WHOSE AGENDA IS OUR CONCERN ANYWAY?
MATTHEW 6:10
The first petition in the Lord’s Prayer is that God’s name be hallowed. The second petition, “your kingdom come,” builds on the first by showing us how God’s name is hallowed in the world. God reveals his character and reputation as his kingdom spreads to every corner of the earth and as citizens of that kingdom do God’s will on earth as it is in heaven. But what is God’s kingdom, and what does it mean to pray for its arrival?
A RADICAL AND REVOLUTIONARY PRAYER
Very few prayers become cemented in the public consciousness. The Lord’s Prayer is of course one, but others, considerably more trite, have also become cultural artifacts. For instance, the so-called Serenity Prayer: “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.” A great deal of controversy surrounds who first wrote the Serenity Prayer, though the most likely candidate seems to be theologian Reinhold Niebuhr.
The Serenity Prayer has enjoyed the spotlight since it was first penned. It has been adopted, for instance, by groups such as Alcoholics Anonymous and other humanitarian or self-help organizations. It has been placarded and painted on decorative pieces throughout the country. The comic strip Calvin and Hobbes even spoofed the prayer, perhaps writing a superior version in the process, by depicting the young child Calvin praying, “Lord grant me the strength to change what I can, the inability to accept what I can’t, and the incapacity to know the difference.”
In many ways the Serenity Prayer is the model prayer for a post-Christian society. It says nothing about the character of God, the plight of man, the need for redemption, or the nature of the gospel. The Serenity Prayer is nothing more than a generic prayer for a people with generic religious convictions.
The Lord’s Prayer, however, is doctrinally robust, theologically deep, and anything but serene. The Lord’s Prayer is anything but tame. Regrettably, our familiarity often blinds us from seeing just how radical, even subversive, this prayer is. It is for those who hold firmly that Jesus Christ has inaugurated a kingdom, has risen from the dead, reigns at the right hand of God, and is coming again to judge the living and the dead. The Lord’s Prayer is for revolutionaries, for men and women who want to see the kingdoms of this world give way to the kingdom of our Lord.
WHAT IS THE KINGDOM OF GOD? LEARNING FROM THE THEOLOGICAL TRADITION
Augustine’s City of God
When Jesus prays “your kingdom come,” what exactly is he asking of the Father? What is the kingdom of God? That question is one of the oldest and most hotly contested theological issues in the Christian church. Augustine, the bishop of Hippo in the fifth century, addressed it at length in his magisterial The City of God, written after the fall of the Roman Empire. In the post-Reformation period, the Lutheran tradition developed what is known as “Two Kingdom Theology,” parsing out the distinctions between what properly belongs to man’s kingdom and what properly belongs to God’s kingdom. Later, in the nineteenth century, classic dispensationalism taught that the kingdom was a purely future reality, inaugurated at the millennial reign of Christ.
Among these attempts at explaining the kingdom of God, Augustine’s City of God has proven the most helpful and the most in line with the teachings of Scripture. This work was birthed out of Augustine’s reflections on the demise of the so-called eternal city—the city of Rome. More pointedly, Augustine was trying to answer the question: “To what degree should the church care about the fall of Rome or does this ultimately teach us that politics do not matter? Is this in any way related to the church’s gospel witness?” Augustine’s answer to these questions was profoundly eschatological—looking to the final consummation of God’s plan.
Augustine employed the metaphor of a city, a polis, to describe the kingdom of God and the kingdoms of this world. Building upon Jesus’ teaching about the first and the second greatest commandments (Matt. 22:36–40), Augustine suggested that the Christian must understand that there are two cities in the world. The first city is the City of God. This city is God’s not merely because he resides there but because his character and authority define it. There, God’s sovereign authority is unmitigated and unconditioned. It is ordered according to the rule and reign of God’s law, which demonstrates simultaneously and in equal proportion his justice, righteousness, mercy, and holiness. Thus in the City of God, everything is exactly as God would have it to be. The longing of every Christian is to live in that city.
By God’s grace and the power of the gospel, Paul indicated that we have already been made citizens of the City of God (Phil. 3:20). This citizenship is given to us by divine promise, though we do not yet reside there. Until we do, every Christian lives in and experiences quite a different city—the City of Man. Jesus Christ is Lord and ultimately sovereign, yet he is also patient and allows human beings to exercise moral responsibility.
