The conclusion of the Lord's Prayer is not to be considered altogether as an act of thanksgiving or an expression of God's praise and glory; it is rather intended to imply on our part the reasons for our assurance that God will grant our petitions. It is attributing to God the power to aid us, and our grounds for confidence that He will do so.
I. To be allowed to give praise and glory to God is indeed a great privilege and blessing, and most becoming in us when God answers our prayers, but a full persuasion of His power is most essentially necessary in us, in order that our prayers may be answered. It may be observed throughout the Gospels how much our Lord required this faith and assurance of His power before He wrought any miracle of His power especially, more than even a sense of His mercy and goodness. Where there was no belief in His power He worked no miracles.
II. In these words it is not akingdom, power, and glory which we ascribe unto God, but thekingdom, thepower, and theglory. There is very much in this. Thekingdom means the one and only kingdom, or such a kingdom as that there is no other of the kind, or to be compared with it. The kingdoms of this world are but weak and poor shadows of the true kingdom; they are but as reflections of the sun in impure pools of water compared to the real sun itself in strength and brightness.
III. Although we are ready in words to assent to this that the kingdom is God's, and the power, and the glory yet we are very slow to believe it as it must be received. We are inclined to think that it is something which is to be hereafter rather than that it is the case even now, that there is no kingdom and power but in the Cross of Christ, that sceptre of His kingdom by which He reigns in the hearts of His faithful subjects. To behold even now the glory of Christ in His humiliation and to be by beholding it conformed unto the same image this is the best gift of the Spirit, for which we have always need to pray.
I. Williams, Plain Sermons on the Catechism,p. 122.