Matt 6:7–15 — The Lord’s Prayer, Part 4: Thy Will Be Done

The third petition of the Lord’s Prayer is “Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” It is a prayer of submission: we ask that God’s will, rather than our own, would govern us.

The Heidelberg Catechism explains the petition in two parts. We ask God to help us renounce our own wills and obey his good will without resistance. We also ask him to help each person carry out his office and calling as willingly and faithfully as the angels in heaven. We will therefore consider what God’s will means, how we submit to it, and how we fulfill our callings.

What Is Meant by God’s Will?

God’s will can have two main meanings, and it is important to distinguish them. One possible meaning is God’s will of decree: his eternal purpose and sovereign plan for all things. This is often called God’s decretive will.

God’s Decretive Will

Before the foundation of the world, God planned everything that would happen from the creation on. And in the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus himself teaches this doctrine that God’s will encompasses everything that occurs. God’s providential control of all that happens in this world, even down to something as small as a sparrow falling to the ground.

In Matthew 10:29–31, Jesus speaks to disciples who may face persecution: “Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. But even the hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not, therefore; you are of more value than many sparrows.” Not even a sparrow falls apart from the Father’s will. This is God’s decretive will, his eternal plan for everything that happens. In Matthew 18:14, Jesus again uses the language of God’s will in this decretive sense.

He says, it is not the will of my Father who is in heaven that one of these little ones should perish. The little ones are God’s people, the elect, who are maybe despised by the world, and they’re not significant in the eyes of man, but they are the little ones in the Father’s eyes. And it is not the will of the Father that any of these little ones should perish. None of the elect will perish and fall from God’s gracious hand.

That is God’s will of decree. He has decreed who the elect are and he will ensure that they are saved from first to last. God’s decretive will is comprehensive. It doesn’t just include salvation of the elect. It also includes even sin and adversity that happen in this world. Every sin that occurs in this world is not something that God desires. That’s contrary to God’s moral will, but it is nevertheless part of his plan. He providentially oversees sin to accomplish his perfect will and to accomplish the greater good. The Heidelberg Catechism says this about the providence of God in question 27.

God’s providence is the almighty and ever-present power of God by which God upholds as with his hand heaven and earth and all creatures and so rules them that leaf and blade, rain and drought, fruitful and lean years, food and drink, health and sickness, prosperity and poverty, all things in fact, come to us, not by chance, but by his fatherly hand.

As Reformed people, we believe that there is no such thing as chance. It may seem to be like chance. You throw a dice and it may seem like it’s just random chance, but in reality, there is no such thing as chance. Everything is completely in God’s control.

That is the providence of God by which he upholds all creatures and all their actions. This is the first meaning of God’s will.

God’s Preceptive Will

The second meaning, and the one Jesus has in view in the Lord’s Prayer, is God’s preceptive will—his will of precept. Unlike his will of decree, God’s preceptive will concerns what he commands and desires us to do in obedience to him.

We see this usage in the Gospel of Matthew as well. In Matthew 7:21 Jesus says, “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.” Doing the Father’s will means doing what God desires of us—the good things consistent with his moral will.

Again in Matthew 12 verse 50, remember that incident where Jesus is meeting with the people, he’s speaking to a crowd, and then his mother and his brothers stood outside and they’re asking if they could speak with him. But he replied to the man who told him, who is my mother and who are my brothers? And stretching out his hand toward his disciples, he said, here are my mother and my brothers. For whoever does the will of my father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother. So again, we have this language of doing the will of my father. We saw that in 721 and here again in 1250.

Obviously, doing the will of God is not the same thing as doing God’s decree. It means doing the good and righteous things he commands. That is the meaning here in the Lord’s Prayer when we pray, “Your will be done.” We are not praying that God’s decree or providence would occur, but that his moral will would be done on earth as it is in heaven.

And that interpretation of thy will be done fits in with the context of the other petitions. For example, the first petition, hallowed be your name. We’re praying that God’s name would be sanctified. We’re praying that God would be honored and glorified. That’s doing God’s will. We’re praying the second petition is, thy kingdom come. We’re praying that God’s kingdom would come, and when his kingdom comes, it would be that God would be glorified by all creatures.

When we pray then, thy will be done, we’re praying that God’s moral will, his preceptive will, would be done. And that’s reinforced by the phrase there, on earth as it is in heaven. We’re praying that just as the angels in heaven are constantly obeying God and honoring him and serving him and seeking his glory alone, so also we here on earth would do the same thing.