As a result, the City of Man is not as it should be. Unlike the City of God, the City of Man is characterized by selfishness, ungodliness, conflict, and strife. The City of Man is temporary—both conditioned and created. It does not exist on its own terms, though as Paul made clear in Romans 1 the City of Man refuses to acknowledge its creaturely and dependent status. Augustine thought it crucial to understand that the City of God is a coming thing never to pass away, while the City of Man is even now a passing thing. And he warned the church not to confuse the one for the other. The warning remains for the church today.
Augustine also argued that both cities are characterized by a primary love. The love of man animates the City of Man, even as the love of God animates the City of God. The problem with the love that animates the City of Man is that it is self-absorbed and full of selfish ambition. In other words, on this side of Genesis 3 we only love those of our own tribe, clan, or family. The love that animates the City of Man is not expansive and selfless. Instead, it fiercely guards our own interests.
With Rome as the model of the City of Man, Augustine’s words proved true before the church’s very eyes. Augustine’s work revealed to the church that even while Rome was at its height, it was already crumbling because it was built on the wrong love. In contrast, even though the church may seem weak, ineffective, and inglorious, it alone will endure because it is built on true love of God and the things of God. If we fail to see this, we do so because we tend to see the passing thing as a coming thing and the coming thing as a passing thing.
Augustine’s discussion of the two cities reminds us that the kingdom of God is not something that is part of the political systems of this world. No government on earth truly represents God’s kingdom. Instead, Christians are citizens of a kingdom that will one day arrive in consummate glory. Our hope is not that the governments of this world will transform into the kingdom of God, but that the kingdom of God will come from heaven to earth in power and glory.
Recent Evangelical Scholarship and a Biblical Theology of the Kingdom
In the twentieth century a number of faithful evangelical scholars such as George Eldon Ladd reinvigorated our understanding of the kingdom.1 They demonstrated that in Scripture the kingdom of God must be understood as something that is already here on earth but not yet fully present. In other words, the kingdom of God has been inaugurated but not yet consummated. As Ladd and others pointed out, the kingdom of God is essentially the end-of-history, or eschatological, vision of the Old Testament. The authors of the Old Testament envisioned a day when God would send the Messiah to triumph over Israel’s enemies, establish the throne of David, and reign in righteousness.
This kingdom arrived with the coming of Christ, who urged his hearers to repent because the “kingdom of God is at hand.” Christians are now part of that kingdom. As Paul stated, “[God] has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son” (Col. 1:13). Thus, even though we await the full expression of God’s kingdom that will come in glory and power at the return of Christ, we are at this time living under the reign of God as his people—we are citizens of that kingdom.
Even so, the question remains, “What is the kingdom of God?” The answer is found in the way the Bible speaks about God’s kingdom in terms of creation, the fall, redemption, and consummation.
Graeme Goldsworthy has defined the kingdom of God as “God’s people in God’s place under God’s rule and blessing.”2 Each of these features is present in the earliest manifestation of God’s kingdom in the garden of Eden. God’s people, Adam and Eve, live in God’s place, the garden of Eden, under God’s rule and blessing. The fall completely disrupts the kingdom. Adam and Eve are exiled from the garden, no longer able to enjoy God’s blessing because they rebelled against God’s rule. Indeed, apart from redemption, rebellion is the state of every natural man. We are all born east of Eden, traitors to the crown, and living in what Paul calls the “kingdom of darkness” (Col. 1:13).
But God did not leave this world in darkness. In the work of redemption, God continued the work of building a kingdom on earth. Thus, God called Abraham and his children (God’s people) to be a light to the nations (Isa. 42:6; 49:6). He promised them the land of Canaan (God’s place) where he would dwell with them in the tabernacle and then in the temple. Finally, God gave the Israelites his law and the sacrificial system so that they might draw near to him (God’s rule and blessing). Yet, as we all know, Israel failed to do and to be what God desired of them. Like Adam, they rebelled against God. Even their kings, those who were supposed to represent the nation, were almost to a man rebellious and wicked, often leading the people to worship false gods.
As a result, God sent Israel into exile in Babylon, just as he expelled Adam from the garden. Yet even in the midst of this judgment, the prophets spoke of a day when God would fully and finally bring his kingdom from heaven to earth. Jeremiah, for instance, spoke of a day when God would inaugurate a new covenant, when the law would no longer be written on tablets of stone but would instead be written on the tablets of people’s hearts. In other words, the law would no longer only be something outside of us (demanding obedience and condemning our failure) but instead would be something God etched on our hearts, giving us the power to obey his commands.
