What Does It Mean to Pray “Your Kingdom Come”?

What does it mean to pray “Your kingdom come”?

We think about the petitions in the Lord’s Prayer, you have that petition, “your kingdom come” and to understand that  you do have to connect it with the next one, “your will be done on earth as it is in heaven”. So obviously all of those are getting at the same sort of idea that just as God’s will of desire, that is what he wants, his commands, his way of doing things. Just as that happens perfectly in heaven, so may become more and more on earth. So all of those petitions are related, and yet your will be done, your kingdom come are not exactly identical. So we need to understand what is the kingdom? We use kingdom language all the time. And sometimes, we’re not as careful as we should be.

Entering the Kingdom

We sometimes talk about building and extending the kingdom. And I’ve used that language before, and I know what people mean. But it’s interesting when you look at the actual verbs in the New Testament; that’s not how the kingdom is described. It’s receiving the kingdom; it’s entering the kingdom. So we must be careful that the kingdom is not something we go out by our hard work and ingenuity and we get hammer and nails, and there we are. We built something called the kingdom. The kingdom is, the kingdom exists. And so we’re better off speaking about receiving it by faith or entering into it by faith, or even, as the prayer suggests, the kingdom breaking in. So, a good analogy is like the sun. The sun is not something; as you are in, we’re building and creating. It’s it’s there. It exists. It doesn’t need us to keep going and keep burning. But you can have a cloudy day, and you can have clouds. You can have rain showers. The sun can have its rays more or less felt. And so in that way, we’re praying your kingdom come. May the clouds of unbelief and disobedience part may we feel more strongly. God’s Word, God’s will, God’s ways. You can think of the kingdom not only like the sun’s rays breaking through here on Earth but pulling forward something of that Garden of Eden from the past and something of that heavenly community to which we’re going.

God as King, Ruler, and Redeemer

There is that biblical theme throughout the Old and the New Testaments that this Kingdom idea is of God’s people in God’s place, with God as their king, their ruler, their redeemer. And soever the kingdom comes, the king is worshiped, the king is obeyed. And this helps steer us away, too, from some secularized notions from the kingdom that if you clean up litter in a park or you lower unemployment, the kingdom is coming. Well, those may be good things to do, but the kingdom comes where the king is acknowledged, believed upon and worshiped. So wherever King Jesus is readily acknowledged, his reign in rule is more firmly felt and entrenched in our lives and in our world, and so mainly that will exist in the church. There we have his kingdom coming. What more important things could we pray about in our day?

Kevin DeYoung is the senior pastor at Christ Covenant Church (PCA) in Matthews, North Carolina and associate professor of systematic theology at Reformed Theological Seminary.