Matthew 6:10 – “Your kingdom come” — the kingdom of the Father, not the kingdom of Jesus

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

Matthew 6:10

Context

The Lord’s Prayer stands at the center of Matthew 6, embedded in a series of instructions on right religious living: on almsgiving (vv. 2-4), on prayer (vv. 5-15) and on fasting (vv. 16-18). In each of these sections Jesus criticizes a practice aimed at outward effect — the desire to be seen by others — and sets against it an attitude oriented toward God. The Lord’s Prayer (vv. 9-13) is therefore not a list of pious wishes but a theologically structured prayer that shapes a particular relationship to God and a particular perception of the world.

The internal structure of the Lord’s Prayer is illuminating: the first three petitions are directed at God — his name, his kingdom, his will. Only after these three God-oriented petitions do three human petitions follow: bread, forgiveness, deliverance from temptation and rescue from evil. Sozzini himself notes this division explicitly: “that the first three are chiefly and principally referred to God himself, that is, to the magnification of his glory, honor and praise; whereas the other three latter ones are referred to us, that is, to our benefit, salvation and security” (Exposition of the Sermon on the Mount, on Mt 6:9).

The address of the prayer is also important: “Our Father in heaven” (v. 9). Jesus prays to the Father — not to himself, not to a Trinitarian unity, but to him whom he calls “my Father” (Mt 11:27) and to whom he “ascends” (Jn 20:17: “to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God”). The prayer is bipolar: praying Jesus (and the praying community) on one side — the Father in heaven on the other. The one who prays is not of one substance with the one to whom he prays.

Sozzini also notes why under the gospel God is so emphatically called upon as Father: “because therein it is most clearly set forth that he wills to make us immortal: for in our immortality, as we have taught elsewhere before, our divine sonship is most highly contained” (Exposition of the Sermon on the Mount, on Mt 6:9). The address “Our Father” is therefore not a merely emotional image but a precise salvation-historical statement: God reveals himself as the one who makes believers his children and heirs of immortality.

The kingdom whose coming Jesus teaches the community to pray for is therefore not a new concept foreign to the preceding history. It is the consummation of what the prophets promised (Isa 52:7; Zech 14:9; Dan 2:44) and what John the Baptist and Jesus himself proclaimed as near (Mt 3:2; 4:17; Mk 1:15). The petition “Your kingdom come” is at once remembrance, confession, and eschatological prospect.

Socinian core thesis

The possessive pronoun “your” in “Your kingdom come” is the decisive theological marker. It refers to the Father, to whom Jesus is praying. The kingdom belongs to the Father — not to Jesus, not to the church, not to humanity. Read Socinianly, this is a fundamental statement: Jesus does not advocate for his own kingdom but proclaims and inaugurates the kingdom of the Father. He is the authorized herald of the kingdom, not its origin and owner. The order of mission is unambiguous: God is the Lord, Jesus is his envoy.

This observation is not trivial. In Trinitarian theology, Jesus’s praying is explained by the two-natures doctrine: Jesus prays in his human nature, not in his divine nature. From a Socinian standpoint, this explanation is a later construction that the text itself does not offer and does not require. What the text directly shows is: a human being prays to the Father and asks for the Father’s kingdom. This is mission Christology pure and simple — and it is exactly the picture that runs through the whole Gospel of Matthew: Jesus as the one sent by the Father (Mt 10:40; 15:24; 21:33-43), who speaks and acts in the Father’s name, and who at the end gives account to the Father.

At the same time Sozzini insists that the petition is not merely a passive expectation of a heavenly act, but draws in the one who prays. On the third petition (“Your will be done”), Sozzini recognizes that “something is asked of God for which nevertheless our doing is required,” and concludes from this retroactively also for the second petition: the kingdom does not come without people receiving it in faith and living God’s will. In this way Sozzini preserves the biblical double aspect: divine sovereignty and human cooperation — without one abolishing the other.

