Your Kingdom come?

When Jesus’ disciples — the men who traveled together with him for three years to learn under his tutelage — asked him to teach them how to pray, he gave them a very interesting prayer model. It’s one that has been prayed by many throughout the centuries, though I fear that many pray the words without really grasping what they mean.

He said to them, “When you pray, say: ‘Father, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread. Forgive us our sins, for we also forgive everyone who sins against us. And lead us not into temptation.’” — Luke 11: 2-4

It’s a very interesting prayer, a very earthy prayer in fact. I’m particularly interested in these words:

“Your Kingdom come…”

Jesus didn’t tell them to pray, “Take me up to heaven someday” but “your kingdom come.”

What did he mean?

It might help us to think about this question: What is the “Gospel”? The word “gospel” is one that is used often by Christians, and it means literally “good news.” But what is the good news that Jesus came to bring?

Some think the good news is simply that, if we will believe in Him, we can go to heaven someday. However, in his ministry, Jesus preached “Repent for the kingdom of heaven is near.” (Matthew 4:17, emphasis mine) He didn’t talk about his kingdom being something that was only far away in the heavens, and his news wasn’t simply that “you can go to the kingdom someday.” He actually talked about something that was near, and when he taught his followers to pray, he didn’t tell them to pray, “Take us up to your kingdom someday.” Rather, he taught them to pray, “Your kingdom come.”

In order to better understand these words, “your kingdom come,” it can help to know something about the world in which Jesus first said them. He was entering into the age-old story of the Jewish people. They had once had their own nation, but then had gone into exile in a foreign land. For years, they dreamed of going back into their land, the land of Israel.

Although living in the land again, they were still in a form of exile. They were living under foreign rule and had for several centuries. They were hoping for freedom and believed, as the Old Testament had shown them, that freedom would come through the Messiah that was to be sent by God. The word Messiah, from the Jewish Scriptures that Christians call the Old Testament, means “anointed one.” They were waiting for the anointed one, the Messiah, to come from heaven and to bring his kingdom.

So what did these words, “Kingdom of Heaven,” mean? They did not refer to a place. Rather, they referred to God’s rule coming to earth; His justice and peace on earth. The Jewish people were waiting for a king.

As to how they interpreted this “rule of God” coming to earth, it depended on who you talked to. While waiting for the coming of God’s kingdom, there were basically three different groups of Jews who each chose a different way to use their time and live their lives until the King came.

1. The first group are the ones we might call separatists. Their approach toward how they would wait for the coming of God’s kingdom was as follows: Separate yourself from the wicked world and just wait for God to do whatever He’s gonna do.
2. The second group are the ones we might call the compromisers. They would be represented by the example of King Herod in the Bible. He took this point of view to heart: Build yourself fortresses and palaces, get along with your political bosses as well as you can, do as well out of it as you can and just hope that God will bless it somehow anyway.
3. Then there was the third group, who were called the “zealots.” This was their approach toward waiting for the kingdom: Take the kingdom by force, fight a holy war and bring in the kingdom on earth by military means.

Now Jesus was a true revolutionary. He came to turn all their expectations upside down. His option was a fourth approach — one that totally fit with the predictions of the Old Testament, but which they’d all missed until he came. He WAS the expected KING, but his KINGDOM was different than anything they’d ever imagined.

Jesus didn’t do things the way people expected him to. From the world’s point of view, in many ways the Kingdom of God is an upside-down kingdom. When God’s rule comes into a group of people, it takes a form that no other government or political movement on earth would even consider.

In Luke 4, Jesus stood up in front of a Jewish synagogue and explained the values of his kingdom and his interpretation of the words, “good news,” with the following:

“The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, 
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” — Luke 4:18-19

When Jesus told his people to pray, “Your Kingdom come,” he was calling for a massive revolution. However, it was a revolution of a different kind. Rather than a call to upward mobility and a fight for free-market economy, it was a call to downward mobility. A call to “humble yourself in the sight of the Lord,” (James 4:10) and to “be the servant of all.” (Mark 9:35) It was a call to speak out for those who did not have a voice in the world, to set the captives free, to release the oppressed. It was a call to the kind of revolution that only comes through love, sacrifice and service.

