!!!!!!The Trinity,

Prayer, and Praying !!!!!!!!!

Ralph Allan Smith !!

!Introduction !!

It may seem that the doctrine of the Trinity is not terribly important for the doctrine of prayer. It may even seem that the fact that God is Triune is a lesser consideration for the act of prayer. After all, people of every faith and no faith pray. Prayer is one of those universal human actions, like breathing, sleeping, and eating. Though less necessary for physical life than the others, prayer is so basic I think it can be said that in one form or another, probably every human who has ever lived has prayed. Which means that whether or not men believe in the Trinity, they do pray. Even without faith in the Trinity, prayer stands as a universal practice, usually with some sort of explanation behind it, a doctrine.

With that introduction, this rest of this article may seem incongruous, for I intend to show that the Trinity is necessary to prayer. I have two simple propositions. First, men pray because God is Triune. Were He not, prayer could not be what it is. Second, only prayer to the Triune God is prayer in the fullest and most proper sense. To state this from a different perspective, take away the Biblical truth of the Triune God, and neither Christian prayer, as it is taught in Scripture, nor non-Christian prayer, as it is practiced all over the world, would be possible. !!

Comparing Acts and Doctrines of Prayer !We can only appreciate the necessity of the doctrine and fact of the Trinity

when we consider the Biblical teaching in contrast with the doctrines of the various and sundry gods of other religions. Obviously, what prayer means and how men pray depends primarily on what men believe about their gods. But — please mark this — it is not wholly determined by it. If the testimony of Scripture is true, non-Christian men cannot live consistently with their faiths because their nature has been determined by the Triune Creator they reject. Man must act according to what he truly is.

Man is created in the image of the Triune God, Three Eternal Persons united in covenant love and fellowship  . Thus, all men seek communion with God and 1

other men, whether that is consistent with their faith or not. As the saying goes, there are no atheists in the trenches. Similarly, Muslims pray to allah for help, though nothing in a consistent theology of allah would encourage them to imagine he is listening. Pagans pray to their gods for favors, but their gods may or may not hear, and may or may not be able to help. However inadequate their theology of

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! I am not here suggesting that the only union among the Persons is covenantal. They are united by 1

virtue of their mutual indwelling. The Three Persons wholly indwelling one another are the One God. Ontological union comes to necessary expression in covenantal union because the covenant is an aspect of God’s unchanging character.

prayer, when pressed and distressed, atheists, Muslims, and pagans cry out as earnestly as any Christian for divine guidance and salvation.

Of course, for the atheist, prayer, if it is anything other than a momentary lapse into faith, can only be justified as a form of therapy. If he bothers to formulate a doctrine of prayer to explain his occasional outburst to God, the atheist may only be able to say that it makes him feel good, since there is no one listening and no objective change in the world results from praying. But the atheist could say that he is calmed by saying things out loud, as if speaking to an omnipotent other.

For the polytheist, prayer is not a whole lot better. To begin with, his gods are limited. They may or may not be within range when he is in trouble and calls for their aid. Besides, they are busy with their own affairs, fighting with other gods, stealing beautiful women or handsome men from their human mates, conspiring to take power from a rival, or perhaps answering the prayers of someone more important to the god’s personal program than the helpless petitioner. The pagan does have the option of switching gods, if the one he prays to doesn’t respond or hasn’t the power to help. But changing gods can be tedious. There are so many gods to consider and every time you visit a temple and greet a new god, you have to bring offerings — the bigger, the better — if you want an answer to your prayer.

Muslims are required to pray five times a day. These prayers are on a completely different level from that of atheists and pagans because Islam borrows so much from the Bible. The set prayers of Islam include praise to God and confession of faith in allah and his prophet, Mohammed. In this sense, they rise to something like real worship. The main problem with Muslim praying is allah himself/itself. I am not referring now to the fact that he/it does not exist, which is enough of an issue to discourage prayer to him/it. I am speaking of a much larger problem: what if allah did exist in exactly the way that Islam conceives of him/it?

The notion of allah/god required by the Koran's teaching is that of an eternally unrelated being. Before allah created the world, he/it never knew or related to another. As an absolute monad, he/it never communicated with another. From eternity past, allah never praised or received praise from another — nor did he/it desire to offer or receive it. This leads to a profound theological problem, for the kind of personal relationship and care that grounds the Christian and Biblical idea of prayer is utterly foreign to the existence of allah. When Muslims pray, they are like atheists in the sense that they do it in spite of what they believe about allah, not on the basis of their theology of allah.