The parallel placement of “Your kingdom come” and “Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” is exegetically fundamental. Both sentences have the same grammatical form (third-person aorist imperative), the same address (“your” — the Father), and the same eschatological horizon. Kingdom and will are inseparable — one cannot pray for the kingdom of God while remaining uninterested in God’s will. The kingdom of God is the reality in which God’s will holds.

Read Socinianly, Mt 6:10 is therefore a key verse against every self-exaltation of the church or any vicar of God on earth. The kingdom belongs to the Father. It is prayed for, not made. The one who prays it places himself under its dominion — he does not seize it as plunder.

Exegesis: key terms and word field

Five Greek key terms and phrases carry the sense of Mt 6:10. Their philologically sound interpretation decides whether the verse is read as the Son’s kingdom-of-God petition to the Father, or as a disguised self-glorification of Jesus:

elthéto hê basileía sou — “Your kingdom come”

The verb elthéto is a third-person singular aorist imperative of erchomai (to come). In Greek the aorist imperative differs from the present imperative in the kind of action: while the present imperative describes an ongoing, repeated action, the aorist imperative denotes a one-time, holistic, decisive action. “Your kingdom come” is therefore not a request for gradual growth — it is the request for the eschatologically consummating coming of God’s dominion.

The noun basileia (“kingdom, dominion, kingship”) in New Testament Greek denotes primarily the act of ruling, not a geographical territory. “Basileia tou theou” is the act of God’s ruling — the dominion he exercises. When this ruling becomes real, when God’s will prevails in the world, then the kingdom is there.

The possessive pronoun sou (“your”) is, in its genitival reference to “Our Father, who is in heaven” (v. 9), unambiguous. It is the kingdom of the addressed Father — the same kingdom that Jesus proclaims as “near” in his public ministry (Mt 4:17), and the same kingdom that at the end Christ “hands over to God the Father” (1 Cor 15:24).

genêthêto to thelêmá sou — “Your will be done”

Genêthêto is likewise an aorist imperative, third person singular, here from the verb gínomai (“to become, to happen”). The construction is the same as with elthéto in v. 10a. Both petitions are grammatically and substantively parallel; they form a coherent double statement.

Thélêma means “will,” “wish,” “purpose.” In New Testament usage the will of God is not an abstract decree but the concretely revealed will for salvation and life (cf. Rom 12:2; Eph 5:17). In Socinian terms this corresponds to the concept of the revelation of the divine will, which Sozzini explicitly takes up in his exposition of the second petition.

Sozzini also maintains: this petition demands our cooperation. “It cannot be denied that something is asked of God for which nevertheless our doing is required. For without doubt it is asked of God here that, just as those heavenly inhabitants and dwellers obey him in all things, so likewise those who inhabit and live on earth shall similarly obey him” (Exposition of the Sermon on the Mount, on Mt 6:10b). The petition is therefore not passive; it calls the one who prays into active obedience.

hôs en ouranôi, kaí epí tês gês — “as in heaven, so on earth”

The comparison gives the prayer a clear direction. Heaven counts here as the realm in which God’s will holds completely, self-evidently and without resistance. The angels and heavenly hosts serve God perfectly (Ps 103:20-21). Heaven is the pattern — the earth is to correspond to this pattern. This is no escape from the world into the beyond, but exactly the opposite: the call to bring the heavenly quality of obedience into earthly reality.

On the phrase “as in heaven, so on earth” Sozzini notes a linguistic precision: “the little word and after the preceding word as has the same force as if it had been said: so let it be done on earth in the manner in which it is done in heaven” (Exposition of the Sermon on the Mount, on Mt 6:10c). The phrase is therefore a comparative clause with a modal point: the manner of the heavenly obedience is the model.

Read Socinianly, this earthly horizon is of central importance. The kingdom of God is not an exclusively heavenly reality awaiting human beings after death. It is an earthly reality which is already real now wherever God’s will is lived — in justice, mercy, truthfulness and peace.