The third petition is therefore not a prayer that God’s decree would come to pass, but that we would obey his preceptive will. As the Heidelberg Catechism puts it, “Help us and all people to renounce our own wills and without any backtalk to obey your will, for it alone is good.”

Submitting to God’s Will

We ought to have an attitude of submission to God’s will. We are not merely praying that others would do it; we ask that our own wills would bend to his. Yet our flesh is naturally hostile to God’s will.

Paul says that in Romans 8, verse 7. He says, the mindset of the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law. Indeed, it cannot. Apart from Christ, apart from the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit to change us, naturally we’re just hostile to God’s will. We don’t want to do God’s will. We buck against it. We have this backtalk against God’s will, as the Heidelberg Catechism uses that phrase, backtalk. We resist God’s will. We don’t like it. We chafe under it.

It’s only by the power of the Spirit that our hearts can be made to be submissive to God’s will. And that’s what we’re praying for here in this prayer. Give us that heart that is submissive. Take away that chafing spirit so that we’re not like children forcing themselves to eat the food on their plate, but that we willingly delight to do God’s will. Ephesians 6, verse 6. As we saw in the meditation there, as bondservants of Christ doing the will of God from the heart. That’s what the Lord wants us to do, to do his will from the heart, not contrary, not with a spirit of being forced to do it, but delighting to do God’s will.

The Heidelberg Catechism interprets the statement “Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven” by pointing to the angels, who perfectly delight in and serve God.

They’re not even for a millisecond thinking about anything else. The angels in heaven are just completely and totally devoted to God’s will. There’s an interesting verse in Psalm 103 that famous psalm, bless the Lord oh my soul and all that is within me, bless his holy name, but at the end of that psalm, near the very end, it mentions the angels and how they are God’s servants. Psalm 103 verse 21, bless the Lord all you his hosts, the hosts being the heavenly hosts, right, and you ministers of his who do his pleasure. The angels are like at God’s beck and call, ready to do whatever he wants. If he sends them on some errand, they’re simply the messengers and servants of God. They’re there at his beck and call to do all of his pleasure.

That is what we’re praying for in this second petition. Your will be done on earth, that is in our hearts, just as it is in heaven, that we would have that same speed and alacrity and willingness to serve the Lord and to obey him. John Calvin had a personal motto that you may have heard before, and it was this, And then that was the motto, but then there was a picture of a hand holding a flaming heart. So he’s offering his heart to the Lord. My heart I offer to you, Lord, promptly and sincerely.” That idea of promptly and sincerely, it’s prompt. It’s like, whatever the Lord says, I’ll do it. And it’s sincere because it’s from the heart, because you desire to be obedient. You desire to obey God’s will.

One helpful practice as we consider each petition of the Lord’s Prayer is to ask how Christ is present in it. We can call God our Father only because we have been adopted through Christ. To hallow God’s name is ultimately to honor Christ, the supreme revelation of God, who has received the name above every name.

Christ’s Submission and Our Service

We see Christ as well, though, in thy kingdom come, because Christ is the king of the kingdom. And so when we pray, Thy kingdom come, ultimately what we’re praying for is for the second coming of Christ. We’re praying for Christ to come and to consummate the kingdom, to bring about the fulfillment of the kingdom of God. He is the king of the kingdom of God. And that’s why he could say that the kingdom is already at hand in his first coming, because the king is there. But that’s why we’re also longing for the kingdom to come in its fullness at the end. Because the king, although he’s reigning from heaven right now, All of his enemies are not yet made the footstool of his feet, and we’re waiting for that day when the kingdom is consummated at the second coming of Christ. But how do we see Christ in this petition here? Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Well, we see it in two ways. Number one, we see it because Christ is the greatest example of this.

Remember in the Garden of Gethsemane, He said, Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me. But then he resigned himself to the Father’s will and said, yet not my will, but your will be done. He prayed this prayer, thy will be done. Christ is the ultimate example of someone who perfectly obeyed the Father. He is the great paragon of submission. He submitted. He was obedient, even to the point of death on the cross.

And as a result, God highly exalted him. But there’s a second way in which we see Christ in this petition. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. And that is that because Christ has been obedient to the Father, even to the point of death on the cross, he is now exalted to the right hand of God. He’s received the reward for what he has done. And now he calls us to be his servants. Christ is, he has purchased us with his own blood. He’s paid for our sins with a price. And so therefore we’re not our own, but we belong to him. And so we must glorify Christ in our bodies.

