This is part of a series of communion meditations considering the Lord’s Prayer
We’re meditating through the Lord’s Prayer, and we now come to Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. What is the Lord’s will? How is the Lord’s will done in heaven?
Let’s start with the first question. Classically, Christian theologians have spoken of God’s will, the Lord’s will, in two main senses. First, His will of decree, or His secret will. It’s in this sense that the 17th Century English theologians at the Westminster Assembly spoke of God’s foreordaining whatsoever comes to pass. In this sense, anything and everything that happens is according God’s will. Nothing happens outside his will because he is Almighty. He’s in control of everything. As it says in Daniel chapter 4 verse 35, there is none who can stay his hand. None who can say to him, what have you done? God is in control of everything. Nothing happens apart from the will of the Father. That’s what Jesus says in the Gospels. There’s no higher authority for God to answer to.
But generally when normal people, who aren’t 17th century theologians, speak of God’s will, we speak of it in a second sense: namely, his will of precept. That is, what does God want us to do? An older brother might ask: is it God’s will for me to kick my brother. Probably not. That’d probably be a failure to love my neighbor as myself. You might say that’s obvious and common sense, but how do I know God wants me to love my neighbor as myself? Through what he tells us. And we find that written down in The Book.
So when Jesus teaches us to pray, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven, especially right on the heels of having prayed, thy kingdom come, I think the point he’s driving at is clear: He’s praying for God’s word to be obeyed by human beings on this earth as joyfully and immediately as the angels in heaven obey his will moment by moment. Where does such obedient living start? It starts when we listen to his word, repent of where we have disobeyed, and ask for his hep to follow what he has told us.
In following Jesus’ model of prayer, we are praying, in essence, Lord, help me to be joyfully obedient to you. Help us, as your church, to walk in conformity to your ways.
It’s in living a life devoted to this form of thy will be done that we’re able to embrace the other form of thy will be done. The way Jesus uses those same words in the Garden of Gethsemane. Maybe you remember the story.
The night on which he was betrayed, the Lord Jesus looked at the bitter cup—in the Garden of Gethsemene he looked at the awful price of the cross—knowing he was about to bear our sins and God’s wrath against those sins in order to bring us salvation. And he prayed, Father, if it is possible, remove this cup from me. Nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will. In pursuing a life lived in obedience to the revealed will of the Father as laid down in Scripture, the Lord Jesus came to his greatest hour of testing and was able to lay aside his human desire to be spared that bitter cup, and he drank it in obedience to the Divine will.
We can pray Thy will be done because Jesus prayed it first. We can pursue obedience to Him because He first was obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. So if you know the Lord Jesus as your Savior, this table is for you. If you know him, join us in celebrating his perfect obedience to the Father’s will. Bearing our sins in his body on the tree that we might die to disobedience and live to the Father’s will. It’s in Jesus’ broken body and shed blood that we are healed.
