Introduction to the Lord's Prayer

We've now covered what we are to do and what we are to believe, along with where the best and most blessed life is found. Now comes the third part: how we are to pray. Since no human being can keep the Ten Commandments perfectly, even one who has made a genuine beginning in faith, and since we must constantly fight against the devil and all his forces, the world, and our own flesh, nothing is more necessary than that we continually seek God's ear, calling on Him and asking Him to give us faith and obedience to the Ten Commandments, to sustain and strengthen that faith, and to remove everything that stands in our way. So that we might know what to pray and how to pray it, our Lord Christ himself has taught us, giving us the very form and words, as we will see.

Before we work through the Lord's Prayer petition by petition, however, it is both fitting and necessary to urge people toward prayer, just as Christ (Luke 18:1; Matt 7:7) and the apostles (1 Thess 5:17; 1 Pet 4:7; Jas 1:5) did. First, we must understand that prayer is not optional; God has commanded it. We already heard this in the Second Commandment: "You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain." That commandment requires us to honor that holy name and to call on it in times of need, which is simply to pray. Calling on God's name and praying are the same thing. This means we are just as strictly and solemnly commanded to pray as we are commanded to have no other gods, to commit no murder, and to steal nothing. No one should assume it makes no difference whether they pray or not, as the uninstructed do in their confusion, saying: Why should I pray? Who knows whether God will even hear me? If I don't pray, someone else will. By thinking this way, they gradually stop praying altogether. And because we rightly condemn false and hypocritical prayer, they use that as cover, claiming we teach that no one needs to pray at all.

It's worth acknowledging that much of what has historically passed for prayer, including the wailing and chanting in churches, was not genuinely prayer at all. Such external, ceremonial practices, when properly observed, serve as useful exercises for children, students, and those new to the faith; they might fairly be called singing or reading exercises, but they are not true prayer. To pray, as the second commandment teaches, is to call on God in every time of need. This He requires of us, and He has not left it to our discretion. We are obligated to pray if we intend to live as Christians, just as we are obligated to obey our parents and civil authorities. Through invocation and prayer, the name of God is honored and rightly used. You must keep this above everything else in mind, and use it to silence and push back against any thought that would discourage or prevent you from praying. Consider how little it would matter if a son said to his father: "What's the point of obeying? I'll do as I please; it makes no difference." When the commandment stands firm, saying you shall and must obey, that argument collapses entirely. In the same way, whether I pray is not left to my personal preference; I am required and duty-bound to pray, or else I invite God's anger and displeasure. We must hold onto this truth above all else, and use it to silence the thoughts that would pull us away from prayer by suggesting that prayer is a minor matter, or a duty reserved only for those who are holier and more acceptable to God than we are. The human heart is by nature so resistant that it constantly runs from God, assuming He has no interest in our prayers because we are sinners who have earned nothing but His wrath. Against exactly that kind of thinking, I say this: we should take this commandment seriously and turn to God, if for no other reason than to avoid making His anger worse through our disobedience. Through this commandment, He makes clear that He will not push us away or reject us simply because we are sinners. On the contrary, He wants to draw us toward Himself and move us to humble ourselves before Him, to acknowledge our misery and need, and to ask for His mercy and help. Scripture is full of accounts of His anger toward those who, when disciplined for their sins, refused to return to Him, refused to soften His anger through prayer, and refused to seek His mercy.

From the weight God places on prayer in His commandment, we should recognize that we must never treat prayer lightly, especially when the obligation to value it is so clear. The command to pray stands on equal footing with all the other commandments. A child should be careful not to disobey his parents, and should always reflect: this is an act of obedience, and what I do is done with the understanding that I am walking in the path of obedience and divine instruction; on this I stand, in this I take confidence, here I find my dignity, not because of any worth of my own, but because of the commandment. In the same way, we should regard our prayers, and the things we pray for, as something God requires of us, done in obedience to His command. We should think: on my own merits, this amounts to nothing, but it carries weight because God has commanded it. So whatever his particular prayer may be, every person should always come before God in obedience to this commandment.

We therefore urge everyone, with great seriousness, to take prayer seriously and never dismiss it. In the past, teaching done in the devil's name led people to ignore prayer entirely. It was considered enough simply to recite the words, whether God heard them or not. That approach treats prayer as trivial, a kind of mumbling on the off chance that someone is listening. Such prayer is worthless. We let ourselves be led astray by thoughts like these: I am not holy enough, not worthy enough. If I were as godly and holy as St. Peter or St. Paul, then I would pray. Dismiss those thoughts entirely. The same commandment that called St. Paul to pray applies to me. The second commandment was given just as much for my sake as for his. He cannot claim a better or holier commandment than I can. You should say to yourself: the prayer I offer is just as precious, just as holy, and just as pleasing to God as the prayer of St. Paul or the greatest of saints. I will freely admit that such a person is holier in terms of who they are, but not in terms of the commandment they follow. God does not value prayer based on the person offering it, but based on His Word and the obedience it reflects. I ground my prayers on the same commandment that all the saints have grounded theirs, and beyond that, I pray for the same things and for the same reasons they pray or have prayed.