It is truly encouraging to think about the way in which the Apostle Paul so often referred to himself as a bondservant of Christ Jesus. In many of his epistles, he’ll say that. For example, Romans, the very first verse of Romans 1, Paul, a bondservant of Christ Jesus.

He’s a servant of Christ. That’s how he views himself. He views himself as being a servant of the exalted Christ because Christ paid for all of the sins and purchased him with his blood. And Paul, of course, isn’t just thinking of this purely in terms of, well, he’s an apostle. And so, well, that would apply to him as an apostle. He also applies that to us as Christians. We’ve been looking at this verse in Ephesians.

I’ve mentioned it a couple of times already, but in Ephesians 6, the context is that Paul is addressing literal slaves who are Christians in the church, and he’s exhorting them to view themselves as bondservants of Christ, just the way he does. Of course, they have a different calling than he does. He’s an apostle, they’re not, but it’s the same idea that whatever God has called them to do, they are to view themselves as bondservants of Christ.

It is very clarifying to think of this issue of submission to God’s will in terms of being a servant of Christ, because that changes the motivation, doesn’t it? Instead of it just being, I have to obey God, I have to obey God, it’s, wow, I get to obey this Savior who graciously loved me and paid for all my sins with his precious blood, who purchased me, who has now redeemed me from the tyranny of the devil, has brought me into his kingdom, and so I am his servant. I am delivered from the bondage to Satan and to sin, that was my former servitude, and I’ve been transferred to this new service, this new servanthood that is a glorious and a wonderful and liberating service, a service of joy. Again, going back to Calvin’s motto. He’s offering his heart to the Lord willingly to serve him. He’s not doing it in a begrudging way. He’s not eating his vegetables. He’s not holding his nose. He is lovingly serving this gracious master who has purchased him with his own blood.

Fulfilling One’s Calling

The second part of the Heidelberg Catechism asks God to “help everyone to carry out his office and calling.” This introduces a further aspect of God’s preceptive will. Beyond the moral commands that apply to everyone, God gives each person particular offices and callings.

It’s really a subcategory under the second. It’s part of the preceptive will of God, but it’s slightly different because it differs based upon who you are. Paul was called to be an apostle by the will of God. But the servants, the slaves in Ephesus that Paul was addressing, they were not called to be apostles, but they were called still to be bondservants of Christ.

We all have our own office and calling. And so part of this prayer then is not only are we praying that we would be submissive to God’s preceptive will, God’s moral will, that we would abstain from sin and that we would seek to glorify God in our lives, but it’s also related to this whole issue of our fulfilling our callings, the callings that God has placed upon us.

For example, in 1 Corinthians chapter 7, Paul, this is that whole chapter that deals with marriage and singleness, but in that context he doesn’t just deal with marriage and singleness, he also talks about other issues too. He talks about if you were called to be a Christian when you were circumcised, then he says don’t seek to be uncircumcised. If you’re called as a slave, don’t seek to be free. He covers other areas of vocation and calling besides simply the issue of marriage and singleness.

He says each has his own gift from God, one of one kind, one of another. Let each person lead the life that the Lord has assigned to him and to which God has called him. That’s why in many of the epistles, like in his letter to the Ephesians and to the Colossians, he has a section near the end where he says, parents, fathers, mothers, slaves, masters, husbands, wives. He calls out the different types of people in the congregation based upon their distinct gifts and callings, that each person lead the life that the Lord has assigned to him and to which God has called him.

Sometimes our calling may not be a lifelong thing, like I’ve been called for my life to be an apostle, or I’ve been called to serve the Lord in this particular career. Sometimes it can even be a season of our lives. Sometimes we’re called to endure unique circumstances for a season.

We see this, for example, in 1 Peter. 1 Peter is addressed to a congregation that’s either enduring suffering right now, and hostility from the pagans around them, or is about to. And one of the things that Peter talks about is that they should suffer if that is God’s will. They should suffer according to God’s will, that might be their calling to suffer for a season.

This idea of calling and office and this other element of the preceptive will of God that has to do with God’s calling in our lives or the assignment that God has given to us, it may not be a lifelong thing. It may be even different seasons of our lives. For one season of our life, we might be called to be in this particular career or in this particular station of life. But then for another season of life, it may be different.

