Luke 11:2 And he said to them, When you pray, say, Our Father which are in heaven, Hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done… First: there is His natural kingdom, or His kingdom over the material creation. Secondly: there is God's supernatural kingdom, or His kingdom over the moral creation. For, let it be noted, our Father's kingdom, like all things of life, is a growth. And first, the kingdom of God, viewed as an inception, has its beginning with and in Jesus Christ. Not that the kingdom of God, as a spiritual sway, had not existed before the Incarnation. Prophets and patriarchs were members of it; but they were members of it anticipatively. The kingdom of God, then, surveyed as a beginning, had its root in Jesus Christ: and so it is called His kingdom, the kingdom of the Son, the kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. And thus surveyed, the kingdom of God has already come. In those days came John the Baptist, preaching in the wilderness of Judea, and saying: Repent ye: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. From that time, Jesus Himself began to preach and to say: "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand: repent ye, and believe in the gospel." Again: the kingdom of God, viewed as a growth, has its unfolding in the Holy Ghost. For, being a spiritual kingdom- the building up of a spiritual character — it needs a spiritual architect, a spiritual workman, a spiritual aedile. God's kingdom is not food and drink, a matter of ceremonial distinction between clean and unclean; it is righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost. As such, the kingdom of God, since the Son departed and the Spirit came, has ever been and still is coming. The conversion of each separate sinner through all these centuries has been the setting up of a new and distinct duchy or principality in the empire of the Father. Once more: the kingdom of God, viewed as a consummation, has its end and completion in the Father. The kingdom for whose coming we are here taught to pray is, as we have seen, the kingdom of the consummation, when God shall be all in all. But as the coming of what is ultimate involves the coming of what is intermediate, and as the Christ must continual reigning till He hath made all His enemies His footstool, the prayer for the coming of our Father's kingdom involves prayer for the coming of His Son's. But it is not enough that we simply pray, "Thy kingdom come!" We must also work in theline of our prayer. (G. D. Boardraan, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: And he said unto them, When ye pray, say, Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, as in heaven, so in earth. |
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