When we pray, “Your kingdom come,” we’re praying that God’s way of thinking would become our way of thinking, and that his concerns would rule in our lives. We’re praying that we would become less selfish and more selfless. We’re not praying that our political party would win the next election, but we are praying that God would help us to stand up for issues of justice in the world and to seek ways to reach out to the poor, the sick and the hurting.

Whenever we reach out in these ways, God’s rule starts to take hold in our world. We get glimpses of his kingdom NOW, knowing that one day his Kingdom will arrive completely.

“But,” someone might say to me, “doesn’t the good news mean we will have eternal life?”

Yes, of course it does! Jesus said:

“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” — John 3:16

The Greek word translated as “eternal,” however, does not just refer to something that starts at some day in the future after you die. That word, aionios, refers to something that has no end and will never cease. It refers to something that starts now and continues into eternity.

In other words, in biblical thinking, eternal life begins immediately when we trust Jesus. He comes into our life and then desires us to submit to him as King now and forever. Submitting to him as king, of course, does not just mean going to church and doing religious things. It means submitting our very lives into his hands and seeking to live in such a way that his kingdom principles are lived out in us.

And so we pray, “Your kingdom come.”

I wonder, when a young starving boy prays this in an African slum, what kind of image he has in mind. “Your kingdom come.” Or the woman who is being sold into slavery in order for her children to eat, or the little girl dying of AIDS.

When we consider that 25,000 children die every day of hunger, poverty, easily preventable diseases and illnesses, and other related causes, what does it mean to pray, “Your kingdom come”?

That’s the equivalent of 1 child dying every 3.5 seconds.

And let’s consider the rest of this model prayer Jesus gave us. He said things like:

“Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”

Some people act like being a Christian is just about getting by on earth until the “real life” begins in heaven. But Jesus told us to pray that His will be done on earth.

About 1.1 billion people in the world don’t have adequate access to water, something you and I might take for granted, and 2.6 billion lack basic sanitation.

Many millions of people around the world don’t have access to healthcare.

Between 1 and 1.5 million people die of malaria every year, a disease that could easily be cured for less than the price of a Happy Meal at McDonald’s.

“Your Kingdom come.”

I wonder what it means for little Peter, a young man I know in the Mathare slums in Nairobi, when he prays, “Give us this day our daily bread.”

As I said, it’s really a very earthy prayer. It’s about praying for God’s rule to come into the everyday situations of life, where people are suffering. And, if we read it in the context of the rest of the Bible, it’s clearly about praying with the knowledge that God wants those of us who can to help play a part in answering that suffering.

Even the words, “Forgive as we forgive those who have sinned against us,” take on an especially powerful tone if we think of them in the terms of their original context.

The original audience lived under Roman rule, in an atmosphere of oppression. They longed for deliverance…

Just like in the Mathare slums, where Peter lives. The people live in “houses” made of the flimsiest, dirtiest of materials. The first time I visited Mathare, I noticed a stream of dirty water running down the uneven, dirt road. I was told that it was both the drinking water and the toilet for the residents. Rubbish lined the roads and filled the corners between the homes.

The pastor of a local church told us that diseases like malaria, diptheria, AIDS, etc. were just as common to them as the common cold is to Americans, if not moreso.

And I was told that the local government charges the people to live there. Their leaders live nearby in mansions partially paid for by their rent.

“Forgive those who have sinned against us…”

What about this part of the prayer?

“Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil…”

I think about the many children I’ve met who steal bread, and the girls who have been sold into prostitution; spurred on by sheer desperation.

“Yours is the kingdom and the power and glory forever. Amen.”

The Bible assures us that one day every wrong will be made right, God’s Kingdom will come fully, all evil will be judged, the oppressed will be set free…

But the Bible also makes it clear that God’s Kingdom is meant to break into the world NOW through those of us who claim to follow him.

