Kingdom, Power and Glory

The concluding line of the Lord’s Prayer (like the concluding verses of Mark’s Gospel), "For yours is the kingdom, the power and the glory, for ever and ever. Amen" is missing from most manuscripts that are available to us. Of course, no original manuscript of any part of the biblical canon has survived; what we have are copies, some citing a few verses only, dating from as early as the second century. This is a whole lot closer than any of the great secular books. For example, we can get as close as thousand years to Caesar’s Gallic War, the writings of Herodotus and Thucydides, over 1,300 years, and the History of Tacitus, at least 700 years.

In the case of the New Testament, there are about 5,000 manuscripts available for study, in various languages and translations. The science of textual criticism endeavors to make judgments as the exact nature of the canon. Estimates of variants in these manuscripts range into the hundreds of thousands, and the vast majority are easily recognizable as scribal errors in copying: missing out a letter, or even a line; repeating a word (dittography); confusing two letters which look similar; and, the practice of inserting marginal comments which later became part of the received text. There is a science. Known as textual criticism, that seeks to determine what the original text might have been. It is a perfectly laudable science and something that Christians who believe in the inerrancy of Scripture ought not in any way to fear. Nor should Christians be under the impression that they cannot trust their Bibles: less than 3% of the New Testament is in dispute, and no major doctrine is ever in question. Professor F. J. A. Hort, the nineteenth century Greek scholar put it this way: "The amount of what can in any sense be called substantial variation…can hardly form more than a thousandth part of the whole text." (1)

All this becomes relevant as we consider the "Doxology" that closes the Lord’s Prayer. The earliest commentaries known to us on this prayer, including Origen’s commentary on the Lord’s Prayer (c. 185-c.254 a.d.), and that of Gregory of Nyssa (330 – c.335 a.d.) inform us that most manuscripts available to them did not contain the doxology. Some manuscripts contained only a reference to the "power and glory," without the "Amen" or the reference to the "kingdom." Whilst one of the Church Fathers, Chrysostom, argued for its inclusion, some of the most notable argued against its inclusion, including Tertullian, Cyprian and Augustine. In what is possibly the greatest puritan commentary on the Lord’s Prayer, written by Thomas Watson in the middle of the seventeenth century, no comment is given on the concluding doxology. (2) A similarly well-known commentary on the Lord’s Prayer by Herman Witsuis (1636-1708), does contain a brief section on the doxology which includes a bold attempt to justify its inclusion based on the (so-called) "received text" as complied by Erasmus in the early sixteenth century. (3)

Nevertheless, it has become so much part of the Christian tradition, and its doctrine is so utterly biblical, that we are bound to make some comments on it. Some parallel statements in Scripture include the following:

"Yours, O LORD, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the majesty and the splendor, for everything in heaven and earth is yours. Yours, O LORD, is the kingdom; you are exalted as head over all" (1 Chron 29:11).

"The Lord will rescue me from every evil attack and will bring me safely to his heavenly kingdom. To him be glory for ever and ever. Amen." (2 Tim 4:18).

"Now to the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory for ever and ever. Amen." (1 Tim 1:17).

"How great are his signs, how mighty his wonders! His kingdom is an eternal kingdom; his dominion endures from generation to generation." (Dan 4:3).

 Doxology
   All good theology should be doxological: it should seek to bring glory to God. For that is what doxology means: it is an expression giving honor to God. It is different from a benediction, in that benedictions expressing God’s blessing to his people, whereas doxologies reverse that, giving blessing to God.

The Bible contains many doxologies. The most well known are:

"…to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen." (Gal 1:5; c.f. Rev 1:6).

"…to Him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen." (Eph 3:21).

"But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To Him be glory both now and forever! Amen." (2 Pet 3:18).

"To Him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be praise and honor and glory and power, for ever and ever!" (Rev 5:13).

"Salvation belongs to our God, who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb." (Rev 7:10).

In the liturgical history of the church, the Gloria in Excelsis (based on Luke 2:14) was used up until the Reformation, when both Calvin and Cranmer omitted it in favor of the Ten Commandments. By far and away the most well known doxology, still in use in the church’s liturgy, is the Gloria Patri (based on Matt 28:19f, and originating in the second century):

 Doxologies are essentially praise: praise to God for all that He is and does. As such, it forms an essential sub-set of all true prayer and worship. As Thomas Watson was to say about the relationship of faith to repentance, so we adapt it for the relationship of prayer and praise: that they are like the two wings of bird by which we fly into heaven. Praise-less Christians are earth-bound Christians; only diseased hearts fail to praise.

We need to learn to fill our prayers with praises to the Lord!

