The kingdom, the power and the glory: Amen

This week's questions

What doth the conclusion of the Lord's Prayer teach us? The conclusion of the Lord's Prayer, which is, For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever, Amen. teacheth us to take our encouragement in prayer from God only, and in our prayers to praise him, ascribing kingdom, power, and glory to him; and, in testimony of our desire, and assurance to be heard, we say, Amen.

Question 107

With the six petitions ended last week, the Lord's Prayer comes to its close. This is the catechism's last question, and the last week of a course that has taken fifty-two.

From God only

Question 107 first tells us where our encouragement in prayer comes from. It is not how earnestly we have prayed or how well we have lived, but God himself. The conclusion, says the Larger Catechism, teaches us "to enforce our petitions with arguments, which are to be taken, not from any worthiness in ourselves, or in any other creature, but from God" Larger Catechism, Q. 196. Daniel's prayer, a proof text of the answer, pleads just so:

Incline Your ear, O my God, and hear; open Your eyes and see the desolation of the city that bears Your name. For we are not presenting our petitions before You because of our righteous acts, but because of Your great compassion.

Daniel 9:18

He goes on: "For Your sake, O my God, do not delay" (Daniel 9:19). And prayer ends in praise. In the next proof, when the gifts for the temple have been brought, David blesses God before all the assembly in words the conclusion echoes:

Yours, O LORD, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the splendor and the majesty, for everything in heaven and on earth belongs to You. Yours, O LORD, is the kingdom, and You are exalted as head over all.

1 Chronicles 29:11

We ask all this, the Heidelberg Catechism explains, because as our King with power over all things God is "both willing and able to give us all good, and that thereby not we but thy holy name may be glorified forever" Heidelberg Catechism, Q. 128. Chrysostom, bishop of Constantinople, saw the comfort of these words coming straight after the mention of our enemy: "since if His be the kingdom, none need fear, since even he who fights against us, must be His subject" Chrysostom.

Yet not every manuscript has these words. The conclusion is not in the oldest Greek manuscripts of Matthew, nor in Luke's form of the prayer. Many later manuscripts have it, and so the KJV prints it; the BSB, following the older manuscripts, leaves it out (Matthew 6:13). The Didache, an early manual of the church commonly placed around AD 100, already ends the prayer "for Thine is the power and the glory for ever" Didache 8.2. Most scholars judge the conclusion an early addition from the church's worship, drawn from words like David's; some hold it original. Either way it says what Scripture says, and Question 107's teaching rests not on this verse alone but on the prayers of Daniel and David and the words of Paul.

The churches pray it each in their own way. In the Catholic Mass the priest, after the Lord's Prayer, prays on from its last petition, and the people answer with the doxology; in the Orthodox Divine Liturgy the doxology names the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2760. Martin Luther's Small Catechism, taught in the Lutheran churches, ends with "Amen, Amen; that is, Yea, yea, it shall be so" Small Catechism, the conclusion. The Reformed pray the conclusion with the prayer.

Amen, and back to the first question

Amen is the assent of those who pray together; Paul asks how anyone can say Amen to a thanksgiving he cannot understand (1 Corinthians 14:16). It is our desire and our assurance at once. All God's promises are Yes in Christ, and through him our Amen is spoken to God's glory (2 Corinthians 1:20). The Heidelberg Catechism's last answer puts the assurance this way:

Amen means: So shall it truly and surely be. For my prayer is much more certainly heard of God than I feel in my heart that I desire these things of him.

Heidelberg Catechism, Q. 129

The Bible itself ends on Amen: "The grace of the Lord Jesus be with all the saints. Amen" (Revelation 22:21). Fifty-two weeks ago this course began with the question of what we are for. Now the catechism ends by putting praise and Amen on the lips of those who pray; the library's introduction shows how the two belong together. The course's motto, ‘Deum glorificare, eoque frui’, to glorify God and to enjoy him, was pointing to this Amen from the start.

The learning does not stop here. Next week you might return to Question 1 and begin again; answers that once sounded strange will sound different now. Read the same Assembly's Larger Catechism and the Westminster Confession beside it, or go on to the Reformed Faith and Christian Doctrine courses; Man's chief end begins where Question 1 does. And keep learning to pray with How should I pray?

To ponder this week

What has learning to glorify God and enjoy him changed in you this year, and to what will you say Amen? Choose the question and answer that stayed with you most this year and read it aloud again. Then pray the Lord's Prayer slowly from beginning to end, and say the last Amen with confidence.

Practice