How very different the Biblical and Trinitarian notion of prayer is! Prayer for the Christian is not primarily coming to God to ask Him for things we want. Prayer is first of all and primarily personal fellowship with God, seeking the kingdom together. For the Christian personal fellowship with God is possible and real because of the kind of God we know and worship. The Father, Son, and Spirit, share an eternal relationship of loving fellowship. In the Bible this is called a covenant. They communicate, mutually glorify one another, give themselves to

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one another, and bless one another from eternity past to eternity future. Moreover, the Three Persons of the Trinity created the world with a purpose and created man to work together with God to accomplish that purpose. It is the existence and nature of the Triune God and His purpose in the world that grounds the Christian doctrine of prayer and the Christian practice of praying.

Deny the Christian doctrine of God, and prayer as an act of addressing a God who hears and cares, has no transcendent ground. At best, we would be addressing a god who might hear if he is not busy, or performing a ritual self-help therapy, or addressing an eternally silent, lonely being, who never relates to another. None of that is prayer as personal fellowship with one who cares. Nor is it seeking the fulfilment of a goal that was determined before the creation of the world. In the atheist, pagan, or Muslim theologies of god and prayer, no sense can be made of the apostle Peter’s words, “casting all your care on Him, for He cares for you” (1 Pet. 5:7). Only the Triune Creator makes sense of prayer and praying. Only creation in the image of the Triune God can explain the universality of prayer, and the conviction shared by people of every faith that God is listening. Somehow all men know He is there and He is not deaf. !!

Christian Prayer !What makes Christian prayer different? It is not that Christians have some

special ritual form — though we do have the perfect form taught by Christ and multiple forms taught by Scripture and tradition — nor is it necessarily that they are better than other people. What makes Christian prayer different from all other sorts of prayer is the Christian God. The Triune God of the Bible is a God in whom fellowship and communication are essential to His being because He is Three Persons who perfectly and wholly indwell one another. The communion of the mutually indwelling Persons includes what we should call worship and prayer, for the Father, Son, and Spirit glorify one another and share the kind of fellowship we have in prayer. Prayer is different in that when a man prays, certain aspects of his prayer reflect the infinite gap that separates God f rom the creature , for man depends on his Creator and Lord for his very life — “Give us this day our daily bread.” At the same time, however, his prayer also manifests his profound likeness to Triune God. The distinction between which aspects are creaturely and which reveal Trinitarian fellowship is not always easy to draw. In any case, it is the nature of the Christian God that makes Christian prayer what it is and distinguishes it from the prayer of atheists, pagans, heretics, and Muslims. !Imitating God

The first thing, therefore, that must be said about Christian prayer — something that distinguishes Christian from all non-Christian praying — is that when we pray we are imitating God. We are acting out in our analogous and creaturely way what Father, Son, and Spirit do from eternity — creatures doing

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what God has always done. That may sound odd and we may ask, what is “prayer” among the Persons of the Trinity? The answer is simple — prayer among the Persons of the Trinity can be described in the same terms that our prayers to God can be: communication, fellowship, mutual self-giving, glorifying and blessing the other, and rejoicing in the presence of the other. These are fundamental elements of prayer, but they are also fundamental elements of the covenant love among the Persons of the Trinity that we find in the pages of Scripture.

Of course, we depend here on the truth that the economic Trinity — the relationship between the Father, Son, and Spirit revealed in creation and redemption — reveals the ontological Trinity — the relationship between Father, Son, and Spirit in eternity. How could it be otherwise, unless we are to be bereft of any knowledge of God at all? The God we learn of in the Bible is the Creator and Savior. We know Him from the world He has created, the words He has given us in His book, and the things He has done and continues to do in the world. Each of these kinds of revelation manifests God as a God of covenantal love and fellowship.

The incarnation of Christ, of course, brings this to light in the fullest sense. When God the Son is given to the world as the love-gift of the Father, we see and know that God is love (John 3:16-17). It was always true and manifest, but not in such an absolute and stunning manner. The Father gives the Son to the world He loves because He is the kind of God who loves and gives. It is His nature. In the same way, He sends the Spirit to the Church He loves. The Son, like the Father, gives His Spirit in love to His bride. When God loves, He gives. But the essence of what He gives in every gift is Himself. The Father withholds nothing from the Son. The Son and the Spirit devote themselves wholly to the Father. Each gives Himself without reserve to the other. And this Triune God in His magnificent love gives Himself to His people.

