6 Thy Kingdom Come
Thy Kingdom Come
That “the Lord is king” in the sense of being sovereign over his world is assumed throughout the Bible. But God’s kingship and his kingdom are different things. The former is a fact of creation, commonly called providence; the latter is a reality of redemption, properly called grace.
This distinction is biblical in substance, but the vocabulary of Scripture does not show it. Kingdom is used in both Testaments for both God’s universal sovereign sway and his redemptive relationship to individuals through Jesus Christ. In the Lord’s Prayer, “thy kingdom come” uses the word in the latter sense, “thine is the kingdom” in the former.
God in sovereignty overrules the lives and doings of all men, including those who deliberately defy and disobey him. In a monstrous outburst of sibling rivalry surpassed only by Cain’s fratricide, Joseph’s brothers sold him into slavery and told his father Joseph was dead. Yet God was overruling, so that later Joseph could say, “You meant evil against me; but God meant it for good” (Genesis 50:20). “By the hands of lawless men” the Jews of Jerusalem “crucified and killed” Jesus; yet God was overruling, so that Jesus was “delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God,” and by his death the world was redeemed (Acts 2:23).
But this overruling is a different thing from God’s reign of grace in the heart and life of one who bows in penitent trust before his authority, desiring only to be delivered from evil and led in paths of righteousness. And that is precisely how it is when we make Jesus king.
Jesus and the Kingdom
So God’s kingdom is not a place, but rather a relationship. It exists wherever people enthrone Jesus as lord of their lives. When Jesus began preaching that “the kingdom of God is at hand” (literally, “has drawn near”) he meant that the long-promised enjoyment of God’s salvation for which Israel had been waiting was now there for them to enter into (Mark 1:15). How were they to enter it? The Gospels answer that question very fully. Why, by becoming Jesus’ disciples; by giving him their hearts’ loyalty, and letting him reshape their lives; by receiving forgiveness from him; by identifying with his concerns; by loving him without reserve, and giving his claims precedence over all others—in short, by manifesting what Paul called “faith working through love” (Galatians 5:6), faith which acknowledges and embraces Jesus Christ as, in Peter’s phrase, “Lord and Savior” (2 Peter 1:11; 2:20; 3:2, 18).
To this faith Jesus pointed Nicodemus (John 3:13-15), having told him that no one sees or enters the kingdom without a radical inner transformation by the Spirit which he pictured as being “born again” (verses 3-8). The passage instructs us that none of us can enter the kingdom without the Spirit’s help, and we must not be too proud to ask for it, nor refuse to be changed in whatever ways God sees necessary.
The kingdom arrived with Jesus; indeed, one might say that as Son of God incarnate, Jesus is the kingdom of God in person. His rule over Christians is regal in the full-blooded biblical sense, personal, direct, and absolute. His claims are the claims of God, overriding those of man. Yet his rule is not tyranny, for King Jesus is his people’s servant, their shepherd and champion, ordering all things for their protection and enrichment. “My yoke is easy, and my burden is light” (Matthew 11:30).
Also, he is their brother in the royal family, who himself lived on earth as “a man under authority” (Matthew 8:9); he will not ask more of us than was asked of him; indeed, not so much. His rule has the nature, not of dictatorship, but of pastoral care. “I am the good shepherd; I know my own” (John 10:14).
The first and fundamental service rendered by “great David’s greater Son” to his disciples is to save them from sin and death, according to God’s promise. So the kingdom of God is the realm of grace, where the damage done to us by sin is repaired; and the gospel of grace proves to be what the kingdom is all about.
Present and Future
In one sense, the kingdom is here now, and Christians are in it. But in another sense—that of perfecting the display of God’s grace in this world—the kingdom remains future, and awaits Christ’s return. The prayer “thy kingdom come” looks on to that day. But this does not exhaust its meaning. Any request for a new display of God’s sovereignty in grace—renewing the church, converting sinners, restraining evil, providing good in this world—is a further spelling out of “thy kingdom come.” If one asks where in the Lord’s Prayer does general intercession appear, the answer is here. (And if one asks, Why burden oneself with a load of intercession? the answer is, Because we are taught to pray, “Thy kingdom come.”)
The Personal Challenge
To pray “thy kingdom come” is searching and demanding, for one must be ready to add, “and start with me; make me your fully obedient subject. Show me my place among ‘workers for the kingdom of God’ (Colossians 4:11), and use me, so far as may be, to extend the kingdom and so be your means of answering my prayer.” Made sincerely, this is a prayer that the Savior who calls to self-denial and cross-bearing and consent that one’s life be lost, one way or another, in serving the gospel, may have his way with us completely. Do we really seek this? Have we faced it? Let every man examine himself, and so—only so—let him say the Lord’s Prayer.
Further Bible Study
The kingdom of God (=heaven):
Matthew 13:1-52
Questions for Thought and Discussion
Do you agree that “God’s kingdom is not a place, but a relationship”? Why or why not?
Why can we rightly say that Jesus was (and is) a king but not a tyrant?
Think out the present-day implications of the prayer “thy kingdom come,” so far as you are able
to see them.