This week we’ll look at the second verse of the Lord’s prayer. Matthew 6:10 reads: Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.
As we can see, the first request within Jesus’ model prayer is for God’s kingdom to come. What does this mean and why was it the first thing he would ask for?
Firstly
There are two ways to understand a request for God’s kingdom to come. The first and perhaps the more obvious is a plea for the kingdom of God to become a literal physical reality on Earth – for Jesus to return from heaven and establish himself as our king, then begin the process of repairing this damaged world and bringing an end to all injustice and evil.
There will be no more war or terrorism or genocide or starvation or pandemics. The world will truly be a place where God’s will is done in every time and place and circumstance, exactly as things are done in heaven.
Revelation 21:1-4 describes it thus: Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them as their God; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them; he will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away.”
That is the hope which all Christians share. God has promised it to us and we can have absolute confidence that it will happen. We don’t know when it will happen, which is one reason why it’s the ideal way to begin a daily prayer. We hope that every day might be the day Jesus returns.
The question is, of course, do you pray for it on a regular basis? How often do you think about the kingdom of God and wish that it could be here now? Perhaps that was something you thought about a lot when you were younger or when you first became a Christian – but what about now?
Are you so consumed with the routine things you need to do every day – work, family, health, pets, hobbies, etc – that you hardly ever think about anything else?
When you see on the news all of the awful things that are going on in the world, whether locally or nationally or across the globe, how often does that make you think about the promise Jesus is returning? How often do you feel hope because of what God has promised instead of fear or despair because of what humans are doing to each other?
How often do you feel excited about it? How often do you feel motivated to share it with the people you see every day? How many people at work or at school – or wherever you spend most of your day – know that you even have this hope?
It’s so easy to include the words “Your kingdom come” in a prayer to God, but how often do you think about what it really means? Is that plea for the kingdom to come something you think about when you’re not at church? Does it have any impact on the way you live your life?
Do you live as if this world and the things you do in it are only temporary? As if life now is simply a fleeting dream (or nightmare) before you wake up into endless day?
Secondly
Now I must stress an essential point here. While this world and things in it are only temporary and God’s kingdom will be eternal, that does not mean this world and the things in it are unimportant.
There is a second way to look at the request for God’s kingdom to come, and it’s this: a plea for help to make the kingdom a reality in our lives right now.
I’m not suggesting for a moment that human beings can bring the kingdom of God into reality by our own efforts or create any kind of utopian society on Earth before Jesus returns. Neither of those things will happen.
What I am suggesting is that in the life of Jesus, people could see hints and glimpses of what life in the future age, in that perfected kingdom ruled over by Jesus, would be like. Healing for the sick and disabled, food for the hungry, inclusion for the downtrodden and ostracised, forgiveness for the repentant, and love for even the smallest and weakest person.
If we can model our lives after Jesus, then is it possible for us also to give people those same hints and glimpses of kingdom life? Obviously we won’t succeed in living lives as good as that of Jesus, and we don’t have access to the miraculous powers he had, but we can still provide for those in need, include those who are at the lowest rungs of society, forgive those who wrong us, and show love to anyone we meet, even if we feel like they don’t deserve it.
In Jesus people could see something of the kingdom. And perhaps in your life people can see something of Jesus.
The kingdom of God is not something we should plead for and hope for while sitting idly or helplessly waiting for it to happen. It’s something we should try and live in right now, to the extent that we can. If we’re not making the effort to do that, then why are we asking God for it?
Advice from apostles
Peter wrote to the early Christians (1 Peter 2:11-17): Beloved, I urge you as aliens and exiles to abstain from the desires of the flesh that wage war against the soul. Conduct yourselves honorably among the Gentiles, so that, though they malign you as evildoers, they may see your honorable deeds and glorify God when he comes to judge. For the Lord’s sake accept the authority of every human institution, whether of the emperor as supreme, or of governors, as sent by him to punish those who do wrong and to praise those who do right. For it is God’s will that by doing right you should silence the ignorance of the foolish. As servants of God, live as free people, yet do not use your freedom as a pretext for evil. Honor everyone. Love the family of believers. Fear God. Honor the emperor.
And Paul taught the following (Philippians 3:17-21): Brothers and sisters, join in imitating me, and observe those who live according to the example you have in us. For many live as enemies of the cross of Christ; I have often told you of them, and now I tell you even with tears. Their end is destruction; their god is the belly; and their glory is in their shame; their minds are set on earthly things. But our citizenship is in heaven, and it is from there that we are expecting a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. He will transform the body of our humiliation that it may be conformed to the body of his glory, by the power that also enables him to make all things subject to himself.
From these two passages we can see that as Christians we need to find a balance between two things.
On one hand, we are supposed to be “aliens and exiles”, whose “citizenship is in heaven” and whose minds should not be “set on earthly things”. This present world (meaning the current socio-political order, not the planet itself) is not our home. We are travellers or even refugees from another place which we cannot go to at this time. We should not take part in the political or military conflicts and struggles of the nations of this world. Our loyalty should lie ultimately with Jesus. Our shared faith with other Christians should transcend all national and cultural boundaries. If someone is a fellow Christian, it shouldn’t matter if they are from the UK or the USA or Russia or Ukraine or Iran or Israel or Gaza or anywhere else. Loyalty to God and fellowship with brothers and sisters in Christ should come before anything else.
On the other hand, it’s clear that both Peter and Paul expected the believers to interact with the communities in which they lived, to obey the law and honour those in power (unless doing so would mean disobeying God), to live their faith publicly and to do good deeds for others. We should not hide ourselves away in a cloistered community separate from everyone else, in an attempt to preserve our own holiness. It should be obvious to the wider world by the way we live that we are trying to serve Jesus.
This, as I said, requires balance. We are to remain separate and holy from this world, but at the same time we are expected to live in it and interact with it, and to do so in a way that will make it obvious to people we consider ourselves aliens and exiles whose citizenship is in heaven.
That’s not easy, and that’s why we need to pray for God’s kingdom to come and his will to be done on Earth, both in the fully literal sense but also in the sense of us trying to live it out day by day and show others a glimpse of what it will be like.
In a country like the UK in which very few people who aren’t already Christians will read the Bible, our living example may be the only way they can ever learn about how different God’s kingdom will be from the tragically ruined world in which they currently live.
Not only that, but living consistently with the message we preach will demonstrate that we genuinely believe this stuff. Many people suspect Christians are really hypocrites whose ‘faith’ is just a cloak for their true desire for power and wealth in this life. May we live lives which show that suspicion to be utterly false.
A new world is coming, one in which everyone will live by God’s will – not through coercion or fear, but because they genuinely love and feel loyalty towards him.
That same love and loyalty should be the underlying motivation for how we live out our lives in this current world.
When we ask God for his kingdom to come and his will to be done here on Earth, we’re expressing our heartfelt desire firstly for Jesus to return, and secondly for help to maintain that love and loyalty consistently until that great day comes.
May it come soon!
Nihilist to Christian 