Perhaps nowhere in the Old Testament is this hope for the inauguration of God’s kingdom painted more vividly than in the Davidic covenant in 2 Samuel 7:8–17:
Now, therefore, thus you shall say to my servant David, “Thus says the LORD of hosts, I took you from the pasture, from following the sheep, that you should be prince over my people Israel. And I have been with you wherever you went and have cut off all your enemies before you. And I will make for you a great name, like the name of the great ones of the earth. And I will appoint a place for my people Israel and will plant them, so that they may dwell in their own place and be disturbed no more. And violent men shall afflict them no more, as formerly, from the time that I appointed judges over my people Israel. And I will give you rest from all your enemies. Moreover, the Lord declares to you that the Lord will make you a house. When your days are fulfilled and you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring after you, who shall come from your body, and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. I will be to him a father, and he shall be to me a son. When he commits iniquity, I will discipline him with the rod of men, with the stripes of the sons of men, but my steadfast love will not depart from him, as I took it from Saul, whom I put away from before you. And your house and your kingdom shall be made sure forever before me. Your throne shall be established forever.” In accordance with all these words, and in accordance with all this vision, Nathan spoke to David.
This passage points to the coming kingdom (“the house”) that God will build. God promised that a descendent of David will have a kingdom established “forever.” While Solomon is the immediate son in view in this passage (the one who receives correction when he commits iniquity), the ultimate fulfillment of this text is none other than Jesus Christ. As Acts 2 makes abundantly clear, Jesus sits on the throne of David, reigning over the universe. His kingdom is unchallenged and his reign is without end.
As already noted, Jesus came preaching the inauguration of the kingdom. His disciples were allowed a glimpse of his kingdom in glory during the transfiguration (Matt. 17:2; Mark 9:2). Jesus’ work on the cross is the work of a king who has come to rescue his people. And after his resurrection Jesus declared that he had been given “all authority in heaven and on earth” (Matt. 28:18). The Great Commission is rooted in Christ’s declaration that he is the king on the throne of all creation. In our current stage in redemptive history, therefore, God’s kingdom is made up of those who believe in Christ (God’s people) gathered in local churches across the world (God’s place) under the law of Christ and partaking of the new covenant (God’s rule and blessing).
Of course, we still wait for the day when this kingdom will be consummated. As of right now, the people of God are at war with spiritual darkness. We are carrying out a commission to make disciples of the king and citizens of the kingdom. And, of course, we can only do so with great suffering and tribulation. Thus, while we are indeed in God’s kingdom, we still await God’s kingdom in its fullness. We still await the completion of the Great Commission. We still await the coming of the king and the destruction of all wickedness. We long for the day when we will no longer be the church militant, but the church triumphant. Revelation 11:15 describes just what that day of consummation will bring: “Then the seventh angel blew his trumpet, and there were loud voices in heaven, saying, ‘The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign forever and ever.’”
Now we have a few key insights helpful in interpreting this petition—“your kingdom come”—in the Lord’s Prayer. God’s kingdom is essentially his reign over his people for their good and his glory. God’s reign is not just his absolute sovereignty; it is also a redemptive reign that transforms hearts and creates obedience.
THE COMING KINGDOM
This leads to a further question: According to Scripture, how does the kingdom of God come from heaven to earth? Many horribly wrong answers to that question have been given in history. Theological liberals in the early twentieth century argued that the kingdom of God arrived through moral reform and social justice. This view, sometimes called the “social gospel” and championed by theologians like Walter Rauschenbusch, saw the kingdom of God as something humanity itself could achieve through social action.
Theological conservatives have sometimes also erred in thinking that Christians can usher in the kingdom through political action and cultural influence. The problem with this way of thinking is, of course, that Jesus’ kingdom is not of this world (John 18:36). Political power and cultural influence are not unimportant, but they can never change the hearts of sinners nor provide the forgiveness of sins.
The Bible teaches that God’s kingdom only comes as God’s people preach God’s Word, which, coupled with God’s Spirit, produces life and obedience. To use the language of Paul, God’s Word and Spirit change the hearts of sinners such that they are rescued out of the kingdom of darkness and into the kingdom of his dear Son (Col. 1:13). As Phil Ryken put it, “The kingdom comes mainly through proclamation, through the announcement that Christ, who was crucified, is now King. . . . The only way people ever come into God’s kingdom is by hearing his heralds proclaim a crucified king.”3
THE REIGN AND RULE OF GOD: YOUR WILL BE DONE
Having instructed the disciples to ask for God’s kingdom to come, Jesus then tells them to pray, “Your will be done.” Scripture does not use the term “will of God” uniformly. Rather, as theologians have recognized for centuries, the “will of God” can be used in two different ways. First, Scripture can speak of God’s will of decree, or what we could call God’s sovereign will. When Scripture speaks of God’s will in this sense, it refers to his absolute, sovereign rule over all things. The only reason anything exists is because God has willed it to exist. Indeed, from the movement of the smallest particles of sand to the political actions of world powers, every event in the cosmos is ordered and orchestrated by the will of God. The apostle Paul spoke of God’s will in this sense in Ephesians 1:11, when he affirmed that God works “all things according to the counsel of his will.” Everything that God has willed shall infallibly come to pass.
