“Your kingdom come. Your Will be done on earth as it is in heaven.“
Matthew 6:10
Holy Bible: Holman Christian Standard Version. 2009. Nashville: Holman Bible Publishers.
Based on Jesus’ model, the focus of our prayers should still be on our Father God. This verse causes us to desire the rise of a public manifestation of God’s established reign through His chosen One and Only Son. This is the picture that the first century Jew would have imagined. They would have seen some picture of their ideal Messiah ruling with authoritarian power over His territory. Living after Christ’s earthly walk, we should continue to envision the world in such a way. All flesh has been conquered by Jesus. He has secured victory for those who trust Him. In the bodies of the called out people of God, the physical bodies of Jesus-followers, the Kingdom is being manifested in a very real realm. God reigns on earth through the church the physical body of Christ, filled with His Spirit and washed in His blood.
“Then comes the end, when He hands over the kingdom of God the Father, when He abolishes all rule and all authority and power. For He must reign until He puts all His enemies under His feet. The last enemy to be abolished is death. For He has put everything under His feet. But when it says “everything” is put under Him, it is obvious that He who puts everything under Him is the exception. And when everything is subject to Him, then the Son Himself will also be subject to Him, who subjected everything to Him, so that God may be all in all.“
1 Corinthians 15:24-28
Holy Bible: Holman Christian Standard Version. 2009. Nashville: Holman Bible Publishers.
Any mention of the Kingdom of God is concerned both with the kingdom come on earth as is in heaven and the kingdom complete in eternity. The Kingdom of God is inseparably linked to things associated with the end of time because the Kingdom of God is the ultimate end-all-be-all of time and reality. Since the time of Christ’s ascent to God, Christ has been doing battle with His enemies by His Holy Spirit and through His followers, the Church.
We are in once sense in the Kingdom, but we anticipate Jesus’ handing over the Kingdom to God, who has positioned all His enemies – even death – underneath the feet of His Son. Our prayers will be at rest and fulfilled with finality when Christ glorifies the Father in handing over the kingdom to God. God the Father will come to be what is said in Greek with emphasis pas pas. God will be all in all. All will certainly, wholly, completely be encompassed, finding its end in God. Take courage Jesus-follower, for we will be caught up with the Lord to be with Him forever and always (1 Th. 4:17-18).
“Between earth and heaven there is but a thin partition. The home country is much nearer than we think… Heaven is by no means the far country, for it is the Father’s house… Our Lord would have us mingle heaven with earth by naming it twice in this short prayer.“
(Spurgeon, A Heavenly Pattern for Our Earthly Life)
Spurgeon, Charles. “A Heavenly Pattern for Our Earthly Life.” Blue Letter Bible. 18 Apr, 2001. Web. 5 Feb, 2020.
Heaven is near the will of God. The will of God done through His people in the power of Christ on earth makes the reality of the kingdom an ever clear and present danger to His enemies. You can feel the closeness of heaven in Spurgeon’s words. It is as if there were an invisible sheer pulled tight holding back the glories of the heavenly reality. We know a little about what to expect from our Father and His Son. Sometimes a wisp of heaven passes through and into our world blessing the nations through the Church. If we catch hold of a wisp of heaven and breathe it in deeply it will always nudge us into closer relationship with our Father and greater extravagance towards others. Heaven is for the complete closeness of man with God, just like going back home to Dad’s house.
“God grant us that the kingdom of Jesus Christ may grow in his Church on earth, God hasten the end of the kingdoms of this world, and establish his own kingdom in power and glory! … But the evil will is still alive even in the followers of Christ, it still seeks to cut them off from fellowship with him; and that is why they must also pray that the will of God may prevail more in their hearts every day and break down all defiance. In the end the whole world must bow before that will, worshiping and giving thanks in joy and tribulation. Heaven and earth shall be subject to God.“
(Bonhoeffer, p. 166)
Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. The Cost of Discipleship. Simon & Schuster Press, 1995.
We cannot deny the presence of evil in this world. Some people choose to ignore evil as impolite table-talk. Some act as if evil were some new fad begun under some ruler or head of state in the recent past. Perhaps we’ve merely become more efficient at evil. The past century was fraught with evil acts. Guns, jackboots, billy clubs, lynching trees, helmets, tear gas, gas chambers, the threat of nuclear annihilation are but a few of the tools of death utilized by the children of earth in days not so long passed. Currently the earth turns under the paranoia of radical reactionary terrorism. These acts were and are carried out by nations and individuals. Every single evil act of personal conduct grew out of an individual’s heart and manifested itself in their hands, feet or in the words spoken from their mouths. Evil spreads in things done and things left undone.
The Jesus-follower must pray for the dissolution of such instruments of evil. The Jesus-follower cannot glory in violence. We must pray that our hearts individually, those of the Church corporately, and those of all men would be gloriously conquered by the Lord God Almighty. We pray for love. We pray for justice. We pray for peace. We pray for victory. These ends alone are merely subjective but with Jesus as the object, they are the natural outflow of a relationship founded on and in Him. In The Lord and His Prayer, Anglican bishop N. T. Wright summarizes the earnest intention in the mind of the Jesus-follower should be one that prays “as Jesus was praying and acting, for the redemption of the world; for the radical defeat and uprooting of evil; and for heaven and earth to be married at last, for God to be all in all. And if we pray this way, we must of course be prepared to live this way”.
“Remember, God is as Great as He is Good!“
Noah R. Hunt
POIEMA: Created for Truth 