When the Son became man and walked among us, He acted like God has always acted. So, He sought the glory of His Father in all that He did, even though it continually brought Him into conflict with sinful men. It was His food to do the will of His Father and to honor Him (John 4:34; 8:29). He blessed the Father and rejoiced to be with Him. The Spirit, who is like the Son, gives glory to the Son and not Himself (John 16:13-14). He will reveal Jesus, so that we can rejoice in knowing Him, too (John 15:26-16:3).

Here is the point: More than anything else, to rightly understand prayer means to know what kind of God created us and what kind of God we pray to. When we see how the Father, Son, and the Spirit reveal themselves wholly to one other, give themselves in love, glorify and bless the other, and rejoice in one another, we understand why men pray and what prayer is supposed to be. All men are His image. When men pray as they ought, they are simply being what God created them to be. They may be imitating Him in part through forms He has given, though not in a merely external or formal manner. Rather, Biblical forms of prayer are given so that men can express their deepest needs in words better than their own. Biblical prayers transform men’s hearts so that become more like Christ, their Savior.

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To say, then, that prayer is imitating God is to say that we communicate with God. We glorify Him and praise Him. Of course, we seek our creaturely needs from Him, too. But that belongs to the larger picture of a fellowship of love between Creator and creature that is modeled on the fellowship enjoyed by Father, Son, and Spirit. !Participating in Trinitarian Love

To conceive of prayer as the imitation of God may seem to be the highest notion of prayer one can attain, but it is not. Prayer in the Bible is more than realizing our true nature and acting like the God in whose image we have been created. Prayer means entering into the fellowship of the Persons of the Godhead. When Christians pray, they not only imitate, they join the fellowship of the Trinity.

That may seem to be saying too much, or to be advocating the sort of mysticism we find when Muslim and Hindu mystics seek union with their gods. For them, prayer may lead to an ecstatic sense of oneness with the god, in which the individual himself disappears. His consciousness becomes one with the god so that the man who prays and meditates on the god is wholly absorbed into the divine. In such a state, language, purpose, meaning, anything of, in, or for this world is left behind. Whether from love of the divine or in order to realize his true nature, the mystic rises above the world and history to find a oneness with his god that cannot be expressed in words.  2

Though there have been and still are Christian mystics, to the degree that they remain Christian, their view of prayer and what it means to experience oneness with God must be wholly different from the Muslim or Hindu versions.  3In the Bible, God and man are united first of all in Christ, in the hypostatic union of His two natures. But there is no amalgamation or mixture of the two natures. Christ is not a hybrid of Creator and creature. The absolute distinction between God the Creator and His creation is never violated in Scripture. In the same way, Christians becoming one with God in prayer does not imply an ontological union of human and divine. In the Bible, the Christian union with God is covenantal.

In the New Covenant, God and His people are united because of the indwelling Holy Spirit. Because the Spirit is in each Christian, each Christian is also in Christ and all Christians are untied to one another in the Church, the body of Christ. There is one body and one temple of the Holy Spirit. But also, since each individual Christian is a temple of the Spirit, there are many temples. Our relationship to God as individuals is covenantal and the Church as a whole is a covenantal one. I n o t h e r w o r d s , s ince God is a Trinity of Persons who share a covenantal oneness and fellowship of love for eternity, He brings His people

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! R. C. Zaehner, Hindu and Muslim Mysticism (Rockport, MA: Oneworld Publications, 1994).2

! We could add comments on Buddhism also. For a Buddhist perspective on the Christian mystic 3

Meister Eckhart, see Daisetsu Suzuki, Mysticism: Christian and Buddhist (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1970). Eckhart is complex enough that I will not venture my own opinion on what he may have really believed or meant to express.

together in covenant with Himself and with one another to share that love. This has profound implications for the Christian doctrine of prayer. !Trinitarian Community

Consider, first, what it means that Christians are constituted a new community in God. This is utterly unique to Christian faith since no other religion or philosophy has a notion of God as Three in One. However they conceive of “the people of God,” they lack the idea of the equal realization of true oneness and true individuality. In the Trinity, each Person is wholly Himself, an absolutely and perfectly unique person; at the same time, the Three are wholly and absolutely One. The Church, as the created expression of the Triune God, is one in Christ, but in such a way that each individual member of the church is being led by the Spirit to realize his unique personhood. The Church as the body of Christ and temple of the Spirit is the new covenant people of God and in God. This is foundational for our understanding of prayer.

