Luke 11:1-13
Seventh Sunday after Pentecost
July 27, 2025
Discussing Luke 11:1-13
During 40 years of leading ecumenical worship services such as funerals, memorial services and prayer gatherings, I learned to give all of the “trespassers” in the congregation time to catch up with all of us “debtors” and “sinners.” The use of “debts” versus “trespasses” versus “sinners” in the Lord’s Prayer is one topic that often arises when discussing Luke 11:1-13.
If you’re engaging this Scripture at a Bible study, I recommend the leader investigate the increasingly common usage of “sins” in this phrase of the prayer. Two questions that I find are frequently asked are:
- Do we really mean it when we ask God to “forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors”? If so, what does that mean about our chances of being forgiven?
- Where is the doxology at the end of the Lord’s Prayer, not only in Luke 11:1-4 but also in Matthew 6:7-15? Neither Scripture includes the traditional, “For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever. Amen” that Presbyterians are used to saying.
While these questions frequently lead to rich discussions about the usage of the Lord’s Prayer in the church, they may not be the strongest foundation for a sermon. A preacher might find they have too ambitious an agenda if they tackle both these questions in one sermon. Besides that, as engaging as these topics are, they could obscure the meaning of Jesus teaching his disciples to pray in Luke 11:1-13.
Praying as Jesus taught us
Worship leaders frequently employ the transitional sentence, “Now let us pray the prayer our Lord taught us to pray,” referencing Jesus’s instruction in Luke 11:2. But what does it mean to pray as Jesus taught us? In my opinion, there are at least three options for interpreting Jesus’s instructions for our prayer life.
“Our Father, who art in heaven…”
The first option, as practiced in both corporate and private prayer on a regular basis, is to use the very words Jesus taught (at least those recorded in Luke 11:1-13 and Matthew 6:9-13, with the addition of the doxology). Indeed, the first century Didache, considered the first known example of church orders, introduces the Lord’s Prayer with the words, “but as the Lord commanded in His Gospel, thus pray…” and specifically teaches, “Thrice in the day thus pray.”
The Lord’s Prayer as a model
A second option is to use Jesus’s teaching about how to pray as a model to shape our own prayers. This approach can serve as a good discipline because, as the apostle Paul reminds us in Romans 8:26, “we do not know how to pray as we ought.” Jesus gives us a template to use so we can fashion our own prayer to include praise and worship of God, an honest appeal for our personal, daily needs, and the acknowledgment of our need for reconciliation with our neighbors. Using Jesus’s teaching as a guide can keep our use of the Lord’s Prayer from being just a rote exercise.
The Lord’s Prayer in context
The third option is to understand our Lord’s Prayer in the context of Luke’s Gospel and the desired relationship with our heavenly Father. Note that one of Jesus’s disciples asks him to teach them to pray after Jesus had finished praying in a certain place. Throughout his ministry in Luke’s Gospel, Jesus regularly prays and models for his disciples and us an intimate relationship with God.
Jesus’s use of the term “Father” in verse 2 is illuminated by his brief parable in verses 11-12 and the explanation in verse 13. If earthly parents care for their children and know how to respond to their needs, how much more will the heavenly Father respond in love?
Jesus’s teaching about how to pray describes an aspirational life for the believer in relationship with God: a life of worship, trust, obedience, and dependence. In fact, Jesus’s teaching about how to pray describes his entire life and ministry. Understanding the Lord’s Prayer in this manner is a good way for us to fulfill Paul’s admonition in 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 to “Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.”
Matt Skinner’s comment in his article “Who Taught You How to Pray?” on the Working Preacher website is a good summary of how we may best use Jesus’s teaching about how to pray. He writes, “In the end, [Luke 11:1-13] is less about the specific prayer that Jesus teaches and more about the theological convictions he puts forth for all to consider. Do we dare believe them? Do we dare adopt this theology of a gracious and justice-loving God as our own and pray accordingly? Can I pray it with my own cadence and emphasis, making it more than a series of statements that I recite to a borrowed God but instead an expression of what I want my life to look like in God’s hands?”
Questions for reflection on Luke 11:1-13
- How can your congregation’s prayer practices keep the Lord’s Prayer from becoming a rote exercise?
- Specifically, how can the Lord’s Prayer shape your life so that you pray without ceasing?
- How does your congregation’s ministry reflect the themes of the Lord’s Prayer?
View the corresponding Order of Worship for the Seventh Sunday after Pentecost.
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