to be an attempt to submit our wills to the will of God.

The second part of the prayer, the part which deals with our needs and our necessities, is a marvelously wrought unity. It deals with the three essential needs of man, and the three spheres of time within which man moves.

First, it asks for bread, for that which is necessary for the maintenance of life, and thereby brings the needs of the present to the throne of God.

Second, it asks for forgiveness and thereby brings the past into the presence of God.

The more accurate biblical quote is to use "debtors/debts." The use of "trespasses/trespass" is used by some in place of "debtors/debts," which has been borrowed from verse 13. "For, if you forgive people their trespasses, your heavenly Father will forgive you too; but if you do not forgive people their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses."

Third, it asks for help in temptation and thereby commits all the future into the hands of God. "Lead us when in temptation" is another version. In these three brief petitions, we are taught to lay the present, the past, and the future before the footstool of the grace of God.

The Ecumenical Version of The Lord’s Prayer conveys its real meaning. "Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us. Save us from the time of trial and deliver us from evil. For the kingdom, the power, and the glory are yours now and for ever. Amen."

Pastor Ivan Horn
Serving St. Martin's U.C.C. of Dittmer, MO   1990 - 2003