Jesus Remembered: Christianity in the Making, vol. 1

§ 12.4 The Kingdom of God
thought of the heavenly banquet to come 144 or memory of the manna necessary
to see the eater through to the Promised Land. 145 Either way, a forward look to a
desired outcome equivalent to the coming of the kingdom may well be implicit,
with the further implication that under God's rule sufficiency is assured. Likewise,
the petition for forgiveness presumably has the final judgment at least
partly in view: 146 the favourable judgment of God is depicted as dependent not
on the petitioner's freedom from sin but on the petitioner's readiness to forgive
others (Matt. 6.12/Luke 11.4a; see below §14.6).
Equally difficult to decide is whether the final petition has a similarly eschatological
note: 'Do not bring us into peirasmos' (Matt. 6.13a/Luke 11.4b).
The issue here is whether peirasmos signifies any 'test or trial' or looks particularly
to the great tribulation widely expected to precede the age to come. In other
words, is this a prayer for help in daily trial and tribulation 147 or a plea to be kept
from the final and most testing trial of the present age? 148 The latter certainly
chimes in with a characteristic fearful expectancy in Jewish apocalyptic writings
of the period and in the preaching of Jesus' mentor, John the Baptist, 149 as indeed
among the first Christians (see §12.4d below), 150 but the key term itself
(peirasmos) is not specific enough to settle the issue. 151 The point here, however,
is that the undisputed petition for the kingdom as still to come gives the prayer as
a whole its eschatological note, and it is this note which echoes through the other
petitions.
Other of the distinctive features observed by Jeremias above (§12.1) are
also most naturally understood as implying a future kingdom. Most of the 'enter
into' sayings clearly have that implication: the kingdom is to be entered into as
into a future state or condition. 152 Similarly, the kingdom is to be 'sought' as
something yet to be attained. 153 Presumably related is the contrast between 'the
144. Jeremias, Proclamation 199-201. See further below (§12.4f).
145. References in Davies and Allison, Matthew 1.609.
146. Davies and Allison, Matthew 1.612; Meier, Marginal Jew 2.301.
147. Betz, Sermon on the Mount 406-11.
148. Jeremias, Prayers 105-106; also Proclamation 202; 'the petition for protection
from succumbing to the peirasmos is the desperate cry of faith on trial: preserve us from apostasy,
keep us from going wrong' (Proclamation 129).
149. See above, §§ 11.4c and 12.2c.
150. Jeremias, Proclamation 129, 201-202; Davies and Allison, Matthew 1.613-14;
Meier, Marginal Jew 2.301.
151. Guelich, Sermon on the Mount 294-96.
152. Of the passages cited in n. 23 above, only Matt. 21.31 and 23.13 are not clearly
future-oriented, though Horn argues that the polemical thrust of these sayings marks them out
as the earliest stratum of the 'entering the kingdom' motif ('synoptischen Einlasssprüche' 200-
203).
153. See above, n. 22, and further Davies and Allison, Matthew 1.660.
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