Every believer is to seek to discern God’s vocational will for them. It isn’t spelled out in Scripture. The Bible doesn’t say, I want you, Matthew, to do this particular thing, and I want you, Lee, to do that particular thing. Scripture reveals the moral will of God. It gives us the Ten Commandments.

It gives us a large circle of things that are permissible, but within that circle there are many legitimate options, and it depends on the individual. Should I get married or not? And if I should get married, should I marry this person or that person? Should I pursue this career or that? And all of this takes sanctified wisdom.

Paul talks about this in Ephesians 5 and verses 15 to 17. He says, look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise, but as wise. So he’s saying you’ve got to walk with wisdom because this issue takes wisdom. It’s not just obvious. It’s not just very clear that, oh, thou shalt not commit adultery, I know not to do that. It’s within that sphere of what is permissible, there are many options, and it takes wisdom to figure out what God wants us to do. Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of the time, because the days are evil. Therefore do not be foolish, But understand. Don’t be foolish, but be wise. Understand what the will of the Lord is.

Paul says something similar in Romans 12:2: “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.”

We don’t need wisdom to discern the Ten Commandments. We don’t need wisdom to discern what is right from wrong. We know that, although sometimes it does take wisdom in specific applications, maybe specific issues where it’s not entirely clear how to apply the moral law. But that’s not what Paul’s getting at here in Romans 12 verse 2. He’s saying we need the Lord to renew our minds, to fill us with the Spirit so that we can be full of wisdom, so that we can test and discern what is the will of God and what is good and acceptable and perfect.

Discerning a Calling

When making a major decision about marriage, work, or another calling, several questions can help us discern God’s will.

First of all, you need to ask, is it morally permissible? That’s the circle of the moral will of God, the Ten Commandments. So if it’s not morally permissible, then obviously that rules that out. But now we still have this big circle of things within that are permissible, so we need to narrow it down.

Second, do I think it is more likely to hinder or advance the kingdom of God? Do not make decisions solely on personal preference or selfish gain; consider whether the choice will further the glory of Christ and his kingdom.

Third, is it compatible with how God made me and my unique personality, desires, and aptitudes? You need to know yourself. God made you as the person that you are. And that’s part of his revelation of his will to you. If he made you with certain personality, desires, and aptitudes, he’s not going to call you to something that’s completely alien to that.

Fourth, do I have the means and ability to carry it out? If you don’t have the means and the ability, let’s say financial resources or whatever it might be, then that might be an indication that God is not calling you to do it. Do I have the means and ability to carry it out? Fifth, am I committed to doing it for the long haul, even when things get tough?

That’s part of what a calling is. When the Apostle Paul was called to be an apostle to the Gentiles, it wasn’t all just rainbows and butterflies. He had to do some difficult things. He had to deal with conflict and struggle, and he had to persevere through that to fulfill his calling.

If you have a calling from God, he will also give you the desire and commitment to continue when hardship arises and events do not go as planned. Knowing that this is what God wants you to do gives strength to persevere.

Sixth, does it have the blessing of the godly and wise people that God has placed in my life? This may include your parents, the elders of your church, or your spouse. Have mature Christians considered your reasoning and affirmed that the choice is wise, or are they skeptical? Their concern might be a warning sign.

Seventh, does it fit with the circumstances in which God has providentially placed me? God’s providence up to this point in your life is not without meaning. The responsibilities he has given you, the trials he has brought you through, your education, and the situations you have experienced are all part of his providential guidance. The next step should ordinarily follow the course along which God has already been leading you.

It should not be wholly disconnected from God’s prior providence. A river follows a channel rather than suddenly flying off in a completely different direction. In the same way, do not ignore the circumstances through which God has guided your life. Consider how the decision fits within them.

Finally, pray about the decision. We need both wisdom to discern God’s will and willingness to submit to it. Bring the choice honestly before your heavenly Father. Ask whether you can seek his blessing upon it and sincerely pray, “Your will be done.”

Prayer often brings clarity. We cannot ask God to bless sin, but we can wrestle honestly with competing responsibilities, desires, and uncertainties. As we lay them before him, he uses Scripture, sanctified wisdom, godly counsel, and providence to guide us.

Thus we pray: “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” We ask for minds wise enough to discern his calling and hearts ready to obey it promptly and sincerely.