READING TIME: 2-3 MINUTES
February 20, 2020
Could you please give us a summary of Christ’s teaching in His Lord’s Prayer in Matthew 6:9-13?
I want to thank my friend Dr. Andy Woods for his excellent material on the kingdom, including the following information on this key prayer.
This prayer should be called the “Disciple’s Prayer.” The key prayer that Jesus prayed is in John 17.
The first three requests are petitions for the coming of the kingdom. The last three are for the needs of the disciples in the interim preceding the establishment of the kingdom.” If Matthew 6:9–13 is in actuality a model prayer for the disciples consisting of three requests for the kingdom to come and three additional requests for their temporal needs to be met before the kingdom’s establishment, then it becomes obvious that the Lord did not establish the kingdom at His First Advent. Why pray for the coming of the kingdom and make additional requests until its establishment if the kingdom were already a present reality?
Matthew 6:9b — Christ is here teaching His disciples to pray for the coming of the time in history when God’s name will be universally revered and respected by humanity.
Matthew 6:10a — The kingdom here is a future reality since Christ is instructing His disciples to pray for its arrival. It is absurd for someone to ask for something that he already possesses.
Matthew 6:10b — Here, Christ instructs His disciples to pray that the unchallenged rule that the Father enjoys in heaven would one day become an earthly reality. In sum, the first three clauses found in the “Disciples’ Prayer” (the requests for God’s name to be revered, the kingdom to come, and the sovereign will of God to be done on the earth) are in reality requests for the yet future kingdom.
Matthew 6:11-13 – these verses can best be understood as three requests that petition the Father to meet the temporal needs of Christ’s disciples in the era leading up to the kingdom’s establishment while the kingdom remains in a state of postponement.
Matthew 6:11 — Until the time of agricultural prosperity in the kingdom age comes (see Isaiah 65:21-22a; Zechariah 8:12), food shortages will continue to be a reality for humanity.
Matthew 6:12 — While still in mortal bodies, followers of Christ still retain a propensity for sin and thus can still fall out of fellowship with the Father.
Matthew 6:13 — in the present age, with the kingdom and Satan’s incarceration not a present reality, the believer needs protection from the Adversary (John 17:15).
In sum, in Matthew 6:9–11, Christ teaches His followers to ask the Father to meet their temporal needs (physical provision, spiritual restoration, and divine protection from Satan) during the kingdom’s absence.
When rightly understood, the “Disciples’ Prayer” consists of three requests for the kingdom to come and three additional requests for provisions that are needed while the kingdom remains in abeyance. Such a framework makes it obvious that the Lord did not establish the kingdom at His First Advent. Thus, the whole notion that Christ already established the kingdom in a spiritual form at His First Advent becomes unlikely, if not impossible.
Source Used
Woods, Andrew M. The Coming Kingdom: What Is the Kingdom and How Is Kingdom Now Theology Changing the Focus of the Church? Grace Gospel Press, chapter 16.