It comes to concrete expression in the prayer our Lord taught His disciples. Jesus taught them to address God as “our Father” (Mat. 6:9). Of course, at the time He first taught it, the fullness of what He intended was not yet revealed. The disciples did not yet understand that they would be part of the Church, the Bride and Body of Christ. Not until the coming of the Spirit at Pentecost did the people of God begin to experience the unity of life and fellowship that the Church as the Body of Christ has been granted.

This does not mean there was no unity of life before Pentecost. In the old covenant, the covenant community was united by circumcision, the priestly and sacrificial system, and the celebration of the Sabbath and feasts of Israel. The Holy Spirit was certainly at work in God’s people and was then, as now, the source of peace and blessing.

But with the coming of the new covenant, the Holy Spirit is present in a new way, for the Spirit of God is the quintessential gift of the new covenant (Mat. 3:11; Mar. 1:8; Luk. 3:16; John 1:33; Acts 1:4-5, 8). To have the Spirit is to be in the covenant. Just as the Spirit is in us, we are also in Christ. There is a mutual indwelling. Furthermore since all Christians are indwelt by the same Spirit, we are also covenantally united to one another in Christ by the Spirit. The Church is a single body, a single people, united in the new covenant by the grace of God.

Naturally, the new covenant doctrine of prayer is also distinct. In the old covenant, the high priest had to be properly anointed and clothed before he could be considered holy and enter the most holy place. Similarly, in the new covenant, we have to be properly anointed and clothed to come into His presence: baptism washes us; Christ is our clothing. We are saints, holy ones, through our baptism into Christ (Rom. 6:1 ff.). As holy ones, new covenant priests, we have access into the true Holy Place in heaven, there to present our petitions to God (Heb. 10:19-22).

When we come before God, we come as members of a body that is one in Christ. Whether we are conscious of it or not, in some sense and, no doubt, often in ways we

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cannot imagine, our prayers are always with other Christians and for other Christians because we are one body with them. What we seek for ourselves even in our most self-concerned praying cannot be wholly unrelated to the larger body of which we are members. When we are blessed, the whole body is benefited. When we suffer, the whole body suffers. Seeking our own blessing in prayer, therefore, is not ne c e s s ar i l y sinfully selfish, unless we are seeking the satisfaction of our own lusts (cf. Jam. 4:3).

To state it in the broadest terms, when new covenant priests enter the holy place, they are calling on God to bless His people according to His covenant promise and to curse the wicked who oppose His kingdom. All of our petitions fit into this general framework, though asking for blessing is more common than cursing. This means that Christian prayer is always offered as a covenantal act by one who has sanctuary access as a member of the holy covenant body.

How does this aspect of prayer express our participation in the fellowship of the Trinity? First, because prayer is a communal act in the covenant, it expresses the oneness of the people of God with one another in Christ and their oneness with God, for it is only because we are one in God that we can be one with one another. Second, because prayer is a covenantal act of seeking the blessing of God on His people, we are participating with God in seeking for ourselves and His Church what He Himself desires and delights to give. Each of the topics below must be understood in the light of the fact that prayer is the work of this covenant community, the new covenant priesthood, the one and many of the people of God, made holy through union with Christ and the indwelling of His Spirit. !Trinitarian Formula

When I say that Christian prayer is not only imitation of God but actually entering into the Trinitarian fellowship of love, I am only saying in different words what Christ taught us. A summary expression of our Lord’s teaching on the new covenant privilege of prayer is that we are to pray to the Father, in the name of the Son, and in the power of the Spirit. This simple formula is far more profound that we recognize, for in this Trinitarian structure of Christian prayer we see the nature of prayer as participation in the fellowship of the Trinitarian persons. The words “in the name of the Son” include the idea that we are Christ’s representatives and that our prayers, therefore, are accounted as if they were His. To pray in the power of the Holy Spirit means that the Spirit leads our prayers so that our words are sanctified and blessed by the Spirit. In a sense, they are the words of the Spirit.

When Jesus taught His disciples to pray in His name, He made it clear that it meant stamping His approval to their requests. !

Whatever you ask in My name, that will I do, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask Me anything in My name, I will do it. (John 14:13-14; cf. 15:16; 16:23-24, 26-27) !

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In addition, Jesus emphasized that prayer in His name means direct access to the Father. !

In that day you will ask in My name, and I do not say to you that I will request of the Father on your behalf; for the Father Himself loves you, because you have loved Me and have believed that I came forth from the Father. (John 16:26-27) !