What are you and I doing to see to it that bits of God’s rule breaks into a world where so much pain and injustice still reign? I wonder if, after thinking through their meaning, we’ll think a little differently about these words when we pray, “Your Kingdom come.”

Is Jesus a good American?

What does it actually mean to be a Christian in America?

I have traveled across a lot of the country and talked to a lot of church-people about their faith. What I’ve discovered is interesting.

For many church-goers in America, to be a good Christian means to be a good patriot and a good Republican. In fact, the conservative movement, in linking itself with the Christian faith, has been so vocal in recent years that for many — Christian and non-Christian alike — the term “Christian” has come to be nearly synonymous with words like “conservative” and “Republican.”

Of course, there have been those who have resisted these labels, but equally interesting is the observation that many Americans who react to these labels do so by claiming Jesus for their political parties instead. So, for some, Jesus is really a liberal democrat.

How sad that so many of us have completely lost sight of what Christ and his message are all about. I would like to remind my fellow Americans of two facts that we need to remember if we are going to hold on to the integrity of Christ’s message.

1. JESUS IS NOT A REPUBLICAN.

   He’s also not a Democrat.

   When people start to claim Jesus for their particular political agenda, they lose sight of Who Jesus really is and what He’s all about. Jesus said:

   My kingdom is not of this world. — John 18:36a

   There were people among the Jews who thought that the Kingdom of God was about bringing God’s rule to the earth through taking control of the nation’s government. They were called “zealots” and, though they tried to win Jesus to their cause, he was not interested. His kingdom was not the kind of kingdom that could be brought through political or military force. It was one that would be brought through servanthood, love and sacrifice.

2. JESUS IS NOT AMERICAN.

   I’ve noticed that a lot of American churches have a cross, a “Christian” flag, and an American flag all sitting on the platform. The theological message conveyed by this, even by those who don’t consciously realize it, is that the cross and the American flag are equal in importance to the Christian. This has become so ingrained in our culture that most of us go for years before it even dawns on us that this borders on idolatry.

   Jesus never promised a preference for America above other nations, and God never once indicated in His Word that America is meant to hold any kind of status as a new Promised Land.

   Don’t get me wrong. He loves America.

   But He also loves Iran, Britain, Tanzania, and every other country in the world. As Revelation 5:9 speaks of Christ’s sacrifice:

   …with your blood you purchased men for God from every tribe and language and people and nation.

   Has He especially blessed America through the years? I think it can rightfully be argued that He has. However, He has equally blessed other nations at times through the years, and He has also removed that blessing according to His will.

We need not ask if God is on our side, but if we are on His.

Many Christians put God and Country on an equal footing, some consciously and others unconsciously.

However, for a true Christ-follower, the Bible tells us that “our citizenship is in Heaven” (Philippians 3:20) and that we are part of a different Kingdom, the Kingdom of God. Our first priority, if we are truly Christ-followers, is to His Kingdom and not to any other Kingdom on earth.

This does not mean, of course, that we should not honor our leaders or take part in politics. What it does mean is that our political agendas should never govern our theology and faith. No political party or nation can claim God’s endorsement because these very parties and nations are our creations, not His.

Once we get our priorities straight, placing God’s Kingdom above all other kingdoms, we can begin to work together across party lines and national lines to seek relevant answers to life’s questions and this world’s needs. As long as we let those lines get in the way, we are in danger of missing the very point of being Christ’s followers in the world.

Does God use doctors?

Recently, I heard someone say the following words:

“I don’t need any doctors. I go to my family physician, Jesus Christ.”

Unfortunately, there are some Christians who actually stand by this credo with a passion. They believe that going to the doctor is a sin and a sign of a lack of faith. I’ve had discussions with people who make this claim, and it frankly makes me very sad.

