 Foundations of the Faith
Foundations of the
Faith explores and
explains Kingdom, power, glory By Robert P. Mills, The LaymanVolume 36, Number 5, Posted September 12, 2003 |
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A doxology is literally “a word of glory.” And while we may not think of it in such terms, in its most familiar form, the Lord’s Prayer ends with a doxology, “For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever. Amen” (Matt. 6:13). The doxology As scholars have noted for centuries, this doxology is not found in the earliest Greek manuscripts of the New Testament. Thus some have questioned whether these words were spoken by Jesus or whether they may have been the Spirit-inspired addition of a later disciple. Either way, the doxology appears to have been drawn from I Chronicles 29:11, “Thine, O Lord, is the greatness, and the power, and the glory, and the victory, and the majesty, for all that is in the heaven and the earth is thine; thine is the kingdom, O Lord, and thou art exalted as head above all.” Moreover, notes N.T. Wright, this conclusion to the Lord’s Prayer “was already well established within a century or so of Jesus’ day; and it is actually inconceivable, within the Jewish praying styles of his day, that Jesus would have intended the prayer to stop simply with ‘deliver us from evil.’ … In any case, it chimes in exactly with the message of the prayer as a whole: God’s kingdom, God’s power, and God’s glory are what it’s all about.” Two little words The concluding doxology of the Lord’s Prayer begins with two little words, “For thine,” words that we might easily skip over as we look ahead to the bigger words that follow. “For” translates a Greek word that may also mean “because, wherefore.” As Spiros Zodhiates observes, “This conjunction introducing the doxology contains the reasons why we should pray to God and why we may expect an answer when we pray.” “Thine,” of course, is the archaic English form of “yours.” This word reminds us that the kingdom, power and glory belong to God and not to us. Because all power and glory belong to God, God’s power is not at our disposal and the Lord’s Prayer is not a magic formula that forces God to give us the glory (or anything else) that we desire. Since we examined the concept of God’s kingdom in an earlier study, here we will consider God’s power and his glory. The final two words of the prayer will be the topic of our closing study. The power It is no coincidence that we are taught to praise God for his power right after we pray to be protected from temptation and evil. Alone in the wilderness, Jesus rejected Satan’s temptation to exercise an earthly power not grounded in a relationship with God (Matt. 4:1-11). Jesus’ life and teachings stand over against our own temptations to gain and use earthly power for our own benefit. The Greek word here translated “power” is dunamis, from which we get “dynamic” and “dynamite.” It is a word that emphasizes the ability to get things done. In praising God for his power, we acknowledge that he not only has the right to rule his kingdom, but that he has – and uses – the power to do so. In the language of classical theology, God is omnipotent, which means he is all-powerful. Although some today suggest that God’s power is limited to influencing our opinions and attitudes, in fact God “is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine” (Eph. 3:20). Praying the Lord’s Prayer reminds us of this reality. The glory The Greek doxa, translated “glory,” means majesty, grandeur, fame or good report. When applied to God, glory may be seen as the sum of all his attributes. To praise God for his glory is the essence of worship. To pray this way at the end of the Lord’s Prayer is to anticipate the worship we will one day join in heaven. Just as Jesus helps us properly understand power, so he also redefines our understanding of glory. Jesus himself is the incarnation of God’s glory (John 1:14). Yet when he spoke of his own glory and the glory of God the Father, (as in John 8:54; 13:31; 15:8; 21:19) most of his first hearers misunderstood. Jesus’ greatest glory is his atoning sacrifice on the cross. Thus with the doxology, “For thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory,” we remind ourselves of why and how we are both rightly related to God and able to speak to him these words of praise and glory. |
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