When we approach the Father in the name of the Son, we are not merely going through the Son, but standing before the Father as His beloved sons in Christ, with full rights to make direct request. This transcends by far the privilege of the old covenant priesthood.

As profound as this is, prayer in the name of Christ means much more. First, to act in the name of another is to imitate God, for we see Father, Son, and Spirit representing one another, acting in the other’s name. Jesus says that the Father will send the Spirit in His name (John 14:6), that the Father keeps believers in His name (John 17:11), that Jesus kept believers in the Father’s name (John 17:12) and that Jesus came to this world and did His works in the Father’s name (John 5:43; 10:25). The Son represents the Father because He is the exact image of the Father (Heb. 1:3) who knows the mind of God because He is perfectly one with the Father. The Spirit represents the Son because He is the comforter who is exactly like the Son, of the same nature with Him (John 14:16, 26; 15:26; 16:7).

Thus, when we pray in the name of the Son, we are imitating the intratrinitarian fellowship of Father, Son, and Spirit, but not from the outside. We enter into that fellowship because we stand before the Father with His Son’s name. Just as Jesus’ use of the Father’s name is grounded in the oneness of Father and Son, our use of Christ’s name is grounded in our covenantal oneness with God. Thus, praying in Jesus’ name is joining the fellowship of the Trinity.

Add to this that our prayers are in the power of the Spirit (cf. Eph 6:18; Phil 3:3; Jude 20). Once again the formula points to Christ Himself, who rejoiced in the Holy Spirit and prayed when the seventy returned from their mission (Luk. 10:21-22). Jesus did all His works in the Spirit and we are called to do the same. Prayer in the Spirit means praying with the aid and empowerment of the Spirit who dwells in us and who is working in us to make us like Christ.

To summarize, we pray to the Father with a fullness of access never known in the old covenant, as the covenant representatives of the Son, in the power that only the Spirit can provide. Our prayers are accepted into the covenantal fellowship and love of the Triune Persons because the Father loves us and has given us the name of His Son and the blessing of His Spirit. Praying in the name of the Son and the power of the Spirit, then, means praying in and with God. The Spirit works in us so that we think like our Savior and seek what He seeks. The name of the Son signed to our prayers brings our prayers to the Father as the Son’s own petitions. Since the Spirit sanctifies them, they are His prayers, too. !

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Trinitarian Forms Even though the Spirit of God works in our hearts so that we can know the

mind of Christ (1 Cor. 2:16) and groans for us when we cannot express ourselves in prayer (Rom. 8:26-27), we still struggle to pray as we ought. That is why Jesus taught His disciples to pray. It is also the reason God gave us a whole book of prayers. In fact, the prayer book is the longest single book in the Bible. Praying does not come easy, so God provided us with forms that we can and should use for our own praying. As we pray the words of the Psalms, the church’s prayer book, and recite the Lord’s Prayer, we ourselves are transformed. We learn to pray as we ought to pray.

The Psalms of David are the prayers of the man who was, more than any other man of the old covenant era, the man after God’s own heart. They were recorded for us so that we could use them as our own prayers. But, of course, these prayers are much more than that. For the prayers of David are the prayers of David’s great Son, the Messiah. It is only when we remember that Jesus Himself prayed the prayers in the book of Psalms that we can read the Psalms as we should and use these prayers as Christian prayers.

The implications of this are broader than we might first think. To begin with, if Jesus prayed these prayers, then it is clear that He did not first identify with sinners at His baptism. Jesus’ sympathy with His sinful people occupied far more of His life than the moments of His baptism and the hours on the cross. From the time of His childhood, he joined the annual pilgrimages to Jerusalem to celebrate God’s saving grace to His wayward people Israel. Weekly worship in the synagogue in Nazareth no doubt included singing the Psalms. Since praying the Psalms was part of the daily life of a godly Jew and Jesus lived that life to the full, confessing sin and asking for forgiveness were an essential part of Jesus’ life from childhood. Whether or not He participated in the weekly fasts of the Pharisees, which included the praying of the penitential Psalms, He knew these Psalms also and repeated the words of David, not as Himself a sinner, but as one who identified with the lot of sinful men and understood them in loving sympathy. After all, since it was His Spirit who inspired David’s prayers, He could pray them without reserve, even though He had no sin nature and no personal sins to repent of.

