I
Already we have seen the Paternoster to be no string of unrelated petitions, brought together without premeditated design, but a symmetrical structure, framed with exquisite skill. And, at this point, let us pause for a moment to observe the manner in which in this first part of the Prayer each sentence leads logically to the next. We begin by praying that God’s revelation of Himself may be held in perfect awe and reverence. What can stir that awe and reverence in the hearts of men? That they should live in a radiant sense of God, in a consciousness of His all-pervading realm and its claims; in other words, that they should be within His Kingdom. In order, therefore, that His name may be hallowed rightly, we ask that His Kingdom may come. What, again, will make that coming possible? By what means shall men become sure of God, how grow convinced that the doctrine of His Kingdom is true? There is only one way. They must do His will. “If any man shall do the will of God, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God” (John 7:17). “Not every one that saith unto Me, Lord, Lord shall enter into the Kingdom of Heaven, but he that doeth the will” (Matt. 7:21). It is, then, in logical sequence to praying “Thy Kingdom come” that we pray next “Thy will be done.” And thus the more closely we examine the structure of the Prayer, the more, I am sure, shall we discern its beauty and revere the wisdom which contrived it.
Perhaps some of us may need to guard ourselves against a misunderstanding of all this first part of the Lord’s Prayer, which is, I think, rather common. To phrase it crudely, many people say the words in the sense of expressing a pious hope that God will work out His Purposes while mankind gratefully or submissively looks on. The idea of their petitions is that of asking God to cause His Name to be hallowed, and establish His Kingdom and do His will. But Divine power, by its own law, can do none of these thing without the co-operation of human effort. These first sentences of the Paternoster are not just so many requests that things may be done. They are prayers that with God’s help, we may do things. We ask that we, and our fellow-men may hallow the name, that in and by us the Kingdom may come, that by us God’s will may be done. And most of all, perhaps, in relation with the last of the three petitions does this truth need to be kept in mind. When people say “God’s will be done,” they mean, as a rule, that if something they dislike is to befall them, they will try to bear it patiently. Although it is not what they would have chosen, nevertheless let God accomplish His purpose. There are special circumstances, no doubt, when this may be a most right and noble prayer. But, when made generally, it is apt to give the effect of a bewildered and not quite unresentful acquiescence. Of this an unfortunate example is supplied by a well-known hymn. Its suggestion – which, obviously, its writer cannot have intended – is that God multiplies misfortunes on those that love Him; the stanzas are a kind of catalogue of calamities, and on each follows the refrain, “Thy will be done.” Much might be said of the harm wrought by such teaching. The one point, however, which concerns us here is that it misunderstands strangely the petition of the Lord’s Prayer, which we have now to consider. As Jesus taught us to use them, the words “Thy will be done” are not a prayer for passive resignation. They are a prayer for active service. They do not mean chiefly “May God do His will,” but “May we do God’s will.” And we ask that we may do it, not of constraint but of choice; even as the angels do it, not because they must, but because they love. “As in heaven, so on earth.”
II
To be sure that we interpret rightly this, as the other sentences of the Paternoster, we must needs turn not to any author of hymns, not to any great saint whose asceticism may have tinged the Christian thought of his time, but to the words and example of Jesus Himself. And both these show that the supreme purpose of His life was ever to do the will of the Father. “My meat is to do the will of Him that sent Me” (John 4:34). “I seek not mine own will, but the will of Him that sent Me” (John 5:30). “For I am come down from heaven, not to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent Me” (John 6:38). With this repeated emphasis He insists upon the fact: “to do the will” – not merely to bear, but to do – “of Him that sent Me” is His own definition of His ministry. And He bids men have the same aim: that one shall be admitted to the Kingdom who “does the will of My Father” (Matt. 7:21); they who strive for it are recognized as His spiritual kindred: “Whosoever shall do the will of God, the same is my brother, and my sister, and mother” (Matt. 12:50).
As Christ thus plainly set before Himself the doing of the Father’s will as His purpose, as he insisted repeatedly that the active doing of the will is the test of true discipleship, we may wonder how the sentence from his Prayer came to be misunderstood, and weakened into a profession of patient submission. The answer lies, no doubt, in the wrong sense people have attached to the words spoken in the garden of Gethsemane. “Not as I will, but as Thou wilt” (Matt. 26:39), He cried to the Father, and used again the very phrase He had taught others to use, “Thy will be done” (Matt. 26:42). This has been taken popularly to mean in effect, that, He desired the Father’s purpose to be worked out, while the Son bowed to it submissively. Thus the sentence has been accounted a prayer for the spirit of patience, for fortitude to bear, for uncomplaining resignation. But this is, if not a quite false, at least a quite inadequate, view. When Jesus prayed “Thy will be done,” in Gethsemane, He would not have ended the sentence “Thy will be done by Thee,” but “Thy will be done by Me.”
