The Lord's Prayer
Matthew 6, the prayer Christ gave, as the early church read it
When the disciples asked to be taught how to pray, Jesus did not give them a technique; He gave them words, the one prayer the whole church has prayed in every century and tongue since. The early church handled it with reverence and wonder. Tertullian called it "an epitome of the whole Gospel." Cyprian, the bishop of Carthage who would die a martyr in 258, wrote an entire treatise on it, and heard the heart of the faith in its very first word: not "My Father" but "Our." Their words below, with a plain restatement.
The Fathers' words are verbatim and attributed (Cyprian of Carthage and Tertullian, in the Ante-Nicene Fathers, public domain; selected from the running prose, footnote apparatus omitted). The box marked "In plain terms" is our own restatement, never the Fathers' words.
Matthew 6:9 · KJVAfter this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name.
"He who made us to live, taught us also to pray, with that same benignity, to wit, wherewith He has condescended to give and confer all other things."
Cyprian of Carthage"Before all things, the Teacher of peace and the Master of unity would not have prayer to be made singly and individually… For we say not 'My Father, which art in heaven,' nor 'Give me this day my daily bread'… Our prayer is public and common; and when we pray, we pray not for one, but for the whole people, because we the whole people are one."
Cyprian of CarthageCyprian first notes the staggering gift: the One "who made us to live" stooped to teach us how to speak to God; the prayer is not ours invented but His given. Then he hears in the opening word the whole shape of Christian life. You cannot pray this prayer alone, because it does not say "My." "We say not 'My Father'… we pray not for one, but for the whole people, because we the whole people are one." Even in your closet, the Lord's Prayer binds you to every other believer; it is a family prayer, and the family is the Church.
Matthew 6:10-11 · KJVThy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread.
Notice the order the Lord builds in, and the Fathers loved this: before a single request for ourselves, three petitions for God, His name hallowed, His kingdom come, His will done. Only then "our daily bread." The prayer reorders the heart, putting God's glory and reign first and our needs in their proper, trusting place. And the bread is asked for daily, one day at a time, the posture of a child who does not hoard but returns each morning to a Father who provides. Many early writers also heard in "daily bread" an echo of the bread of the Supper, the soul fed as well as the body.
Matthew 6:12-13 · KJVAnd forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil…
"But what matters of deep moment are contained in the Lord's prayer! How many and how great, briefly collected in the words, but spiritually abundant in virtue! so that there is absolutely nothing passed over that is not comprehended in these our prayers and petitions, as in a compendium of heavenly doctrine."
Cyprian of Carthage"…so that, in fact, in the Prayer is comprised an epitome of the whole Gospel."
TertullianThe last petitions are weighty. "Forgive us… as we forgive" is the one request that carries a condition, the forgiven are to forgive, and Jesus underlines it in the very next verses (Matthew 6:14-15). "Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil" is the daily plea of a people who know their own weakness. And the Fathers stand back in awe at the whole: Cyprian calls it "a compendium of heavenly doctrine," Tertullian "an epitome of the whole Gospel." In a few short lines the Lord packed everything, the Father's name and reign, our bread, our pardon, our protection, so that the simplest believer holds the entire faith every time he prays it.
Where this stands among the traditions
The Lord's Prayer is perhaps the single most uniting text in all of Christendom: prayed by Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant alike, in every liturgy and at countless bedsides, almost always in the same words. There is no doctrinal divide over its meaning. A couple of small, honest footnotes belong here. On the closing doxology, "For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever, Amen", it appears very early (in the Didache, around AD 100) and stands in the King James and the Eastern and Protestant usage, but it is absent from the oldest manuscripts of Matthew, which is why the Roman Catholic form of the prayer traditionally ends at "deliver us from evil." On "lead us not into temptation," some modern translators, uneasy that God might seem to lead anyone into sin (James 1:13), have rendered it "let us not fall into temptation"; the historic reading is simply a plea to be kept and delivered, which the next clause makes plain. These are matters of text and translation, not of conflict. The drift to resist is gentler and aimed at all of us: letting this gift become mere rote, or quietly turning its "Our" into a private "My", when the Teacher of unity meant it to make us one. (See the letter on prayer and the Lord's Supper.)
Patristic text from Cyprian of Carthage, On the Lord's Prayer (Treatise IV), and Tertullian, On Prayer, in the Ante-Nicene Fathers (public domain), selected from the running prose with footnote apparatus omitted; nothing added or paraphrased within the quotation marks. Scripture in the King James Version; the plain-language lines are our own restatement. This passage in the Study Bible; Matthew 6 at BibleHub.