For Christians, the prayers of David are the prayers of Jesus. When we repeat these words, we are praying as our Lord Himself prayed in the words the Spirit of God inspired. Again, then, we are entering into the fellowship of the Father, Son, and Spirit. David never knew the full meaning of his own poetry. He wrote prayers by the inspiration of the Spirit, but without knowing that his words would someday be the words of God incarnate. After Jesus prays these prayers, their meaning has been transformed. When we pray them as God’s new covenant people, we pray them as those who enter into the fellowship of the Trinity. The Psalms of David give us the words of God that we need to address our Father. They teach us to pray as Jesus did.

Of course, our Lord Himself instructed us to pray and left us a form for daily prayer. When we pray the Lord’s prayer each day, which is clearly what

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Jesus intended, we are again using words given by the Son and inspired by the Spirit to address the Father. We are entering into the fellowship of the Trinity. How we are fellowshipping with God in the Lord’s prayer will be more evident in our next section. !Trinitarian Purpose

When Jesus healed a man on the Sabbath, the Jews were offended at Him. His explanation offended them even more: “But He answered them, ‘My Father is working until now, and I Myself am working’” (John 5:17). Jesus was not speaking merely of God’s work since creation. He was saying that God is a God who works eternally. It is essential to His nature. That is why He is a God who could and would create; work is not contrary to who He always has been. As an eternal worker, God always works with a purpose, for work without a goal or purpose is action for actions sake, not work. Thus, when God created the world He created it with a purpose and gave a commission to mankind (Gen. 1:26-28). That purpose is reflected in the prayer that we call the Lord’s Prayer.

Jesus, in other words, taught His disciples to pray so that His church would be daily seeking the fulfilment of God’s purpose in creation. That is one reason why the Lord’s prayer is not only the ideal prayer for us to repeat, but a paradigm that we are to keep in mind in all our praying. When we consider the Lord’s Prayer as the true model of Christian prayer, we discover basic truths that draw attention to the vast differences between Christian prayer and all other sorts of prayer.

What stands out in particular is that Jesus’ prayer teaches us that all our praying should be kingdom oriented. The first three petitions in the Lord’s prayer – hallowed be Thy name, Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven – all express what it means for the kingdom of God to be realized in history. The three petitions are one. Each petition only has meaning in the light of the other two and all three together express the Christian vision of the aim and meaning of history.

That, of course, brings us back to the creation. For what purpose did God create the world? We are told in Genesis He created the world by His word and gave to Adam and Eve, the creatures in His own image and likeness, a special command: “So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. Then God blessed them, and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.’” (Gen. 1:27-28). This is often called the dominion mandate, but it could as easily be called the kingdom mandate. Adam and Eve, with their descendants after them, were created and called to be kingdom builders.

Before the fall, there would be no question about the fact that man should work to honor the Father, nor would there be any thought of doing other than God’s own perfect will. The fall, however, changed things radically. From the fall onward, man seeks his own will. Even so, man is still God’s image and he has, therefore,

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what might be called a “kingdom nature.” As the image of the heavenly king, he naturally seeks dominion and rule, though after the fall, God’s honor and God’s will are not part of what it means when sinful men seek “the kingdom.” The tower of Babel shows that fallen man was motivated by a perverted form of the kingdom impulse. Now, it is his own kingdom he seeks.

Though Adam sinned and ruined his posterity, bringing sin and death into the world, Christ restored us to God. In the last Adam, we have been re-created by grace. The original kingdom purpose is ours in Christ. In the Lord’s Prayer, the honor and will of the Father are associated clearly with the kingdom. The first three petitions mutually define one another and express the very purpose of God in creating man as His image. When we pray the Lord’s Prayer, we are seeking to become what God made us to be, as we seek the fulfilment of man’s historical destiny in Christ. This is reflected again when Christ commissioned His church to make all the nations of the world to become His disciples (Mat. 28:18-20). He is seated at the right hand of God in heaven interceding for us until the job is done (Heb. 7:25; 8:1-2; 1 Cor. 15:25). When we pray the Lord’s Prayer, therefore, we are praying to the Father in the words inspired by the Spirit and taught by the Son. We are entering into the fellowship of the Trinity and working with God as co-laborers in the accomplishment of His glorious plan in history.

This broad kingdom context — the eschatological goal of the establishment of Christ’s reign by the power of the Spirit to the glory of the Father — defines all Christian petition. Considering the Lord’s prayer makes this clear, since the second set of three petitions — for daily bread, forgiveness of sin, and salvation from Satan — are clearly subordinate to and aimed at the kingdom. It is in order to seek God’s kingdom that we need daily bread so that we have strength to serve Him. It is because we are sinners seeking the kingdom that we need to pray for forgiveness daily. And it is because victory against Satan lies at the very heart of the establishment of the kingdom that we seek protection from temptation.