Praise, my soul, the King heaven, To his feet your tribute bring; Ransomed, healed, restored, forgiven,
Who like me, his praise should sing?  Praise him, praise him, praise him, praise him, Praise the everlasting King.
                                                                                             Henry Lyte (based on Psalm 103).

Resource and Reliability
   The doxology is connected to the rest of the prayer by the conjunction, for…: "For thine (yours) is the kingdom, the power, the glory, for ever and ever. Amen." Having asked for provision, pardon and protection in the preceding three petitions, the Lord’s Prayer now asserts that the reason we may ask for such things is because our Father in heaven has both the resources and the reliability to give them. It is within both His ability and character to provide, pardon and protect because the kingdom, power and glory are His. We do not ask of one who cannot or will not answer us. Chrysostom puts it this way: "After having roused us to the struggle by the consideration of the enemy, and entirely removed every apology for slothfulness, he again confirms and strengthens our mind by reminding us of the King, whom we faithfully serve, and by showing that he is more powerful than all."(4)

The Lord’s Prayer, thus, takes us full-cycle: having started with God, the prayer now ends with God. And he wants us to know that our praying is not in vain. He intends to answer us from the riches of His resources. God does not mock by inviting us to do something that He has no intension of heeding. C. H. Spurgeon once wrote:

I cannot imagine any one of you tantalizing your child by exciting in him a desire that you did not intend to gratify. It were a very ungenerous thing to offer alms to the poor, and then when they hold out their hand for it, to mock their poverty with a denial. It were a cruel addition to the miseries of the sick if they were taken to the hospital and there left to die untended and uncared for. Where God leads you to pray, He means you to receive. (5)

Kingdom and Power
The first two words of doxology, "kingdom" and "power" are what grammarians call, a hendiadys. That is, they are two expressing a single, composite thought. We have already had occasion to mention the word "kingdom" since it has been a part of the second petition: "Your kingdom come." It denotes God’s all embracing control of God over all of his universe, but more particularly, God’s design to fulfill His redemptive purposes in redeeming a people for Himself by overthrowing the rule and dominion of Satan. Having asked for God to bring that about, the prayer concludes by asserting its reality: the kingdom is His. As J. I. Packer puts it: "Satan, the prime example of how sin breeds cunning but saps intelligence and rots the mind, does not accept that the Lord is king in this basic sense, and would dismiss this doxology¾ indeed, all doxologies¾ as false; but Christians know better, and praise God accordingly." (6)

But what good is meaning without muscle, brain without brawn, intent without intensity? Rulers can be overthrown. Thus, we are reassured that the power is God’s, too. He can do whatever He purposes to achieve. Job was brought low in order to confess it: "I know that you can do all things; no plan of yours can be thwarted" (Job 42:2). As Jesus would say, "All things are possible with God" (Mark 10:27). This last statement needs some interpretation to make sense of it. Theologians have drawn boundary lines: it is not that God do anything: He cannot lie, or change His character, for example (Numb 23:19; 1 Sam 15:29; 2 Tim 2:13). Thus we might put it this way: God can do anything that is within His moral and rational nature to do.

Knowing this is liberating and invigorating. It was this thought that drove the Psalmist to say:

"I love you, O LORD, my strength. 2 The LORD is my rock, my fortress and my deliverer; my God is my rock, in whom I take refuge. He is my shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold" (Psa 18:1).

And again:

"God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble" (Psa 46:1).

There is no power that can overthrow the rule of Almighty God. Jesus came into the world to destroy the devil’s naïve claim to power (1 John 3:8).

What needs to you have? The kingdom and power are the Lord’s to provide!

What sins have you confessed? The kingdom and power are the Lord’s to pardon!

What temptations threaten to undo you? The kingdom and power are the Lord’s to protect you.

 Glory
   "Glory" is one of those words we use as Christians without too much thought as its meaning and significance. In the Bible, its Old Testament roots lie in a word which seems to speak of weight, or worth. When Moses asked that he might glimpse God’s glory, he was given a sight of a burning bush that was not consumed in the process, together with an accompanying revelation of God’s name ¾ God’s name Yahweh, (or Jehovah as we used to render it), a name which is later interpreted as, "I Am (or will be) who I AM (or will be)" (Exod 3:13-15; 6:2-3; 33:18 - 34:7).

