The Lord's Prayer-Part 5-Your Will Be Done

Your Will Be Done

Hello! Today is Sunday June 14th. Welcome to the next episode of the podcast. We are continuing our examination of the LP in context and in light of the OT Exodus and how the LP for Jesus was a type of New Exodus.

“Your Will Be Done”

Matthew 6:10b

The Lord’s model prayer is an outline of the elements that an ideal prayer should contain. Its simple structure is very specific. It begins with the foundational awareness that God is our “Dearest Father” with whom we have the intimacy of a father-daughter or father-son relationship. This is the distinctive ground of Christian prayer. From this intimate awareness flow six petitions. The first three concern the glory of God and are distinguished by the word “your.” The second three concern our well-being and are distinguished by the word “us.” Ideal prayer is first Godward for God’s glory and then turns to man’s needs.

“Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven” is surely the most abused of the Prayer’s six petitions. The Lord’s Prayer is repeated mindlessly thousands of times every week.

Hollywood thinks it makes a perfect conclusion to a war movie. You know the story line. “The Terrible Ten” have been killing the enemy with ferocious joy and cohabiting with the local girls. The only time God has been mentioned is in their curses. But now the enemy has them encircled, their ammo is gone, and the situation is so desperate that they need to do something religious. So they begin to pray, “Our Father in heaven …” The Lord’s Prayer is one of the most abused portions of Scripture in or out of the church. Not only is it abused through mindless repetition but in its being prayed by people who have never had any intention of doing God’s will!

“Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” Luther called this a “fearful prayer.” If some people really realized what they were praying, their words would stick in their throats. Considering the petition’s gravity, it is of the utmost importance that we understand what we are praying, then pray it with the utmost sincerity.

It is also important because submitting our wills to God is one of our greatest needs, though none of us finds it easy. We all like to be “captains of our souls” and often even retake the command we once humbly and wisely relinquished. Perhaps as children we were strong-willed, and our parents never succeeded in bringing us into line. Submitting to anyone’s will is foreign to us. Whether or not that has been our experience, Jesus’ words apply to us! Jesus tells us here that the ideal prayer should contain a section in which we bow before God saying, “Let your will be done in my life, in this situation, at this time, just as it is in heaven itself.” Do we truly pray this? And if we do, what do we mean? What is Jesus asking us to pray for when he tells us to pray, “Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven”?

Jesus Calls Us to Pray for the World’s Obedience

This call is twofold. First, we pray for the universal obedience that will come at the end of history. In the final kingdom there will be no necessity for guidelines about divorce, retaliation, hate, lust, or hypocrisy because there will be no divorce or hatred or hypocrisy. God’s will will prevail everywhere. “Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven” focuses on this final inevitable event and fills us with hope in this rebellious world.

Second, the prayer calls for God’s will to be done right now in present history. To those who question how this is possible, Jesus answers with his life. Early in his ministry Jesus told his disciples, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me” (John 4:34). If I pray this petition rightly, my food—what I really live for—is not an extra dessert or a bit of religion to decorate my life, but doing God’s will. Helmut Thielicke wrote:

Just as I live by my daily bread, just as my heart and my eyes and my whole body are driven toward food by the spontaneous urge of hunger, so I live by the will of the Father, so I am driven to him and linked to him with every fiber of my being.

Later Jesus again said, “I seek not to please myself but him who sent me” (John 5:30). And yet again in John’s Gospel, “I have come down from heaven not to do my will but to do the will of him who sent me” (6:38). And in Gethsemane, in the midst of bloody sweat, he cried to his Father, “Abba Father, everything is possible for you. Take this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will” (Mark 14:36).

We are to emulate our Lord’s example. It is possible for men and women, despite their imperfections, to experience the working out of God’s will. We are to pray that this will happen not only in regard to salvation, but so righteousness and justice will be brought about in this fallen world.

“Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” This petition is stridently upward. “Father, your will (and no other) be done just as it is in heaven.” This is a command (aorist passive imperative) and as such demands passionate expression. Pray it with all your heart, for it is also a prayer for individual obedience.

Jesus Calls Us to Pray for Our Own Obedience

“Your will be done [in me], on earth as it is in heaven.” In praying this we invite God to conquer us, and that is why this petition is so scary. When we pray this prayer, we are asking God to do what is necessary to make his will prevail in our lives. And God then comes with gracious, kind violence to root out all impediments to our obedience. To pray this prayer may terrify us, but it will also deliver us from ourselves. It can truly be said that we have not learned to pray at all until every request in our prayers is made subject to this one. “Your will be done” is the petition that determines the authenticity of the other upward petitions, for if we do not mean it, we cannot truly pray, “hallowed be your name” or “your kingdom come.” Truly praying “your will be done” is fundamental to all true prayer.

What else is our obedience to be like? The key is found in the second half of the petition: “as it is in heaven.” Not only is God’s will to be done by us, but we are to do it just as the believers are doing it in Heaven at this moment! How is it done in Heaven? Gladly, with no reservation. It is possible to say “your will be done” in a tone of bitter resentment, but that is not what God wants.

Julian was the Roman Emperor who tried to turn the clock back. He tried to reverse the decision of Constantine that Christianity should be the religion of the Empire, and he tried to reintroduce the worship and the service and the ceremonies of the ancient gods. In the end he was mortally wounded in battle in the east. The historians tell how, when he lay bleeding to death, he took a handful of his blood and tossed it in the air, saying: “You have conquered, O man of Galilee!”