When we pray for daily bread or other daily needs, however small and seemingly unimportant (O Lord, please help me find my glasses!), we are seeking help to bring in the kingdom. Or, at least we should be. We may fail (O Lord, won’t you give me a Mercedes Benz), but in such cases our loving Father simply answers, No. Children, immature Christians, old foolish Christians, and weak Christians of every sort pray and ask for things that may be so utterly selfish they appear downright silly. But God hears us. On our part, we have to be careful not to offer prayers that dishonor our Savior, since we pray in His name. Nevertheless, Paul encourages us to pray without reservation when he writes, “Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God” (Phil. 4:6). All of our prayers, whether we realize it or not, whether we intend it or not, are tied to God’s kingdom purpose.

There is something more in this. For God’s will to be done on earth as it is in heaven – which is indeed the fullest meaning of the kingdom – means that God’s people will have perfect fellowship with God and with one another. For God’s name

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to be honored and sanctified fulfills the very purpose of man’s creation in His image because it means that man enters into the fellowship of the Trinity. How is that? Father, Son, and Spirit love and honor one another from eternity. If we honor the Father in the name of the Son and by the power of the Spirit, we have entered into the Trinitarian fellowship of love. Like the Son, after whose image we have been recreated, and like the Spirit, who indwells us, we are seeking the honor of the Father.

This is what distinguishes Christian petitions from non-Christian petitions. It is not just that our petitions should not be selfish, though that is also true. The point is that our petitions, even when not properly understood and offered, bring us into the fellowship of the Godhead. This wonderful reality does not depend on us, our efforts, or even our sincerity in praying. It depends on who we are in Christ and what we are doing when we call upon Him.

To understand this, we must always keep in mind the larger picture. The Father created the world as the kingdom gift for His Son. The Son and the Spirit together glorify the world that the Father gave in order to return the gift to the Father. The eternal love of the Persons for one another is expressed in their mutual self-giving. In the economy of creation and salvation, the intratrinitarian love is expressed in the gift of the created and saved world. The Father gives the elect to the Son, who saves and sanctifies them with the Spirit. Then, the Son presents to the Father His unblemished Spirit-filled bride.

In the same way, Christian petition is seeking God’s gracious help so that we can work with others in Christ to present the kingdom to the Father. Since the church is Christ’s body, through which He works to glorify the Father, every petition that we rightly offer to God has the kingdom in view, even when we don’t. !Trinitarian Oneness

Finally, we have to be very clear about the ultimate meaning of the kingdom. The kingdom goal itself is not merely the realization of man’s dominion. The book of Revelation shows us the vision of the heavenly city in which God and man are one, united in their eternal dwelling. To seek the kingdom is to seek union with God. For non-Christians and heretical Christians, union with God usually means some sort of a quasi ontological oneness. But in the Bible, man cannot be ontologically united to God.

The kind of union that the Bible speaks of can be best understood by considering another Lord’s Prayer, John 17.  Our Lord Christ prayed to the Father 4

that all Christians would be one in the Father (vs. 20-23). !I do not pray for these alone, but also for those who will believe in Me through their word; that they all may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You; that they also may be one in Us, that the world may believe that You sent Me. And the glory which You gave Me I have given them,

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! See Ralph A. Smith, “The Trinitarian Covenant in John 17” http://www.berith.org/pdf/4

TrinCovJohn17.pdf .

that they may be one just as We are one: I in them, and You in Me; that they may be made perfect in one, and that the world may know that You have sent Me, and have loved them as You have loved Me. !

Two things are worthy of note for my purposes. First, Christ is praying that the Church will become unified as Father and Son are unified. This cannot be speaking of the essential oneness of the Trinity, though, of course, the Triune Persons are ontologically one. For we can never become ontologically one with each other or with God in the way that the Father and the Son are ontologically one. Thus, Jesus is speaking, I believe, of the covenantal unity of Father and Son, a covenantal fellowship of love into which the Spirit brings the Bride of Christ. Second, the unity of the church is a unity in God. We can only be one with one another through our covenantal union with God. As we draw near to God in worship and prayer and become more and more united to Him in spirit, we also become more and more one with one another.