Páter hêmôn ho en toîs ouranoîs — “Our Father in heaven”

The address of the Lord’s Prayer is not arbitrary. It defines to whom the prayer is directed: to the one God, here expressly called Father. The addition “who is in heaven” distinguishes him from all earthly fathers and ties in with the Old Testament throne-of-the-king theology (Ps 11:4; Ps 103:19; Isa 66:1).

Sozzini is clear on this point: “It is said that God is in heaven ... because in heaven his glory, majesty and dominion shine forth and appear without any comparison more than on earth” (Exposition of the Sermon on the Mount, on Mt 6:9). Heaven is not a mere location, but the sphere of the unclouded divine dominion — that very sphere whose quality is to be transferred to the earth in the third petition.

Since Jesus prays to this Father, the Father-Son relationship in the Lord’s Prayer is constitutively asymmetrical: the one is the praying one, the other the prayed-to; the one asks, the other grants. This asymmetry cannot be dissolved by a later two-natures Christology, but is given by the text itself.

hagiasthêto to ónoma sou — the first petition as frame

The first petition “Hallowed be your name” (v. 9c) is closely connected with the second and third petitions. Sozzini deliberately interprets the passive hagiasthêto not as a mere “to be venerated as holy” in an inner sense, but as “to be invested with honor and glory” through concrete words, writings and visible praise.

This is exegetically important: the three petitions to God move from the outer glorification of the name (v. 9c) through the inner acknowledgment of the divine dominion (v. 10a) to the concrete carrying-out of the divine will on earth (v. 10b-c). It is a movement from outside to inside and back out into the world — not a mere stacking of pious phrases.

Sozzini himself formulates the logic this way: “that the first refers to words and writings and other outwardly similar things by which God’s name is expressly honored and praised. The second refers to our inner disposition. ... The third refers to the deeds that proceed from us, so that by our deeds we render to God himself that obedience which he demands” (Exposition of the Sermon on the Mount, on Mt 6:9-10).

Comparison of interpretations

In reference to Fausto Sozzini

Fausto Sozzini commented extensively on the two petitions of this verse in his Exposition of the Sermon on the Mount (Lat. Explicatio primae partis primi capitis primae Christi concionis...). His central result: the “kingdom of God” for whose coming we pray here has a double meaning — outer revelation of the divine will and inner reigning of God in hearts. Both aspects interlock and are present simultaneously in the petition. The Racovian Catechism of 1605 summarizes the teaching of the Polish Brethren in precise question-and-answer form and takes up the same reading.

The more common meaning of the name ‘kingdom of God’, especially as used in the way we have said, seems to be that it denotes the revelation of the divine will and its acceptance or acknowledgement, which is also called ‘kingdom’ in exactly the same sense as that kingdom of heaven. ... But from this very mode of God’s ruling there follows what we chiefly understand in this place, namely that God reigns in our hearts themselves; and if this does not follow, it cannot properly be said that God reigns.

Fausto Sozzini, Exposition of the Sermon on the Mount (Explicatio primae Christi concionis), on Matthew 6:10 — second petition “Your kingdom come”

Sozzini’s definition fits the verse Mt 6:10 precisely. The petition “Your kingdom come” does not mean a political-territorial dominion that will arrive sometime later, but the double process of God’s self-revelation and its acceptance within the human being. This is exegetically fruitful: both aspects are held together in the petition, and neither may be cut away.

In the immediately following exposition of the third petition Sozzini grounds this view on the plain wording. He explicitly argues that the kingdom-petition does not exclude but presupposes our active participation:

“Since therefore in this petition it is manifest that something is asked for us and prayed of God in which our doing is absolutely required, it seems that we must conclude that in the two preceding petitions too there is something contained which cannot stand without us, and that therefore, when in one of them it is asked that God’s kingdom come, this must not simply be understood of the revelation and confirmation of the divine will among human beings, but of its reception, and not only outwardly but also inwardly; indeed chiefly of this inward reception, without which the outward one can neither in any way be sincere nor have the power to bring it about that God truly reigns in us.”

