Kingdom Come
The Lord’s Prayer is an eschatological prayer—even an apocalyptic prayer. We are praying for the coming of God’s kingdom in glory, and to pray for the coming of God’s kingdom is to pray for Christ’s return, for Christ is God’s King. Tim Bradshaw says, ‘ “Your kingdom come” calls upon God to act in a decisive fashion to end the ambiguity of the world’s sin and confusion … This is not a request to God to help us to implement the kingdom, but plainly asks for the coming of the kingdom that only God can bring.’
To pray ‘your will be done on earth as it is in heaven’ is to pray that earth and heaven will be brought into conformity, and ultimately this takes place as described in Revelation 21 when heaven comes down to earth and God dwells with his people (Rev. 21:1–4). On that day, as Tom Wright puts it, ‘God’s space and ours are finally married, integrated at last.’ Elsewhere Wright says that this is ‘to pray not merely that certain things might occur within the earthly realm that would coincide with plans that God had made in the heavenly realm, but that a fresh integration of heaven and earth would take place
b. Your kingdom come … on earth as it is in heaven
The petition your kingdom come takes us to the heart of the prayer, and the heart of what it means to pray as a disciple. The kingdom of heaven in Matthew (described as the kingdom of God in Mark and Luke) is a vitally important theme in the teaching of Jesus. To speak of God’s kingdom is to speak of God’s rule and reign. God as Creator is King of the whole cosmos. We have rebelled against his rule but he remains the rightful King. When Jesus begins his public ministry, he proclaims that the kingdom is ‘near’ (NIV), or ‘at hand’ (ESV). God is re-establishing his rule through his Son Jesus. Wonderfully, this happens through his death and resurrection. In a very real sense the kingdom has now come: ‘God’s promised rule has now begun.’ We glory in all God has done through his Son, the King of kings and the Lord of lords.
But there is a vital future dimension to praying for the kingdom. Scholars talk helpfully of the ‘now and not yet’ of the kingdom of God. Yes, it has come in Jesus and is coming all over the world as people bow the knee before God and communities are transformed by the gospel. God is at work, and wherever we see it we praise him and pray for more. And indeed, there is more. The phrase on earth as it is in heaven is crucial. As Tom Wright says, we should understand heaven as meaning ‘God’s space, where God’s writ runs and God’s future purposes are waiting in the wings’. God’s kingdom will not fully come until heaven comes down to earth and ‘God’s space and ours are finally married, integrated at last’. This will only happen in its fullness when Jesus returns at the end of the age. There is a powerful eschatological dimension to the Lord’s Prayer which is often missed. We are not just praying vaguely for things to get a bit better. We are praying for God’s kingdom to be consummated.
So, what does this mean in practice for us as disciples of Jesus? How are we to pray for the kingdom to come on earth as it is in heaven? We are to pray for the consummation of God’s kingdom, for our Lord Jesus to come again and make all things new. We see disciples praying this in the New Testament. The Aramaic phrase maranatha—‘Come, O Lord’—was extremely important for them. But we are also to pray for increasing signs of the kingdom day to day, for the powers of the age to come to break through increasingly, for heaven to touch earth. This involves praying for conversions, for hearts to be changed, for whole families to come to him, for community transformation, and much more. When we look around us and see signs that God is graciously at work bringing his rule, we are encouraged to pray for more. And when we look around and see hatred, violence and bitterness, we pray that God’s kingdom—his just and gentle rule—would break in with unmistakable grace and power. Is God’s kingdom the burden and focus of our prayers as disciples? There is no greater theme for intercession.
5. Conclusion
We live in a world preoccupied with the present. The motto of our day, just as it was in Paul’s day, is
Let us eat and drink,
for tomorrow we die.
(1 Cor. 15:32)
This prayer reorients us to the true treasure—the treasure Jesus describes immediately after his discourse on prayer as treasures in heaven (Matt. 6:19–21).
To pray for the coming of God and his kingdom is not a request we should make lightly. ‘This is a risky, crazy prayer of submission and conversion.’ Persecuted and oppressed Christians over the centuries have prayed this fervently. But for most of us life is comfortable. We want Jesus to come, but not yet. We do not long for the coming kingdom, because we look for pleasure in the things of this world. It is an attitude that springs from a deep malaise at the heart of our faith and our love for God. Tom Wright describes the Lord’s Prayer as ‘a marker, a reminder’, of the church’s status as ‘the eschatological people of God’. But, he comments, ‘all sorts of Christian traditions have been tempted in various ways to de-eschatologize themselves, and so to settle down into being simply a religion’. Back in the second century Tertullian complained about those whose prayers are preoccupied with the present when our true hope lies in the consummation of God’s kingdom: ‘Even if it had not been prescribed in the Prayer that we should ask for the advent of the kingdom, we should, unbidden, have sent forth that cry, hastening toward the realization of our hope.’
To pray this should be to be deeply challenged. Do we really want Christ to come today? Do we long to exchange the treasure of earth for the treasure of heaven? For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also (Matt. 6:21).
3.3. The Second Petition: “May Your Kingdom Come”. Jesus was not the first to associate the sanctification of God’s name with prayer for the coming *kingdom. An ancient prayer known as the Kaddish states, “May his great name be magnified and sanctified according to his will in the world he created. May he establish his kingdom in our lifetime, in our days.” Yahweh sanctifies his name by establishing the long-awaited kingdom on earth (Pss. Sol. 17; 1QM XII, 7–8). The kingdom’s consummation is the establishment of God’s royal rule over creation demonstrated in the *judgment of all those in rebellion and the eternal *blessing of all the righteous. Jesus’ particular formulation of “the kingdom coming” remains unparalleled in Jewish literature, where typically it is God who comes to the nation (1 Chron 16:33; Ps 96:13; 98:9; Is 26:21; 35:4; 40:9–10; 1 En. 1:3–9; 25:3; Jub. 1:22–28; As. Mos. 10:1–12). Now Jesus and the kingdom come together, for he inaugurates the Father’s victory on earth (laying the foundation for the “already but not yet” eschatology characteristic of the NT). Jesus’ disciples must live as obedient citizens within the kingdom, submitting to the king’s authority, demonstrating the transformative power of the Father’s life-giving Spirit. However, kingdom obedience should not be confused with the kingdom’s coming; this is not a request that people behave in a manner sufficient for the establishment of God’s reign, or that human transformation may inaugurate the kingdom. Only the Father brings the kingdom through the gospel proclamation of his Son. Thus, prayer for the kingdom’s coming is multidimensional. The petitioner (1) surrenders daily to the comprehensive, existential demands of Jesus’ lordship; (2) embodies the self-sacrificial, ethical expectations of kingdom citizenship; (3) eagerly anticipates the Father’s final victory at Jesus’ parousia.