Scripture speaks of God’s sovereign will on almost every page. In Genesis 1, God created simply by speaking and willing the cosmos into existence. God showed his sovereignty over the kingdoms of the earth and even hardened Pharaoh’s heart in order to show his glory in rescuing Israel in the exodus (Ex. 9:12; 10:20, 27; cf. Rom. 9:17–18). God himself proclaimed his superiority over all the false gods of the nations by declaring the absolute rule of his will over creation. In Isaiah, God said that he alone declared “the end from the beginning” and proclaimed, “My counsel shall stand, and I will accomplish all my purpose” (46:10). In sum, as the psalmist exclaimed, “Our God is in the heavens; he does all that he pleases” (Ps. 115:3).
Second, Scripture uses the phrase “will of God” to refer to God’s commandments. Theologians also refer to this use of the “will of God” as God’s revealed will. The revealed will of God speaks to what God expects of his human creatures. The Ten Commandments, for instance, are an excellent example of God’s revealed will. The call to repent and believe the gospel would be yet another example of God’s revealed will (Acts 17:30). Paul very clearly referred to God’s revealed will in 1 Thessalonians 4:3 when he wrote, “This is the will of God, your sanctification: that you abstain from sexual immorality.” In this verse Paul very clearly was speaking about God’s expectations for humanity, not merely his sovereign rule over all things.
So the question remains: In what sense is Jesus teaching us about the will of God in the Lord’s Prayer? Is Jesus asking that God’s sovereign will be done on earth as it is in heaven, or is he referring to his revealed will?
He cannot be speaking of God’s sovereign will because God’s will is already done in heaven as it is on earth. As the psalmist wrote, “Whatever the LORD pleases, he does, in heaven and on earth, in the seas and all deeps” (Ps. 135:6). Jesus is clearly referring to God’s revealed will. He is asking the Father to reshape the hearts of every single person such that God is obeyed and glorified by men on earth as the angels obey and glorify God in heaven.
Thus, in this petition, “Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven,” Jesus is further explaining what it looks like for God’s kingdom to come from heaven to earth. When the kingdom of God arrives anew and afresh in the hearts and lives of the lost, they begin to obey God from the heart, just as the angels in heaven. In this age, the age of the inaugurated kingdom, we know that reality only in part. In the coming age, the age of the consummated kingdom, we will experience that reality completely.
Praying “your will be done on earth as it is in heaven” also reorients our own sense of personal autonomy and sense of control over our own lives and situations. This petition causes us to forfeit all our personal claims of lordship and sovereignty over our lives. This petition expresses a humble resignation to and desire for the reign and rule of God. It is no longer “my will” that is preeminent, but his. As J. I. Packer noted, “Here more clearly than anywhere the purpose of prayer becomes plain: not to make God do my will (which is practicing magic), but to bring my will into line with his (which is what it means to practice true religion).”4
WHAT ARE WE REALLY ASKING?
Now we can see why this pair of petitions is so radical. By asking for the kingdom of God to come, Jesus subversively overthrows the kingdoms of man and the powers of Satan. He petitions God to create an ultimate allegiance in the hearts of all men to the true king of creation. For the kingdom of God to come means that all other kingdoms (including our own!) must fade into oblivion.
As many scholars have noted, “kingdom language” always represents a subversion of an established order. Any time a new kingdom arrives, it must do so as a rival of the current reigning powers. Writing in the last century, George Arthur Buttrick attested to this fact, noting that modern man does not like the word kingdom. “It savors of totalitarianism,” he said.5 Of course, what Buttrick recognized is that the carnal heart of man refuses to be ruled by anyone but himself. In the modern era we have domesticated our kings and turned them into little more than tabloid figures or national mascots. In many constitutional monarchies, the monarch only bears the responsibilities of opening parliament and adorning postage stamps.
