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Luke 11:3–4

“Give us each day our daily bread, and forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone who is indebted to us. And lead us not into temptation.”

Our first priorities in prayer are the hallowing of the name of God and the coming of His kingdom, as we see in the opening petitions of the Lord’s Prayer (Luke 11:1–2). Yet there is room in God-focused prayer to bring our own needs before the Father. That is clear in today’s passage, which features petitions of the Lord’s Prayer that are concerned with human needs.

In Luke 11:3, we read, “Give us each day our daily bread.” This petition asks God to supply the basic necessities of life. In biblical times, bread was the core of the diet of God’s people, so it could stand in as a representative of all the essentials that we need to survive. “Daily bread,” therefore, refers to what is needed to maintain life on a regular basis. The fact that the prayer specifies that we are to ask God to give us this bread “each day” underscores our absolute dependence on the Lord. We do not ask for our needs to be met just once and then forget that God is the source of every good thing (James 1:18). He must provide our necessities each and every day or we will not have them. We rely wholly on the Lord at every moment.

Luke 11:4 says that we should ask God to forgive us our sins, which does not surprise us, but Jesus adds “for we ourselves forgive everyone who is indebted to us,” which seems to make our Creator’s pardon dependent on our forgiving others. That cannot be what Jesus means, for that would base our salvation on our good work of forgiving others, and salvation is not based on our good works (see Eph. 2:8–9). Jesus mentions our forgiving others because our willingness to forgive indicates that we understand forgiveness and are in the right frame of mind and heart to receive forgiveness. We cannot expect God to forgive us if we are unwilling to forgive others (see Matt. 18:21–35). John Calvin comments, “The forgiveness, which we ask that God would give us, does not depend on the forgiveness which we grant to others: but the design of Christ was, to exhort us, in this manner, to forgive the offenses which have been committed against us, and at the same time, to give, as it were, the impression of his seal, to ratify the confidence in our own forgiveness.”

The Lord’s Prayer concludes with a petition for the Father not to lead us into temptation (Luke 11:4). We know that God tempts no one (James 1:13). We can pray, however, that God will keep us from tempting situations that might lead to compromise. This is really a request for spiritual strength, for help not to succumb to sin.

Coram Deo Living before the face of God

Are we people who are willing to forgive? Because of remaining sin, it can be easy for us to start thinking that we can withhold forgiveness from those who have asked our pardon. Let us ask the Lord to enable us to forgive others and to remember that we have not really understood the gospel if we impenitently refuse to forgive others.


for further study
  • Matthew 6:11–15
  • Colossians 3:12–13
the bible in a year
  • 2 Chronicles 7–9
  • John 13:1–20
  • 2 Chronicles 10–15
  • John 13:21–14:31

The Right Priorities in Prayer

Be Kind to One Another

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From the June 2023 Issue
Jun 2023 Issue