What does 'forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors' mean for kids?

Debts here is a picture of something we owe that we cannot pay back, which is a helpful image for older kids. For younger children, translating it as 'wrongs we have done' works well. The key teaching point is that Jesus connects the two: we are people who have been forgiven by God, and that reality should shape how we treat people who have hurt us.

Should I teach kids to memorize the Lord's Prayer word for word?

Memorization is genuinely valuable and has formed Christians for centuries, so there is nothing wrong with it. The risk Jesus was addressing in Matthew 6 was not memorization itself but hollow, thoughtless repetition. If you teach the words, pair that with helping kids understand what they are actually saying so the prayer stays alive.

How do I handle 'deliver us from the evil one' with kids who might be scared by that phrase?

Be honest without being alarming. Jesus includes this line because He takes the reality of spiritual opposition seriously, and children can handle knowing that God is a protector. Frame it positively: this is a prayer of confidence that God is stronger, not a reason for fear. The line sits right alongside 'yours is the kingdom and the power,' which is the reassuring answer to it.

Matthew 6:9-13 Sunday School Lesson for Kids

“Pray like this: ‘Our Father in heaven, may your name be kept holy. Let your Kingdom come. Let your will be done, as in heaven, so on earth. Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors. Bring us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. For yours is the Kingdom, the power, and the glory forever. Amen.’”
— Matthew 6:9-13

Scripture: World English Bible (Public Domain).

Big Idea

Jesus gave us a pattern for prayer that shows us who God is and how to bring our real needs to Him.

Opening Hook

Ask the class if they have ever not known what to say when they needed to talk to someone important. Let a few kids share, then tell them that Jesus' disciples had that same question about prayer and Jesus gave them an answer.

Teaching Points

The prayer starts by focusing on God, not on us. 'Our Father in heaven, may your name be kept holy' means we come to God remembering who He is before we talk about what we need.
Jesus teaches us to ask for daily bread, which means we trust God one day at a time rather than worrying about everything at once.
Forgiveness runs in both directions in this prayer. We ask God to forgive our debts, and Jesus links that directly to how we forgive people who have wronged us.

Bible Context

Matthew 6:9-13 sits inside the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus' extended teaching on the shape of kingdom life. He offers this prayer immediately after warning against empty, showy religion, so the Lord's Prayer is partly a corrective: prayer is a real conversation with a real Father, not a performance. Matthew, writing primarily for a Jewish audience, would have recognized the prayer's echoes of Jewish liturgy while also seeing Jesus reframe intimacy with God in a striking new way through the word 'Father.'

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Frequently Asked Questions

Focus on the meaning behind each phrase rather than memorizing the words as a block. For young kids, breaking the prayer into parts across multiple weeks works better than teaching it all at once. The goal is for children to understand that each line reflects something true about God or a real need we bring to Him.