If you’ve been tracking with our latest blog series on the Lord’s Prayer, you may have expected the conclusion to be the words: “For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever. Amen.” And you’d be right! … But can I geek out on you a little?

Many of the ancient manuscripts of the Lord’s Prayer in Matthew 6 include this statement (the Byzantine texts in particular). However, the earliest dated manuscripts that we have of the Gospel of Matthew, discovered as of now, do not. As such, many of our English translations omit this conclusion to the Lord’s Prayer from Matthew 6:13 for the sake of integrity to the Scripture as God’s unchanging Word.

Please catch this: no matter how truthful or liturgical the statement may be, God’s Word, the Bible, is not under man’s prerogative. However, is the statement “For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory” true and worth affirming? Absolutely!

The church historically, when praying the Lord’s Prayer together in public worship, has often used this doxology to reaffirm the truths contained within the prayer. After all, each part of the doxology directly correlates with one or more statements in Matthew 6:9–13. Additionally, the conclusion is certainly founded in the Bible and is most likely adapted from 1 Chronicles 29:11. That doxological verse says the following: “Yours, O LORD, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the victory and the majesty, for all that is in the heavens and the in the earth is yours. Yours is the kingdom, O LORD, and you are exalted as head above all.”

So for purposes of public worship, we append the Lord’s Prayer when we recount it collectively with a conclusion that is both biblical and fitting. You might wonder, “Why is it fitting?” It is fitting, because it teaches us to reinforce our petitions with—get this—an argument! Prayer isn’t just soulful or emotional; it is rational and reasonable.

The Westminster Larger Catechism, in speaking about this conclusion to the Lord’s Prayer tells us that we can ask all of the petitions in the prayer itself on the basis of God alone, and not our own worthiness (cf. WLC, 196). In other words, when we pray together as a church, we do not pray on the basis of the pastor’s faith behind the pulpit. We do not pray based upon our feelings that day. We do not pray based upon whatever baggage or heavy loads that we have been carrying throughout the week. Rather, we entrust ourselves to our Creator who is faithful (1 Peter 4:19). We come boldly to the throne of grace, because our Father not only cares for us, but he is more than able to save and to deliver and to provide us with mercy and grace in our time of need, because we are united to Christ, his Son, our Savior (Hebrews 4:16).

God wants us to join our prayer with praises, to ascribe to him alone “eternal sovereignty, omnipotency, and glorious excellency” with both our words and how we live our lives (WLC 196).

So knowing that to him belongs the kingdom, glory, and power, we trust in the fact that he is able and willing to help us, to hear us, and to invite us to repose in him. As such, we bring our praises and our prayers to him in faith-filled confidence: Amen!