Thy Kingdom Come -- Thy Will Be Done

Jesus summed up his life purpose in these words: "I must give the good news of the Kingdom of God . . . for that is what I was sent to do." (Luke 4:43). What did he mean by it? He made it the first petition in the Lord's Prayer: "When you pray say: Our Father . . . Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven." Prayer is the deepest thing we do and in that deepest thing we do, the coming of the Kingdom is the most important. It is the foremost and the uppermost -- without it the prayer is comparatively meaningless. This is the framework and the core of everything. Rauschenbush says, "The Kingdom is the vertebrae on which all things in the body hang."

The key is this: "Thy Kingdom come. They will be done on earth, as it is done in heaven." The second phrase explains the first. The coming of the Kingdom was the doing of the will of God on earth as it is done in heaven. How is the will of God done in heaven? In the individual will? Yes. In the collective will? Yes. In the total social arrangements of heaven? Yes. It is a complete totalitarianism, a total way of life in this life now.

But wouldn't that be total bondage? Strangely enough, No. Here is a complete totalitarianism in which, when you obey it totally, you find total freedom. I do not argue. I only testify: When I belong to Christ and his Kingdom, I am most my own. Bound to the Kingdom, I walk the earth free. Low at his feet, I stand straight before everything else. There is one difference between the earthborn totalitarianism and God's heavenborn totalitarianism: if you obey the earthborn totalitarianisms, fascism, naziism, communism totally you find total bondage. If you obey God's Kingdom you will find total freedom.