Fausto Sozzini, Exposition of the Sermon on the Mount (Explicatio), on Mt 6:10b — third petition “Your will be done”

In this Sozzini also insists on human freedom: “God, speaking in the ordinary sense, brings with himself no necessity whatever to do his will.” The kingdom-petition therefore does not call human beings into compulsion but into a real turning of life: “we, who meanwhile are free and could also act otherwise, are urged to its accomplishment” (Exposition of the Sermon on the Mount, on Mt 6:10b).

The Racovian Catechism — the official confession of the Polish Brethren, whose theological architect Sozzini himself was — summarizes the petition “Your kingdom come” along the same line, with an almost didactic precision that removes any doubt as to whose kingdom is to come here:

“We effectively ask of God that all human beings acknowledge his dominion and supremacy as that of their Creator and submit themselves to his right and his power.”

Racovian Catechism, On Prayer — Explanation of the second petition of the Lord’s Prayer

And on the third petition the Catechism states, equally concise and unambiguous:

“We effectively ask of God that all people on earth by the things themselves and by their deeds carry out the will of God just as this is done by all the angels in heaven. In all these petitions the gift of the Holy Spirit must rightly be considered as included, since, in order that all this may be done by human beings, above all the help of the Holy Spirit is needed.”

Racovian Catechism, On Prayer — Explanation of the third petition of the Lord’s Prayer

These two answers of the Racovian Catechism mark the Socinian doctrine of the kingdom precisely: it is God whose kingdom comes; it is human beings who do his will; and it is the Holy Spirit whose working makes the human response possible. No trace of an identification of Jesus with the king of the kingdom; but also no reduction of the kingdom to a purely inward mood. Kingdom, will and Spirit interlock — in the line which Sozzini grounded exegetically in his Exposition of the Sermon on the Mount.

Overview of the works of Sozzini

Logical arguments

From Mt 6:10 the following grammatical-philological and theological arguments follow for the Socinian theocentric reading:

1. Argument from the possessive pronoun. The “your” (sou) in v. 10 refers unambiguously to the Father of the address in v. 9 (“Our Father in heaven”). There is in the entire Lord’s Prayer no verse in which Jesus asks for his own kingdom. He prays for the Father’s kingdom — for a dominion that does not belong to him but which he proclaims and inaugurates. In Mt 20:21-23 Jesus says that places at his right and left in his kingdom are not his to grant but the Father’s. In Mt 26:29 he speaks of “the kingdom of my Father.”
2. Argument from the asymmetry of the act of prayer. By its very nature prayer is asymmetrical: the one praying and the one prayed to are not identical. Whoever prays acknowledges another as higher and makes himself dependent on him. When Jesus prays to the Father in Mt 6:9ff., the text itself thereby testifies that Jesus is not identical with the Father. A later two-natures construction (Jesus prays in his human nature) is not required by the text, but is only introduced to save Trinitarian doctrine.
3. Argument from the parallelism of kingdom and will. The direct parallel placement of “Your kingdom come” and “Your will be done” shows: the kingdom of God is the reality in which God’s will holds. One cannot want to pray for God’s kingdom without wanting to do God’s will. This is the logic of Mt 7:21: “The one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven” — only this one enters the kingdom.
4. Argument from the earthly horizon. “On earth as it is in heaven” — the word “earth” (gê) means the physical, social, concrete earth, not an inner landscape of the soul. The prayer does not ask: “Bring us into heaven.” It asks: “Let the quality of heaven become real on earth.” Flight from the world and the theology of consolation contradict the plain wording.
5. Argument from divine initiative. The aorist imperative elthéto and the passive construction “Your will be done” (genêthêto) show: God is the acting subject. Humans pray — God brings the kingdom. This is theologically consistent with Dan 2:44 (“The God of heaven will set up a kingdom” — without human hand) and with 1 Cor 15:24-28 (God completes the kingdom). Lk 12:32 confirms: “Fear not, little flock — it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.”
6. Argument from the eschatological telos. Paul formulates the eschatological goal in 1 Cor 15:24: “Then comes the end, when he delivers the kingdom to God the Father.” Christ hands the kingdom over to the Father — a logically impossible process if the kingdom had been Christ’s own from the beginning. The kingdom-petition “Your kingdom come” fits exactly into this line: the kingdom belongs to the Father, from beginning to end.
7. Argument from the Old Testament background. Zech 14:9 shows the eschatological goal: “And the LORD will be king over all the earth; on that day the LORD will be one and his name one.” The eschatological goal is God’s universal, undivided, all-encompassing dominion. The Lord’s Prayer prays for this goal — and thereby gives the theological ground-structure in which Jesus is to be understood not as a co-equal co-ruler, but as the messenger and opener of this dominion.
8. Argument from cooperation. Sozzini’s observation is exegetically compelling: the third petition demands our doing (“Your will be done” — where the will is carried out by human beings). Since the first three petitions are built in parallel, this applies retroactively also to the kingdom-petition and the name-petition. A purely passive expectation of a “kingdom on the clouds” misses the sense of the verse.

