This is part of a series of communion meditations through the Lord’s Prayer
The first recorded words of Jesus in the Gospel of Mark are this: The time is fulfilled. The kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe the gospel. (Mark 1:15)
As we work our way through the Lord’s Prayer, we come now to the second petition: Thy kingdom come.
The kingdom of God is one of the greatest themes in the Bible. And at the same time, it’s one of the most hotly contested parts of Christian theology. What exactly does the kingdom entail? What does its scope? When does it actually come? These are all debated by Christian theologians.
In very simple terms, a kingdom involves three things. It involves a king or a ruler. It involves a people over whom the ruler reigns. And it involves a realm, a place where that rule is exercised. King, people, and realm. That’s what a kingdom is.
There is a sense in which everything everywhere is always under the rule of God, and as God, he is in authority over it—everyone being, in fact, under his authority. Thus all of creation could be called, in some sense, the kingdom of God. And that’s how it was meant to be at creation. Everything was under his rule, gladly, willingly, in submission to his rule.
