Articles
Thy Kingdom Come
The Lord's Prayer is recited in churches, schools, private homes and it opens each session of Parliament in Australia. When billions of Christians for two millennium have wondered how to pray, this has been their guide.
One of the things we ask for in the Lord's Prayer is, "Your Kingdom come". In our five part study series on "The Kingdom of God" we will seek to understand what it means for God's Kingdom to come.
The next line of the prayer is "Your will be done on earth as it is in Heaven". This is the way things were described in Genesis regarding the Garden of Eden. God's people were created to live in God's perfect place under God's perfect rule. And God's rules were not onerous. The work was enjoyable and without hardship, the people enjoyed each other's company and talked freely with God, and they were given every plant and animal to enjoy. Adam and Eve were king and queen over creation. God gave them only one rule: they must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil or they would die. Everything was good, and they felt no shame. But only 6 verses into chapter 3 of Genesis the fruit had been eaten and death had entered the Kingdom of God.
Skip ahead in Genesis to Chapter 12 to read about a man called Abraham. He answered God's call to go to a place that God would show him, where he would become the father of a great nation through whom all people on earth would be blessed. The promise was renewed with Abraham's descendents through Moses. Jacob (known as Israel) prophesied that the line of Abraham’s great-grandson Judah would hold the sceptre of the Kingdom. Judah's descendent David initially held great promise as the first of a line of God-fearing Kings. When both he and his son Solomon failed to live up to their promises to God and their hearts turned to foreign gods, the kingdom was taken from them.
During the Babylonian and Persian exile, Daniel lived the challenge of obeying God as his King, while under the rule of a hostile government. Daniel received a vision of one "like a son of man" who is given all power and authority to rule over an everlasting kingdom. Daniel's experience makes it clear that God's kingdom is not defined by location, but by the willingness of God's people to be ruled.
When John the Baptist proclaimed that the Kingdom of God (or of Heaven) was near, he preached both good news and a warning. The kingdom had arrived in the person of Jesus, the promised king, and his rule was to be one of love, hope and reconciliation with God. To enter his kingdom the sinner must humbly repent, and the king recognised the fruit of repentance without being fooled by hypocritical religious gestures. Jesus warned that making an idol, such as wealth, king in one's life would exclude many from God's kingdom. When Jesus died the charge above his head ironically proclaimed him to be the "King of the Jews". He promised to remember the repentant criminal crucified alongside him when he entered his Kingdom.
Paul's letters are of great help in explaining how sinners can throw off their sin and embrace the new life they have in God's Kingdom, for the Kingdom has arrived with Jesus and can be enjoyed right now. Christians can be God's people in God's place under God's rule. However, we experience what the theologians like to call "Eschatological Tension" (eschatology being the doctrine of the "last things") The tension is felt as we wait for the day when Jesus returns in glory. This was once explained to me as the "Now, but not Yet-ness" of Jesus' kingdom. This kingdom is real and growing as people submit to Jesus' rule, but not yet perfected. When we pray "your kingdom come" we are longing for the day when we will be God's perfect people in our resurrected immortal bodies enjoying perfect fellowship with God. Until then, whenever we seek to do God's will here on earth we are enjoying life in the Kingdom of God.