Biblical cross-references

The following passages are essential for the right understanding of Mt 6:10:

Mark 1:15 — the kingdom of God is near

Jesus’s kingdom proclamation presupposes what is petitioned in the Lord’s Prayer: the kingdom of God is not a future cloud-phantom but a reality already breaking in. Mk 1:15 and Mt 6:10 are exegetically parallel: what Jesus in his first public sermon announces as near, he teaches his own to pray for in the Lord’s Prayer. Cf. Mark 1:15.

Luke 17:20-21 — the kingdom of God is in your midst

When asked about the outward appearance of the kingdom, Jesus answers: it does not come in such a way that it can be observed; entos hymôn — in your midst / among you. This statement stands in close relation to the Lord’s Prayer: the kingdom for whose coming we pray is not simply future, but is also already a reality breaking into the midst of the community. Cf. Luke 17:20-21.

Matthew 6:33 — seek first the kingdom of God

A few verses after the Lord’s Prayer Jesus concretizes the ethical claim of the kingdom-petition: seek the kingdom of God first, before all anxious worries about food and clothing. Mt 6:33 unfolds in practice what Mt 6:10 confesses in prayer: God’s kingdom has absolute priority. Cf. Matthew 6:33.

1 Corinthians 15:24-28 — the kingdom is delivered to the Father

Paul formulates the eschatological goal: Christ hands the kingdom over to God the Father, “so that God may be all in all.” This is the concluding confirmation of what the Lord’s Prayer petitions: the kingdom belongs to the Father — from the beginning, through Christ’s mission, to the eschatological consummation. Cf. 1 Corinthians 15:24.

Daniel 2:44 — the God of heaven sets up a kingdom

“In the days of those kings the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that shall never be destroyed.” Here the kingdom is expressly assigned to God the Father — “broken without human hand” (v. 45). This is the same logic as in the aorist imperative of the Lord’s Prayer: the kingdom comes through God’s sovereign act. Cf. Daniel 2:44.

Zechariah 14:9 — the LORD will be king over all the earth

“And the LORD will be king over all the earth; on that day the LORD will be one and his name one.” The eschatological goal is God’s universal, undivided dominion. The Lord’s Prayer prays for precisely this goal: basileía sou — your, the one Father’s, kingdom.

Matthew 7:21 — the one who does the will of the Father

At the end of the Sermon on the Mount Jesus binds together access to the kingdom and the doing of the will: “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.” Mt 7:21 confirms the exegetical parallelism of kingdom and will in the Lord’s Prayer: whoever seeks the one must do the other.

Luke 12:32 — it is the Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom

“Fear not, little flock — for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” Once again the Father is expressly named as the giver of the kingdom. The kingdom is gift, not achievement — petition, not conquest. Mt 6:10 petitions exactly for this gift.

