No More Lord's Prayer Or Ten Commandments?
Things will be different at the great eschaton! That is, things will be different when we are
raised from the grave, when Jesus comes to make thing right again.
What will be different?
For starters we will ‘not’ pray The Lord’s Prayer. The reason why this is so? “In the Lord’s Prayer we are effectively
praying against the old sinner in each of us, who would rather die than ask and
who defining efforts take place on behalf of our own good names to build our
kingdoms and to enforce our own wills.”[1]
Therefore, because our bodies will be
raised imperishable and full of glory without the stain of sin, we will no
longer fight against the old sinner, which means we will no longer pray the
petitions of The Lord’s Prayer against our old Adam.
It gets even better when we think about The Ten
Commandments. “At the resurrection, The
Ten Commandments become promises.”[2] Indeed, in our present lives under the sun we hear God's perfect will: that we shall
not have any other gods, that we shall not take the name of the Lord God in
vain, that we shall not steal, that we shall not murder or commit adultery, and so forth. Presently we read the blessed Ten Commandments as
imperatives.[3] They are God's good and holy will for us. However, when we are raised
from the graves imperishable or taken to be with the Lord in a twinkling of an
eye, we will no longer have Ten Commandments, but they become 'promises.' Truly, at the resurrection we will love God
perfectly and love our neighbor perfectly as the Lord intends it to be. It will be impossible to break The 10
Commandments because we will no longer be simultaneously sinners and saints; we will be rid of this body of sin and death, due to us being resurrected unto
everlasting life. Just think about
it! After the resurrection, we will have gloried bodies and everlasting life, freed from the old Adam; we will only have one God, we will esteem the name of the Lord, we will celebrate life without the fear of death, we
will have eternal rest as we behold the incarnate Word, we will speak well of each other, and so forth.
Things will be different, yes different indeed. No more praying of the Lord’s Prayer and the blessed Ten Commandments become tremendous promises for us at the great eschaton!
What a glorious day that will be.
[1] James Nestingen, The Lord’s Prayer In Luther’s Catechism (Word & World Volume 22, number 1, Winter 2002), 41.
[2] Unknown author; unknown source.
[3] Paraphrasing Pr. Donavon Riley, "We also read The Ten Commandments presently in hope of the resurrection; faith converts the commandments to promises."
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