But true kingship is not as facile or impotent. The reign of Christ is the reign of a true king: one who demands allegiance; one who will disrupt the order of our lives; one who will call us to abandon our own pursuits for the sake of his. Thus when we pray “your kingdom come,” we are praying something incredibly dangerous because it imperils our comfort and devalues our ease. By praying “your kingdom come,” Jesus teaches us that we are ultimately meant to value God’s agenda, not our own. By making God’s kingdom paramount in our hearts, we are setting aside our own paltry attempts at personal glory to pursue the glory of King Jesus.
One of the reasons we must pray for God to advance his kingdom is because we, in and of ourselves, cannot cause the kingdom to come. In fact, only the sovereign grace of God has the power to break through the darkness and establish his reign by changing the hearts of rebellious sinners. The human heart is naturally hostile to the kingdom of God because it challenges our sense of identity and commitment to self-glorification. As Augustine noted, the citizens of the City of Man are animated by self-love. They refuse and resist God’s kingdom because it doesn’t conform to their agenda.
Church history provides enormous insight and encouragement. The early church’s proclamation of the arrival of God’s kingdom in Jesus Christ was in direct confrontation with the emperor worship of the Roman cult. To declare “Jesus Christ is Lord” was to declare that Caesar was not. Thus to preach the kingdom was an act of subversion. This Christian commitment to the lordship of Christ in the arrival of God’s kingdom was thus the primary reason Christians were persecuted and put to death. Christians were considered subversive and traitorous because they did not join the Imperial cult or accept the deity of Caesar.
Notably, a similar situation emerged in Nazi Germany in the first half of the twentieth century. In 1922 public Christianity was the norm in Germany. Kulturprotestantismus, what we might call cultural Christianity, characterized much of public life. Yet by 1942 the Nazi regime had supplanted the old cultural Christianity with a new religion: the German Evangelical Church (emphasis on German) under the oversight of the Reichsbischofs. This new state church, controlled by and therefore in support of the Nazi regime, recognized the statement “Jesus is Lord” as subversive to the state. To declare Jesus is Lord was to say Hitler was not. As a result, believers in the Confessing Church (those who refused to be incorporated into the pro-Nazi state church) could find themselves on a train to Flossenbürg or some other concentration camp for such treason.
The rapid disappearance of cultural Christianity in our own time will mean that Christians may soon find themselves in a situation similar to that of the early church in Rome or the Confessing Church in Nazi Germany. Praying for the coming of God’s kingdom will be considered culturally and politically subversive. Confessing Christ is king and expecting his kingdom to come in power will lead to direct confrontation with the culture.
Ultimately, the radical nature of this petition challenges everyone in every theological tradition. We are all guilty of trying to domesticate the kingdom so that it doesn’t subvert our values or disorder our commitments. In fact, this isn’t just a problem for some theological traditions. Both theological liberals and conservatives are guilty of trying to domesticate the kingdom.
For decades theological liberals and revisionist theologians have sought to speak of God’s kingdom as something we can engineer through humanitarian efforts and good works. In this conception of the kingdom, God is little more than a cheerleader encouraging our own efforts. He is not one who is infinitely sovereign, but instead just someone who is infinitely resourceful. His kingdom makes no demands on our lives because, as king, he is merely an impotent monarch who simply encourages humanity to live up to its full potential.
Of course, conservatives can similarly domesticate God’s kingdom by confusing a particular political party or a particular government with the kingdom. Christians too often fall prey to the temptation—as old as the Roman emperor Constantine—that we can bring about the kingdom of God by political force or some other sociological means. But God’s kingdom is not of this world. As Jesus teaches us in this prayer, we are dependent on God and God alone to bring the kingdom to every heart and every corner of the earth. We cannot manufacture God’s kingdom by our own efforts. Instead, we are called to be faithful in the Great Commission, trusting that God by his sovereign, supernatural grace will spread his redemptive reign to every tribe, tongue, and nation.
So what are we asking when we say “your kingdom come”? We are asking for something wonderful and something dangerous all at the same time.
• We are praying that history would be brought to a close.
• We are praying to see all the nations rejoice in the glory of God.
• We are praying to see Christ honored as king in every human heart.
• We are praying to see Satan bound, evil vanquished, death no more.
• We are praying to see the mercy of God demonstrated in the full justification and acquittal of sinners through the shed blood of the crucified and resurrected Christ.
• We are praying to see the wrath of God poured out upon sin.
• We are praying to see every knee bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.
• We are praying to see a New Jerusalem, a new heaven, and a new earth, a new creation.
This is indeed a radical prayer. We must not take this petition lightly. But, as we have seen, this petition also carries great hope. Our God will come to save us and bring us to know the fullness of his grace in the final revelation of his kingdom. To that end, we pray.