Glory was how the Israelites thought of God ever since Moses asked to glimpse His glory and God passed by as a bright, shining light ¾ which later became known as the Shekinah ¾ and ever-after was to be glimpsed (only by the High Priest) in the Tabernacle and Temple (Exod 40:34; 1 Kings 8:10ff). Glory was understood as that which defined God’s essential being. Thus, whenever John wants to tell us that Jesus is none other than the God of the Old Testament, he can find no better way as a Jew to say, "we have seen His glory" (John 1:14). Paul seems to be thinking of all of this whenever he writes to the Corinthians: "For God, who said, "Let light shine out of darkness," made His light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ." (2 Cor 4:6). And John seems to be saying the same thing whenever he brings the New Testament to its close in the vision of Christ in the New Jerusalem, by saying: "The city does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and the Lamb is its lamp." (Rev 21:23).

Glory then becomes synonymous with who and what God is. The doxology is therefore attributing, not only rule and might to God (kingdom and power), but also, in a sense, divinity. To say that all glory belongs to him is synonymous with saying, HE IS THE LORD!

But the Bible gives us a much fuller meaning of what giving, or ascribing glory to God means; Take, for example, the following lines of thought.

We give glory to God by:

i. worshipping him: "Whoever offers praise glorifies Me." (Psa 50:23 NKJ).

ii. trusting his promises (as Abraham did): "Yet he did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God, but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God" (Rom 4:20).

iii. by confessing Jesus to be the LORD: "…and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father." (Phil 2:11).

iv. by our obedience to God’s law: "This is my prayer…that you may be…filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ-- to the glory and praise of God." (Phil 1:9-11).

Worship, faith, confession, obedience: demonstrating these in our lives ascribes glory to God.

For ever?
   Ascribing qualities to God is what the Bible does from beginning to end. Its pages begin and end with God. Knowing his character is health-giving and enriching in the profoundest possible sense. But can we possibly understand that these are "for ever and ever"?

No! This is beyond our grasp. We are time-bound and it is hard for us to imagine what a lifetime is let alone endless existence. We find ourselves asking, "How long is forever?" only to discover that the question is meaningless. "But you remain the same, and your years will never end," the Psalmist says. (Psa 102:27). But what does that mean? A great many modern theologians and philosophers read this as suggesting that God is "within time." But, our forefathers, ¾ men like Augustine and Calvin, were surely right in thinking that God is outside of time, that time is itself part of the created order of things.(7) God is not subject to the ravages of time; he has no yesterday or tomorrow. It is because of this that he unchangeable, utterly dependable, always the same yesterday, today and tomorrow (cf. Heb 13:8).

Our relationship with God as his children will never change, because God will never change.

Amen
   Every Christian knows a little bit of Hebrew, for the word "Amen" is a transliteration of the Hebrew word meaning, "firmness", or "truth." Its best known for the way Jesus employed, repeating (in Hebrew style) the word by way of emphasizing some important truth he was about to speak ("Amen, Amen…" or "Verily, verily…" as the King James version rendered it). Jesus is called "the Amen" in Revelation 3:14, since he is the faithful and true witness (John 1:14; 14:6).

Ever since the Paul recorded that the early Christians added "Amen" to prayers to suggest that what they say is true and dependable, Christians have done so ever since (1 Cor 14:16). Saying "Amen" to this prayer, the Lord’s Prayer, is to assert one’s conviction that everything in it is one’s own conviction and longing. This prayer is my prayer. These petitions express the longings of my heart. This is my confession of faith, my record to what is essential and true.

I want to give reverence to the name of God.
I want God’s kingdom to come.
I want God’s will to be done above everything else and no matter what the cost.
I need bread, and I believe God will supply it because he is the Creator.
I need daily forgiveness, and the grace to forgive others, because God pardons through Jesus my Lord.
I need help against temptation and the Tempter.
And I pray in the confidence that all resources to give me these things are his, because he is the Sovereign Lord of glory.
I want God to have all the glory, just as the Shorter Catechism says it" Man’s chief end is to glorify God…"
All the glory!

I want to grow less and less that he might become all in all!
Is this your conviction?
Praying will take on a new life if it is.

(1) F. J. A. Hort and B. F. Westcott, The New Testament in the Original Greek, cited by John Blanchard in How to Enjoy Your Bible (Welwyn: Evangelical Press, 1984), 25.
(2) Thomas Watson, The Lord’s Prayer (Edinburgh: The Banner of Truth, 1960).,
(3) Herman Witsuis, Dissertations on the Lord’s Prayer (Escondido, CA: The den Dulk Foundation, 1994).
(4) Homily xx on chapter 6 of Matthew.
(5) C. H. Spurgeon, Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit (Pasadena, TX: Pilgrim Publications, 1981), Vol. 3, 251.
(6)J. I. Packer, I Want to be a Christian (Wheaten, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, 1985), 176.
(7) For an in-depth defense of this view, see Paul Helm, Eternal God: A Study of God Without Time (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988).