As we talked about in my last post, God does sometimes choose to heal miraculously. However, I am equally convinced that God often chooses to heal through the agency of people He has gifted with the special knowledge and abilities of the medical profession.

I pointed out in one debate that Luke, who wrote the Gospel of Luke, was a physician. One man tried to argue that Luke was a physician, but that he stopped practicing as a doctor once he became a Christian. The implied suggestion was that he repented of the sin of being a doctor once he came to know Christ.

Besides the obvious insult contained in that argument toward all the dedicated Christian doctors out there, this argument simply doesn’t hold water. For one thing, there is absolutely no evidence to suggest that Luke ever changed his profession after becoming a follower of Christ. In fact, the only biblical evidence indicates the exact opposite. Toward the end of his letter to the Colossians, the Apostle Paul says the following:

Our dear friend, Luke, the doctor, and Demas send greetings. — Colossians 4:14

There is nothing in the Bible to suggest that the early Christians were against doctors. In fact, the only verses in the Bible that talk about doctors are actually quite positive.

Jesus himself used doctors as an example, and when he did so he did it in a positive way. In Matthew 9:12, he said:

It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick.

Some readers, by lifting this comment out of context, might argue that Jesus is referring to himself as the doctor and that, therefore, this comment strengthens the argument that he, and he alone, is the doctor we need. A look at the context, however, refutes such an argument. Let’s look at the whole passage:

While Jesus was having dinner at Matthew’s house, many tax collectors and “sinners” came and ate with him and his disciples. When the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and ‘sinners’?”

On hearing this, Jesus said, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.” — Matthew 9: 10-13

The Pharisees were unhappy because Jesus was spending time with people they considered to be sinners. In their legalistic understanding of their faith, they believed that there were certain “kinds” of people they were not to associate with. Jesus was associating with those very people, and so they were offended.

When the Pharisees challenged Jesus about hanging out with “sinners,” he compared himself with a doctor. He said that healthy people don’t need a doctor, but sick people do. Then he said that he had come to sinners, not to the righteous.

In other words, he was proclaiming himself to be like a doctor of the soul, one who had come not for those who already had their lives together but for those who did not. He was not, however, using the illustration literally to talk about himself and his relationship to physical health. There are other places where we see him healing people physically, but in this case he was talking about his greater mission to those who were considered “sinners.”

Therefore, he used doctors as a positive example. Just as sick people need a doctor, sinners need a saviour.

This statement, which we’ve just read in Matthew, is also repeated in Mark and Luke. If Jesus acknowledged that sick people need a doctor, how can his followers deny the role of the medical profession in God’s plan?

Does God always heal?

Years ago, I knew a woman who was very ill. The people from her church prayed for her and were convinced that God was going to heal her. However, she wasn’t healed.

When it became evident that she wasn’t going to be healed immediately, the people in her church started treating her differently. Why? Because they were convinced of two things:

• If she was ill, it was because there was unconfessed sin in her life.
• If she’d had more faith, she would have been healed.

Eventually, she left that church and found a church with a more balanced, biblical view of her situation. Its people came around her, loved her and helped her in her weakness, never judging her.

How sad, however, that Christians could ever take such a dangerous, non-biblical view. I have heard of others in situations similar to this woman’s whose stories have not ended so well. In some cases, the result has been that people have turned away from God altogether because they became convinced either that they were too sinful to be loved by God or that Christians were all judgmental and that God, therefore, must also be judgmental and unloving.

What would be a biblical response to this lady’s situation? Let me respond briefly to each of the above accusations:

1. If she was ill, it was because there was unconfessed sin in her life.That accusation is certainly not a new one. It represents the same attitude that some of God’s followers had all the way back in the time of Jesus. What’s funny to me, however, is that any Christian today would profess that same attitude when Jesus himself actually addressed it directly in the Bible.

   Lets look at these verses from a story about Jesus in the Gospel of John:

   As he went along, he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, ‘Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?’

