The Lord's PrayerНамуна

Purpose

Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven

There are two big questions in life. The first is personal: what am I here for? The second is universal: where is the world going? These are ‘what is the point?’ questions and they are very important. After all, many people have sadly and reluctantly concluded that there is no point either to life or to the universe. And to believe there is no point in existence is incredibly sad; it is an idea that undercuts any drive or determination. The best you can do is find some way of passing the time as pleasantly as possible. 

This clause in the Lord’s Prayer denies this whole idea of meaninglessness and instead offers purpose both for us and for the world. Jesus here refers to the kingdom and it’s worth noting that the kingdom of God and the kingdom of heaven are the same. Many Bible readers find themselves slightly puzzled here because there are relatively few references to the kingdom in the Old Testament and not many more once you get beyond the pages of Matthew, Mark and Luke. However, the reality is that while the Old Testament talks little about the kingdom, it does talk an awful lot about the King. There God is the King of the whole world and the problem of the human race is that human beings disregard his rule; we are in rebellion against the King and his kingdom. 

The New Testament picks up these ideas and makes it plain that now, with the arrival of Jesus, the kingdom has become accessible to all. The kingdom is anywhere – and any life – that is under the authority of Jesus; it is every place where God’s rule is accepted in the lives of men and women. To be in the kingdom is to be someone or somewhere where God’s authority is accepted and his will is done. At the moment that only occurs in heaven, but one day we are promised the human race’s rebellion will be ended and God’s authority will be obeyed across the universe.

This idea of the kingdom is important because we human beings tend to think that we exist in some sort of spiritually neutral territory in which we are independent. In fact the Bible’s position is that there is no neutrality: this world is a battleground where the powers of evil and the evil one (of whom more later) exert, or claim to exert, supreme authority over everything. When someone puts his or her faith in Jesus and becomes a Christian, lots of things happen; one that is extraordinarily important is that they shift their allegiance from this world to God’s glorious kingdom. 

This prayer, then, is that evil will be defeated, that one day – perhaps sooner than we think – this world will be somewhere where the only things that happen are the good, right and joyful ones that God wants to happen. The clashing discordant noise of our world will give way to the perfect harmony of heaven. 

Although we must always keep the long-term future of our universe in focus and long for that great day when all will be eternally well, we must live from day to day in the meantime. To pray this portion of the Lord’s Prayer means that we personally must make decisions and take actions to support the King and kingdom. We can pray for and against things. So, we must pray for things that help apply the values of the kingdom: for example, acts of kindness and mercy and words of truth and grace. We can also pray against things that stand opposed to God’s kingdom: greed, hatred, lust and so on. Of course, we mustn’t be inconsistent. We can’t pray for our colleagues or neighbours to show the values of the kingdom without us trying to live them out in our own lives.

To pray this part of the Lord’s Prayer meaningfully is to look over everything in our lives and in our world and say over it all, ‘Lord, take charge: let this world become more like heaven and our lives more heavenly!’