Why Did the Early Christians pray the Lord's Prayer 3 Times a Day?
This is a deep dive into early Christian understanding of the Lord's teaching about prayer based on Matthew 6 of the Sermon on the Mount. This study may be one of the most important studies of a Christian's life because the early Christians were admonished to pray this same prayer three times in a day.
Tertullian wrote that in the Lord's prayer, we find a concise summary of the gospel of the Kingdom of God. Recall that this is Christ's clearly stated mission (Luke 4:43): To preach the GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM. In Matthew 24:14, Christ also said that "this gospel of the Kingdom will be preached to the whole world and then the end will come".
So the Lord's prayer is a prayer asking God to help his people live as kingdom citizens and children of God and hasten the coming of his final rule over the world. Notable highlights are that we cannot pray "Our Father" if we do not behave like good sons, that prayers for prosperity and the future may contradict the meaning of "Give us this day the bread that we need" and most importantly, we CANNOT pray nor obtain forgiveness from God if we do not know how to forgive others. No forgiveness = No salvation. This is Bible.
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