What Does Thy Kingdom Come Mean?

What Jesus Was Asking His Followers to Pray For

Matthew 6 begins with Jesus confronting religious hypocrisy. He warns against public prayer used for display and against empty repetition. Then He tells His disciples to pray to their Father, who already knows what they need.

That same setting matters when Jesus says, “Your kingdom come, your will be done.” He had not yet gone to the cross. The resurrection had not happened. The New Covenant had not yet reached the point at which the old order would finally disappear.

That is also why the statements about forgiveness in the Lord’s Prayer should not be lifted out of their setting and turned into a New Covenant rule that says Christians are forgiven only to the degree that they forgive others. Christ had not yet accomplished the work that would establish our reconciled standing with the Father. The larger covenant setting is developed in What Is the New Covenant?.

Jesus was speaking into that transition. I believe “Your kingdom come” was prophetic. He was telling those followers to pray for something God had promised and was about to bring to completion.

The Kingdom Was Coming in Their Generation

There is a difference between belonging to a Kingdom that is being established and living after that Kingdom has been fully established. After Pentecost, the disciples could already participate in what Christ was bringing through the Holy Spirit, while still waiting for the consummation Jesus had promised.

Luke 21 gives the historical marker. Jesus told His hearers that when they saw Jerusalem surrounded by armies, its desolation had drawn near. He called those days “days of vengeance” in which what had been written would be fulfilled. The Jewish war began in the first century and ended with Jerusalem and the Temple destroyed in AD 70.

Matthew 24 describes the same period with the language of tribulation, darkened sun and moon, falling stars, the Son of Man coming on the clouds, and the gathering of His elect. Then Jesus gives the timing statement that should control the reading: this generation would not pass away until all those things took place. The companion study What Is the Great Tribulation? follows that judgment setting in more detail.

The return of Christ is included in the things Jesus said belonged to that generation. Rome carried out the destruction of Jerusalem, but the judgment belonged to the Lord. Jesus had announced it, Stephen was accused of proclaiming that Jesus would destroy the place and change the customs of Moses, and Jesus Himself told Israel’s leaders they would see the Son of Man at the right hand of power and coming on the clouds of heaven. Is Jesus Coming Back? develops that time question directly.

Heaven and Earth Were Covenant Language

The reason many readers move Jesus’ words thousands of years into the future is simple: the physical world did not end in the first century. If “heaven and earth” can only be seen in a material sense, then “this generation” appears impossible.

But Scripture already gives us a language for reading these images. In Judges 5, the stars are pictured as fighting against Sisera. Daniel 12 compares the wise to stars shining in the heavens. In Joseph’s dream in Genesis 37, the sun, moon, and eleven stars represent his father, mother, and brothers. Nobody in Joseph’s family thought literal constellations were going to bow down to him.

Prophetic language works through images. We do the same thing in ordinary speech. We can say someone is “out to lunch” without meaning the person is sitting in a restaurant. The words make sense inside the culture that uses them.

When Jesus spoke of sun, moon, stars, heaven, earth, and clouds, His Jewish hearers already had the Old Testament background for those images. The passing of heaven and earth was not announcing the destruction of the physical universe. It was the passing of the covenant order centered in the Law, Jerusalem, and the Temple.

The New Jerusalem Is the New Covenant

Paul makes the covenant connection especially clear in Galatians 4. He compares Hagar and Sarah to two covenants. Hagar corresponds to the Jerusalem that then existed in slavery, while the Jerusalem above is free and is the mother of the children of promise.

That gives us a biblical way to read Revelation 21. John sees the New Jerusalem coming down from heaven as a bride prepared for her husband. God dwells with His people. The former things pass away. Death is no more, and the water of life is given freely.

I do not read that as a giant physical city descending from the sky. Paul had already connected the Jerusalem above with the free woman and the New Covenant. Revelation is showing the same covenant reality in prophetic imagery.

Death being no more does not mean Christians stopped dying physically. It means the believer is no longer separated from God in death. Christ defeated death and brought His people into life in His presence. The next study, What Does 1 Thessalonians 4:13–18 Mean?, carries that question into Paul’s language of resurrection, immortality, and meeting the Lord in the air.

The Kingdom Is Fully Established Now

The prayer was “Your kingdom come.” The good news is that the Kingdom did come. Christ reigns now. The New Covenant is not waiting to replace the Old Covenant someday, and the New Jerusalem is not merely a future city we hope will eventually appear.

That does not mean the physical world has become sinless or that every person recognizes the reign of Christ. The Kingdom is spiritual, and its work continues as the gospel brings people from death to life. The future is not another covenant age waiting to begin. It is more people receiving life and more of God’s work being done in the Kingdom Christ established.

That brings us back to the practical thought that opened the conversation. We belong to God’s family, and that should affect the way we live here. We do not need to act as though the Kingdom is still postponed. We can live as people who already belong to the reign of Christ.

“Your kingdom come” was a prayer for what God was then bringing to fulfillment. We are living in the Kingdom that Christ established.