   ‘Neither this man nor his parents sinned,’ said Jesus, ‘but this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life.’ — John 9: 1-3

   Jesus’ own disciples had fallen prey to this false teaching. They believed that if someone was ill, it was because that person had sinned. When they met a man who had been born blind, however, they found it hard to reconcile with their theology. They wondered how his problem could be as a result of his own sin if he had it from the moment he was born. So they asked Jesus, “Who sinned to cause him to be like this? Was it him or his parents?”

   Jesus’ response must have surprised him, just as it would have surprised the people in the first church from the story above. He told them that his blindness was not the result of personal sin in his life or in the life of his parents. These words of Jesus shatter any suggestion that illness is always a result of personal sin and that it would always be healed if we would simply repent.

   In the case of the man born blind, Jesus said that his blindness actually served a higher purpose, even though the man certainly would never have been able to understand that up to this point in his life. The purpose in his particular case was that the glory of God might be demonstrated through the man’s healing. Might this mean that there is a higher purpose being served behind other people’s illnesses as well, even if in some cases they’re not healed? That raises a lot of other questions that we don’t have the time to go into here, but as we will see in the response to the next accusation, the highest purpose isn’t always immediate healing.

2. If she’d had more faith, she would have been healed.

   The Bible does talk about miraculous healings. One section of Scripture that talks about healing is James 5: 14-15:

   Is any one of you sick? He should call the elders of the church to pray over him and anoint him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well; the Lord will raise him up. If he has sinned, he will be forgiven.

   Does this mean, however, that every sickness will be healed? At first glance, it would seem to be the case. However, this particular verse takes place in the context of a larger argument in James. I can go into that argument in more detail in a different post sometime if anybody asks me to explain it in more detail. For now, though, suffice it to say that it’s too simplistic to assume that this one verse is claiming that EVERY illness will always be healed.

   Besides, reality gets in the way of such a simplistic interpretation. Even all of the original Christians, including James, died. Some of them were killed, but a lot of them also died of natural causes. To say that anyone who is not healed of an illness must be lacking in faith is to suggest that whenever Christ-followers die it is because they finally ran out of faith!

   1 Thessalonians 4 talks about the resurrection of the dead. It says:

   For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. — 1 Thessalonians 4:16

   The hope of the Christ-follower is the hope of the resurrection of the dead, not the avoidance of death and illness.

Don’t get me wrong. I’ve known people who have been dramatically healed. Just recently in Africa, there was a blind woman who received her sight when Ernie, one of our team-members prayed with her. My own wife also had an excruciating pain in her back, and when I prayed for her one day it instantly went away.

But then, in the very same week, Karen and I both got really ill with some kind of bug that kept us nearly bed-ridden for a couple of days. When we prayed about that, God didn’t take it away. We just had to ride out that illness until eventually we felt better.

Why is it that sometimes God heals and sometimes He doesn’t? I don’t know. I could share some of the explanations I’ve heard, but the truth is that I don’t know. What I do believe, however, is that He is sovereign and that we just have to trust His final judgment in these things. Perhaps the reason He does NOT always heal is because we need to remember that it’s not ultimately about this life as we know it.

The Apostle Paul said clearly in the Bible that the Christian’s hope is in the resurrection of the dead when Jesus returns. He said in 1 Corinthians 15: 13-14:

If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith.

Clearly, he did not see the Christian’s ultimate hope as being wrapped up in having perfect bodies here and now. In fact, he went on to say in verse 19:

If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men.

He said that this body is perishable. It is true that God sometimes delays the inevitable through supernatural healings, but even the faith healer dies eventually. Here’s what Paul said:

So will it be with the resurrection of the dead. The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable; it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. — 1 Corinthians 15: 42-44a

What a wonderful hope we have as followers of Jesus Christ. Though we try to fight off the effects of old age with creams and medicines, the sad fact is that illness, wrinkles and death cannot be held off forever. The good news, however, is that that is not the point! The point is that God is preparing us for an eternity, and when that eternity dawns we all WILL be healed, and our healing will be complete and eternal.