The eternal and only blessed God, out of sovereign goodness, has created heaven and earth and all their hosts. He preserves them in their essence and motions by His omnipotent, omniscient (as far as each creature is concerned), efficacious, and all-encompassing influence. “Who … upholding all things by the word of His power” (Heb 1:3); “By Him all things consist” (Col 1:17). Furthermore, He is also the lawgiver of His rational creatures—men: “For the Lord is our Judge, the Lord is our lawgiver” (Isa 33:22).
Among all creatures upon earth, only man knows God as Creator, preserver, ruler, and lawgiver. When man was still in the state of rectitude, he joyously acknowledged the majesty, supremacy, and other perfections of the Lord. He beheld these perfections by reason of the immediate revelation of God to the soul, as well as by observing the creatures and God’s operations in them. He was conscious of his dependency upon His Maker, submitted himself to Him as lawgiver, and with a joyful willingness did everything the Lord required from him. He knew of no other will but the Lord’s will, for His law was imprinted in his nature—not only as a rule, but it was natural to him, he being a law unto himself.
However, after the fall everything in man has been reversed and corrupted. Even though he may be conscious and knowledgeable of his obligations toward God, he nevertheless separates himself from God, rejects the law of his Lord, lives according to his own rule, allows himself to be guided by his lusts, and declares himself to be his own master. By his very conduct he declares: “Who is the Lord, that I should obey His voice … I know not the Lord” (Exod 5:2); “Who is Lord over us” (Ps 12:4).
When God converts a person, however, his own will is most burdensome and grievous to himself. He hates it, strives against it, and would extract it by its very root if he were able to. He loves the will of God, and to do this will would be all his desire and delight. Yes, since he loves God, it is his desire that not only he, but that all men would acknowledge, honor, and fear God in His majesty and sovereign rule, and be obedient to Him. Since he knows that both he and all other men are unworthy, impotent, and incapable of this, and that such obedience is a gracious gift of God, he therefore avails himself of prayer and prays in humility, “Thy will be done,” doing so in accordance with what the Lord Jesus has prescribed in the third petition.
This petition consists of two parts. First, there is the matter requested: “Thy will be done.” Secondly, there is the manner in which this will is to be done: “On earth as it is in heaven.”
The Subject of this Petition: The Revealed Will of God
Relative to the matter requested, there is 1) the subject: Thy will; and 2) the activity requested: be done.
The address “Our Father,” etc. is applicable to all petitions. The supplicant here maintains his childlike disposition and makes use of a childlike boldness to make his desire known to God as being His Father in Christ, and requesting its fulfillment. He does this, taking the lowest place, in deepest humility, and with the deepest reverence for the eminence and awe-inspiring nature of the divine majesty. While being in such a frame, the supplicant will perceive at once that his request will not attribute anything to the Lord Himself. Rather, he perceives it to be a gracious gift to man that he is permitted to behold and delight in the majesty of his God and His worthiness to be obeyed; that he is privileged to submit to Him and with joyful willingness may do that which is pleasing to Him, thus executing His will and commandments with zeal and steadfastness. He therefore requests this in such a heartfelt manner.
In regard to man, his will is a faculty of the soul which enables him to love or to hate, to be either pleased or displeased, to choose or reject—all this in accordance with the manner in which the intellect views or judges a given matter as being desirable or undesirable. However, this is not true of the will of God. We puny human beings speak of it in human terms and are to understand it in a divine sense. We are acquainted with the matter as such, but for the “how” of this truth we must close our eyes; it is incomprehensible. We know that the will of God is the willing God Himself, and this is therefore not the matter to which our petition relates here.
When we speak here of the will of God, we perceive this will as it relates to the creature. As such, it signifies that which pleases God—God’s good pleasure: “… according to the good pleasure of His will” (Eph 1:5). It can be that God Himself executes this: “But our God is in the heavens: He hath done whatsoever He hath pleased” (Ps 115:3), or that He requires this to be done by man: “… doing the will of God from the heart” (Eph 6:6).