The union that Jesus here prays for is not realized fully in this world, even though we continually move toward it, however slowly. It is in the resurrection, when we have arrived at the everlasting city that we find full union between God and man, first, and among men, second. The heavenly Jerusalem centers in the Lamb whom we will serve forever. John tells us that we will see His face (Rev. 22:4).

Union with God in the fullness of covenantal love is pictured for us in the book of Revelation in John’s vision of the New Jerusalem. This is the kingdom of God — the realization of the dominion mandate of Genesis 1:26-28. The kingdom of God that the human race was originally called to build presupposed the union of God and man in the Garden but aimed for a higher and greater union of God and man in Christ, through the marriage of Christ to His bride. When we pray for the kingdom, therefore, we are seeking uninterrupted, unimpeded, everlasting fellowship between God and man, between Father, Son, and Spirit and the Bride of Christ.

David expressed this ultimate aim of the kingdom in language that we ought to borrow. !

O God, You are my God; Early will I seek You;

My soul thirsts for You; My flesh longs for You In a dry and thirsty land

Where there is no water. So I have looked for You in the sanctuary,

To see Your power and Your glory. Because Your lovingkindness is better than life,

My lips shall praise You. Thus I will bless You while I live;

I will lift up my hands in Your name.

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My soul shall be satisfied as with marrow and fatness, And my mouth shall praise You with joyful lips.

When I remember You on my bed, I meditate on You in the night watches.

(Psa. 63:1-6) !!Conclusion !

No other religion has a doctrine or a theology of prayer that can even begin to compare to the wonder of the Christian doctrine because no other religion has a conception of God that can begin to compare to the beauty and glory of the Triune God of Holy Scripture. All men, whatever their religion or philosophy, unconsciously confess the truth of the Trinity when they desire fellowship with the infinite, when they seek judgment from an omnipotent ruler that is just and good, when they believe that there is a God who hears them. Though Muslims do not realize it, a mythical monad like allah could not be interested in their prayers, for he/it is the eternally lonely one who has no notion whatsoever of relationship, fellowship, love, caring and sacrificing for another. Pagans usually do not take into account the fact that the gods from whom they seek help are not sovereign. They have no control over the events of the world and no knowledge of what is to come. Praying to them is, at best, like seeking advice from one’s stock broker though, of course, the stock broker has the advantage that he actually exists.  5

By contrast to Muslims and pagans, Christian prayer means joining an eternal fellowship of love. The Father, Son, and Spirit each deny themselves and glorify the other. They work together from eternity and in time create the world as a project that they share with man, the image of the Triune God. Christian prayer is offered in the context of that grand historical plan as petition from those who are co-workers with God in building His kingdom. We have the mind of Christ because of the Spirit who indwells us, and therefore we can sign our petitions with Jesus’ name. We pray as Jesus taught us, seeking the Father’s glory in all things. Through our daily work in the world, family life, evangelism, Bible teaching, and worship, we labor so that His will shall be done on earth as in heaven. But it is our prayers in Jesus’ name that make our work effective.

Creation and redemption are united in the covenant of love among Father, Son, and Spirit. The beginning of the world and the end of the world are part of a single plan, in which the Father gives the world to the Son and the Son responds by redeeming the fallen world and glorifying it to return it to the Father. The Spirit is central to both the work of the Father and the Son, for He worked with the Father in the beginning to give the world to the Son (Gen. 1:2) and works now to bring God’s elect to Him. Again, in the beginning, the Spirit worked with the Son to

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! In the ancient world, the so-called gods may often have been territorial demons. In that case, their 5

existence was real, but their power and wisdom were severely limited and perverted. With the coming of Christ and the defeat of the powers of this world, these territorial demons have been dethroned.

bring glory to the creation and He works now to sanctify the elect. The Bride, indwelt by the Spirit, labors in the name of the Son to bring the world to the Father, to glorify Him who loved her and sent His Son to redeem her.

This covenantal fellowship of love among the three eternal Persons and between God and the Church is the context of prayer. This includes the truth that Christian prayer is what it is because of its kingdom purpose, a purpose in which God rejoices to work with man. Our historical task is a labor of love, accomplished by God’s answer to our prayers. Our prayers are fellowship with God, relishing the God who not only works and gives man work, but who is also the God of rest, peace, and joy, who invites us to sit with Him and feast. And when all is accomplished, we rest with Him in the glory of the New Jerusalem, one Church one with God and in God: the perfect union of the Bride with Christ and each individual person of the new humanity with one another and with the Triune God.

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