Objections and Socinian responses

Objection 1: “The kingdom of God is purely inward — a matter of the heart”

The inner dimension is real and important — but it does not exhaust the kingdom. “Your will be done on earth” cannot be restricted to a transformation of the heart, if “earth” (gê) means the physical, social world. The prophetic tradition on which Jesus builds always also understands God’s will as a societal claim: justice and righteousness as public realities (Am 5:24; Isa 58:6-7).

Sozzini explicitly holds both dimensions together: the kingdom encompasses the outer “revelation of the divine will and its acceptance or acknowledgement” and the inner “reigning of God in our hearts.” A reduction to one of the two sides misses the verse.

Matthew 25:31-46 shows the eschatological measure: “Whatever you did for one of the least of these my brothers, you did for me.” That is no inner matter of the heart, but concrete action in the world. Both dimensions belong together: the transformed heart that brings forth a changed dealing with the world.

Incidentally, Lk 17:21 itself cannot be reduced to inwardness: entos hymôn can equally mean “in your midst” — in the community, in Jesus’s working, in the healings and the table fellowship. The kingdom is at once personal and social.

Objection 2: “The kingdom is purely future — only at the return of Christ”

Matthew 12:28 shows explicitly that the kingdom is already present in Jesus’s working: “But if I cast out demons by the Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God has come upon you.” Lk 17:21 confirms: the kingdom is “in your midst.” The parable of the mustard seed (Mt 13:31-32) describes a kingdom that is already growing now.

The petition “Your kingdom come” is therefore not only a petition for the future consummation, but also a petition for the growth of the already begun kingdom and for its concrete effectiveness in the life-world of the one who prays.

Sozzini himself expressly rejects this purely futurist reading: the kingdom is both the revelation already made and the acceptance now happening in hearts. Postponing it to the end of time misses the holistic biblical doctrine of the kingdom.

This does not exclude the eschatological consummation — 1 Cor 15:24-28 is clear. But the “already” and the “not yet” belong in the Lord’s Prayer simultaneously; resolving one at the cost of the other mutilates the text.

Objection 3: “Jesus’s praying proves the Trinitarian fellowship”

This interpretation presupposes what it sets out to prove. In the text itself the Holy Spirit is not mentioned — the prayer is bipolar: the one praying and the Father. And when Jesus says “your kingdom,” the kingdom of the Father is distinguished from Jesus — it does not belong to Jesus, but to the Father.

If Father and Son were of one substance, the kingdom would have to belong as much to Jesus as to the Father — why then does Jesus pray for “your kingdom,” as if it were not his own? The simpler and more text-near explanation, in Socinian terms, is: Jesus prays as the human being sent by God, and he prays for the dominion of the God who sent him.

John 20:17 is decisive here: “I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.” Jesus’s God is the Father — the same God his disciples worship. The sonship of Jesus differs in depth and mission, not in the direction of the prayer’s address.

The two-natures construction (Jesus prays in his human nature) is a later theological auxiliary hypothesis that the text itself does not offer. Socinianly, the simple asymmetry given by the text is taken seriously instead: whoever prays is not the one prayed to.

Objection 4: “The Socinian reading undermines the doctrine of grace — Pelagian!”

Sozzini himself expressly rejects this reading. He says: “although God’s help and cooperation are certainly present, nevertheless a certain space for our freedom in acting remains” (Exposition of the Sermon on the Mount, on Mt 6:10). God’s initiative is absolutely required; the human response is nonetheless real and free.

This position is not Pelagian but biblical. The imperative metanoeîte (“repent”) in Mk 1:15 or Acts 2:38 demands a real human response. If the human being were entirely passive, the imperative would have no addressee.

The Racovian Catechism makes this precise: “In all these petitions the gift of the Holy Spirit must rightly be considered as included, since, in order that all this may be done by human beings, above all the help of the Holy Spirit is needed.” God gives; the human being answers. Both sides are real; neither is played against the other.