The first and most essential point, then, is that all our prayers must be grounded in obedience to God, regardless of who we are, whether we are sinners or saints, worthy or unworthy. We must also understand that God will not allow this commandment to be treated as something optional. He will be angry and will hold us accountable if we do not pray, just as He holds us accountable for any other act of disobedience. And at the same time, He will not allow our prayers to be wasted or go unanswered. If He did not intend to hear us, He would never have commanded us, with such seriousness and weight, to pray in the first place.

We should be all the more motivated to pray because God has promised that our prayers will certainly be answered. As He says in Ps 50:15: "Call upon me in the day of trouble: I will deliver thee;" and as Christ says in Matt 7:7-8: "Ask and it shall be given you... for every one that asketh receiveth." These promises should stir and kindle our hearts with a genuine desire and love for prayer. God testifies through His Word that our prayers are deeply pleasing to Him and will surely be heard and granted, so that we won't treat prayer as worthless, or pray into empty air with no confidence. You can hold those promises up before God and say: I come to you, dear Father, and pray; not on my own initiative or because of any merit in me, but because of your command and promise, which cannot mislead or deceive me. Anyone who refuses to believe these promises should understand that he provokes God to anger by grossly dishonoring Him and accusing Him of lying.

We should be even more persuaded and drawn to pray because, beyond the command and the promise, God actually comes to our aid and places the very words in our mouths that we are to use. He does this so that we might understand how sincerely He cares about our needs, and so that we might never doubt that such prayer pleases Him and will surely be heard. This is why the Lord's Prayer surpasses any prayer we might be inclined to compose for ourselves. When we pray in our own words, our consciences can always waver and say: I have prayed, but who knows whether it pleases God, or whether I used the right form and the right measure? There is no more remarkable prayer on earth, then, than the Lord's Prayer, because it carries the highest possible testimony that God loves to hear it. We should not surrender it for all the riches in the world.

It is laid out in this specific form so that we can see and reflect on the need that should drive us to pray without ceasing. Anyone who prays must bring a genuine request, naming and asking for something specific; otherwise, it isn't really prayer at all. This is why we have rightly criticized the prayers of monks and priests, who strain and mutter day and night with great effort, yet none of them think to ask for even the smallest thing. If you gathered every church and every priest together, they would have to admit they never once prayed from the heart for so much as a drop of wine. Not one of them could honestly say his prayers were ever prompted by obedience to God, by faith in His promise, or by any genuine sense of need. At best, they thought they were performing a good work, something by which they intended to give God His due. They had no interest in receiving anything from Him; they only wanted to give.

But where there is genuine prayer, there must be earnestness. We must feel our need, a distress that presses and compels us to cry out and plead. When that is present, prayer will arise naturally, as it should, and we won't need instruction on how to prepare ourselves or manufacture devotion. The Lord's Prayer makes sufficiently clear the necessities that should drive us, both for ourselves and for others. It should therefore serve as a constant reminder of our need and teach us to reflect seriously on that need, so that we don't simply neglect to pray. Every one of us has more than enough needs; the real problem is that we don't recognize them for what they are. This is why God wants us to voice our wants and lay them before Him, not because He doesn't already know them, but so that our hearts may be stirred to ask for more, and to ask with greater urgency, opening ourselves wide to receive His abundance.

Therefore, we should train ourselves from childhood to pray daily for all our needs, and to pray whenever we face difficulties, and also to pray for those around us: pastors, authorities, neighbors, and servants. As I said, we must always hold before God His own command and promise, knowing that He will not allow them to be ignored. I say this because I would dearly love to see people taught once more to pray properly, rather than approaching prayer so carelessly and halfheartedly, growing less capable of it with each passing day. This is what the devil wants, and he works toward it with everything he has, because he knows very well how much his cause suffers when people give themselves to earnest prayer.

We should understand that all our protection and defense rests entirely on prayer. We are far too weak to resist the devil on our own, along with all his power and all his allies, who stand against us and could easily crush us. We must therefore take up the weapons with which Christians are meant to arm themselves against the devil. For what, do you think, has until now accomplished so much—frustrating the schemes of our enemies, restraining their murderous and destructive plans, and turning aside the devil's efforts to destroy us and the Gospel—if not the prayers of a small number of faithful people, standing like an impenetrable wall between us and our foes? Without those prayers, we would have seen a far darker outcome; the devil would have drowned all of Germany in her own blood. So let our enemies mock and celebrate their supposed victories if they wish. Through prayer alone, if we are diligent and persistent, we will be more than a match for them and for the devil himself. When a faithful Christian prays, "Dear Father, your will be done," God answers from on high: Yes, dear child, so it shall be, in spite of the devil and all the world.

These remarks are meant as encouragement, so that we might, above all else, learn to value prayer as something great and precious, and clearly distinguish between empty mumbling and genuine, purposeful prayer. We are not condemning prayer itself, but rather the kind of hollow howling and muttering that produces nothing, just as Christ himself rejected and forbade long, meaningless repetitions (Matt 23:14). Now we will work through the Lord's Prayer in the briefest and clearest way possible. In its seven petitions, every need that continually presses on us is gathered together in an orderly sequence, and each one is urgent enough to occupy our prayers for a lifetime.