We can say “your will be done” through angry, clenched lips, but that is not Heaven’s tone. It is possible to say “your will be done” in a funereal tone of resignation and defeat, which goes well with sweet organ tones and the smell of flowers but not with Christian consecration. “God, I wanted things my way, but they are not turning out that way. So I shall turn them over to You, for Your competitive will has more power than mine and will probably have its way anyhow. So teach me not to grumble too much about how things are going against me.”

It is also possible to say “your will be done” with a note of cheer and buoyancy, for we know that is the way it is in Heaven! The glorified saints and angels find their greatest joy in doing God’s will. They probably do it with singing, judging by the heavenly vignettes in the book of Revelation.

When we pray this third petition of the Lord’s Prayer, we pray for two things. First, we pray that we ourselves will live in profound obedience, that his will may be the supreme desire of our lives. And second, we pray that our obedience may be “as it is in heaven”—joyous, bounding, and enthusiastic.

How can we attain this?

Besides the obvious, which is to pray that his will be done and then consciously submit to it, we should keep foremost in our minds the fact that this entire prayer is controlled by the word “Father.” Here “your will” is the Father’s will—the will of One we call Abba—“Dearest Father.” You and I are asked to do the will of our Father whose love is measured by the cross of Jesus Christ. The fact that his will issues from his Father-love ought to be the greatest encouragement to do his will.

Earthly Father comparison. Our father-love, as imperfect as it is, always desires the best for our children. All healthy fathers dream and even scheme to secure a happy and prosperous future for their sons and daughters. Over the years my wife and I went out for breakfast every Monday, my day off, and most of our conversation centered on our children. We did talk about other things, but our beginning conversation was always about our kids. We would talk about the pressure that one was under, the “good week” of another, what we thought was best for each, what we needed to pray about, lists of things they needed. The mental focus of a caring father (and mother) is incredible. If one of our children is having a difficult time, it affects us immensely. Our father-love for them (imperfect as it is) has only the best in mind for them.

To pray “your will be done” is to pray that the perfect, loving Father-will of our heavenly Father will be done in our lives. It is to pray that what is “good, pleasing and perfect” (Romans 12:2) will be done in our lives. This is what we need to keep in mind as we attempt to grow in obedience to God’s will.

Another thing that is helpful to keep in mind as we strive to grow in obedience is that in order to do God’s will, we need to know God’s will.

This is often the question many Christians ask. But with the wrong emphasis in mind. “what is God’s will for my life?”

Thus when we truly pray “your will be done,” there must be a corresponding commitment to learn all we can about his will. This requires the continual study of the Scriptures, which are the main revelatory agency of his will. The Bible is infallible, but sadly, many believers are woefully ignorant of its contents. To truly pray “your will be done” is to commit oneself to knowing God’s will as it is revealed in his Word, then to do it.

Your Will Be Done

The doing of YHWH’s will on earth as in heaven is, of course, part of the whole apocalyptic theme in which heavenly truths and events become embodied in their earthly counterparts. Part of the point of the whole Sinai theophany—the central part, in fact, of the Exodus story—was the meeting of heaven and earth, with Moses as the intermediary who went to and fro between the two spheres, so that laws and instructions made in heaven could be carried out on earth. This anticipates (or, depending on one’s view of Pentateuchal origins, reflects) the temple theology in which the sanctuary was considered to be quite literally the place where heaven and earth met. If Torah was the means by which, within Israel, God’s will was to be done on earth as in heaven, and if the temple was the place where this was embodied in cultic celebration and sacrifice, to pray that this might happen anew—within the context of the New Exodus motifs already so strongly present—was to pray not merely that certain things might occur within the earthly realm that would coincide with plans that God had made in the heavenly realm, but that a fresh integration of heaven and earth would take place in which all that temple and Torah had stood for would be realized afresh. It was to pray both that God’s saving purpose for Israel and the world would come about through God’s personal action, and that God’s people would find themselves not merely shaped by a law, however divine, or focused on a building, however God-given, but embraced by a saving personal love.

“Thy will be done on earth as in heaven” can, of course, carry all sorts of further overtones, such as prayers for wise political solutions to world-shaking crises, prayers for bread for the hungry, and prayers for justice for the oppressed. But at its heart lies a prayer for the appropriate integration of heaven and earth that the early Christians came to see already accomplished in Jesus himself—who was like Moses, but so much more so—and came to long for in God’s eventual future (cf. Rev. 21; see also Rom. 8:17–30, which we will discuss later).[1]

To glibly parrot this prayer does nothing, but to pray it sincerely is revolutionary. When we truly pray, “your will be done on earth as it is in heaven,” we pray for the world’s obedience—we pray for the final day when all will bow. And we also pray for the here and now. We pray for that which is surely coming, and we unite ourselves with future victory even while we reside in a disobedient world.

We also pray for our own obedience. “Your will be done” means that I want my submission to be like the submission in Heaven—eager, cheerful, buoyant. In his will is our greatest glory and joy.

We either line ourselves up with the Son of God and say to the Father, “Your will be done,” or we give in to the principle that controls the rest of the world and say, “My will be done.” Obedience to God is an act of the will. Put yourself in his hands. Choose to give yourself to him daily.

Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship. (Romans 12:1)[2]

[1] Wright, N. T. (2002). The Lord’s Prayer as a Paradigm of Christian Prayer. In R. N. Longenecker (Ed.), Into God’s Presence: Prayer in the New Testament (p. 142). Grand Rapids, MI; Cambridge, U.K.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company.

[2] Hughes, R. K. (2001). The sermon on the mount: the message of the kingdom (pp. 175–180). Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books.