The Augustinian-Reformed construction of a wholly one-sided operating grace is itself a theological auxiliary hypothesis that finds no support in Mt 6:10. The Lord’s Prayer teaches both divine sovereignty (“your kingdom”) and human cooperation (“your will be done” — through us).

Whoever charges Sozzini with Pelagianism has not read the Racovian Catechism. The Polish Brethren were quite aware of the necessity of divine grace — they simply refused to read the human response as a mere divine soliloquy.

Objection 5: “If Jesus is only a messenger, who then is the real king of the kingdom?”

The Socinian reading does not reduce Jesus; it places him in the proper structure of mission. Jesus is the messenger — the unique messenger, authorized by the Father, equipped with the Holy Spirit (Mt 11:27; Jn 17:3). His authority is absolute not in spite of, but precisely because of, his standing in mission.

In Mt 28:18 Jesus himself says: “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.” The word given is decisive: the authority is not original but received. That is not less than divine authority — but it is anchored in the Father, not drawn from Jesus’s own divine substance.

1 Cor 15:24-28 sketches the eschatological picture: Christ reigns until all enemies are defeated — and then hands the kingdom over to God the Father. This is the highest conceivable kingly standing of Christ: king by commission, who at the end gives the crown back to the eternal king, “so that God may be all in all.”

The kingdom is therefore not a kingdom against or alongside Jesus, but a kingdom through Jesus — yet traced back to the one Father. This order does not diminish Jesus but places him in his exact biblical position: between the one God and the redeemed creation as mediator (1 Tim 2:5).

Whoever wishes to read this differently breaks the genitives of the kingdom passages (basileía tou theou, “kingdom of my Father,” “kingdom of God the Father”) and replaces them with a later logic of identification. Socinianly, the text-near reading is to be preferred.

Theological consequences

Related verses

The following passages support, deepen or contrast the interpretation presented here:

• Mark 1:15 — Kingdom proclamation: the kingdom of God is near — what is asked in the Lord’s Prayer is already breaking in in Jesus’s working.
• Luke 17:20-21 — Entos hymôn: the kingdom of God is in your midst — Sozzini’s “God reigns in hearts” in action.
• Matthew 6:33 — Ethical unfolding of the second petition of the Lord’s Prayer: seek first the kingdom of God.
• 1 Corinthians 15:24 — Eschatological consummation: Christ hands the kingdom over to God the Father — the kingdom remains God’s kingdom.
• Daniel 2:44 — Old Testament background: the God of heaven sets up an eternal kingdom — without human hand.
• Mark 12:29 — The Sh’ma as theological frame: the LORD is one — it is the kingdom of this one that comes in the Lord’s Prayer.
• John 20:17 — “My Father and your Father, my God and your God” — the asymmetry of the act of prayer underlined.

Summary

Matthew 6:10 compresses the whole kingdom-of-God theology of Jesus into two brief petitions. “Your kingdom come” — the possessive pronoun shows: the kingdom belongs to the Father, to whom Jesus prays. Jesus is the herald, the messenger, the inaugurator — but not the owner. “Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” — the kingdom is neither a geographical zone nor a mystical inwardness, but the concrete earthly reality in which God’s will holds.

In his Exposition of the Sermon on the Mount, Sozzini unfolds a double meaning of the “kingdom of God”: the outer revelation of the divine will and the inner reigning of God in the hearts of believers. Both belong together; resolving one at the cost of the other would be loss. At the same time the third petition shows that our active cooperation too is asked — without God’s sovereignty being diminished thereby.

The Racovian Catechism formulates the same view with didactic concision: the kingdom is asked for, “that all human beings acknowledge his dominion and supremacy as that of their Creator and submit themselves to his right and his power,” and the will, “that all people on earth ... carry out the will of God just as this is done by all the angels in heaven.” This doctrine of the kingdom is theocentric, ethically serious, pneumatologically anchored and eschatologically open. It is the clearest biblical statement on the order between God and Christ — and it comes from the mouth of Jesus himself.