Lord's Prayer
The Lord's Prayer, also called the "Our Father," is a central Christian prayer that Jesus taught to his disciples. It is recorded in the New Testament, where it appears in two forms: a longer form in the Gospel of Matthew as part of the Sermon on the Mount, and a shorter form in the Gospel of Luke as a response by Jesus to a request by "one of his disciples" to teach them "to pray as John taught his disciples". The prayer concludes with "deliver us from evil" in
Matthew, and with "lead us not into temptation" in
Luke. The first three of the seven petitions in
Matthew address God; the other four are related to our needs and concerns. The liturgical form is the Matthean. Some Christians, particularly Protestants, conclude the prayer with a doxology, a later addendum appearing in some manuscripts of
Matthew. The context of the prayer in
Matthew is a discourse deploring people who pray ostentatiously: Jesus instructs his listeners to pray in the manner prescribed in the prayer.