Then, with supreme resolve in that supreme hour, He bent Himself anew to the task. There was but a short space left before the Crucifixion, yet there were ways still in which the Father’s will might be done. And it is well for us to notice what has been termed “the animation of our Lord’s surrender,” the passion of His Passion. He did not merely accept what came; up to the very end He sought eagerly for opportunities of ministering, as the Father willed, to the souls of men. Even on the Cross there were murderers to be prayed for, and a penitent to be pardoned, and a mother to be sheltered, and at the last He was able – as none else ever has been able – to cry, “It is finished” (John 19:30). All was complete. The Father’s will was done.
III
Therefore the words and deeds of Jesus show quite plainly what He had in mind when He bade His disciples use this sentence of His Prayer. They were to ask that they might follow the rule of life which had been His own, and dedicate themselves without reserve to doing the will of God. Through men united by that aim would the Kingdom come. We need often, and then may ask fitly, a submissive spirit, resignation to bear trials the reason of which lies beyond our understanding. Yet in the Paternoster that for which we ask God’s help is not that we may bear, but that we may do; that we may have insight to recognize our opportunities of service and strength to use them. The thought could not be summarized better than it is in one of the Prayer-book collects [col-lect: Anglican prayer], which asks for God’s people “that they may both perceive and know what things they ought to do, and also may have grace and power faithfully to fulfil the same.”
Nothing, perhaps, so helps us to measure the difference in scope and value between the “negative” and “positive” interpretations of this petition as to ponder the results could we attain, in this stage, the life of the prayer’s perfect fulfillment. Were that achieved when “Thy will be done” is given its common “negative” meaning, patience would be complete. There would be no murmuring against the decrees of Providence. We should bear readily whatever of strain or burden was imposed upon us by God. Ours would be that trusting spirit of submission for which our saying of the words is popularly supposed to ask. That would bring, no doubt, some real gain, provided that we did not ascribe to God sufferings actually due to our own fault or to the malignant powers of evil. At best, though, how small the gain would seem when set beside the fulfillment of “Thy will be done” in its positive sense! First, for our individual selves, it would mean that every one of us had an immensely simplified life. Every moment of it would be controlled by one law, the doing of God’s will. We should care for this, and for nothing else. Thereby we should escape the tangle of rival motives, and achieve something of that serene tranquillity with which the unhurried Master moved from one day to another, from one task to the next. To be singly bent on doing the will of God is to know the secret of His composure.
Or, think, again, of the result on our common life. How vastly its quarrels and acerbities would be lessened! Differences of opinion, no doubt, would remain, due as they are to diversities of temperament and education and experience. But our social problems would be faced in a new spirit. In a sense, our “unhappy divisions,” ecclesiastical or political, need not be unhappy at all, but rather a sign of life. Truth will ever remain greater than any one individual’s, or party’s, powers of perception; each will see some aspect which is invisible to others. The existence of “divisions,” (1 Cor.) then, is a sign that our beliefs are honest, that we are trying to see as much as we can of truth for ourselves. What is “unhappy” is the spirit of rancor between those honestly divided, not the divisions themselves. And rancor must vanish between those, of views however divergent, who are united by a common effort to fulfil this petition of the Lord’s Prayer.
Let us take a concrete example. Suppose – it needs a little imagination, unhappily – some great industrial dispute to be in progress. At length (it should be at the start) representatives of the two sides are brought together for conference. As things are now, probably each side is anxious for a victory, or, at best, for a settlement which keeps as much and gives as little as is necessary for some sort of workable compromise. But suppose that the representatives of the two parties met with the one desire, not to score a victory, not to patch up some kind of working compromise, but to do the will of God? Suppose that their first act was to pray together “Thy will be done,” and that then they set themselves resolutely to see how they could accomplish this? It would remain for them, obviously, to decide what way God’s will pointed, and often this would be interpreted at first with marked differences. But soon – incredibly soon, as the world would judge – those who had met in the spirit, had prayed together that they might do God’s will, and had put aside all lower aims, would find themselves guided into agreement. This may seem a fantastic picture. There would be nothing impossible in it were ours in truth a Christian country, or even if all those who habitually pray “Thy will be done” felt and obeyed the real meaning of the words.
Imagine once more this same motive to control international councils, so that the question asked by each nation was not “How can we consolidate our realms? ” “How can we achieve security?” “How can we foster our trade?” – but, “How can we do God’s will?” Again a far-off vision! Yet it is only along that road that the world will arrive at real peace, when the ideals of Christ are seen to be practical wisdom, when this sentence of the Lord’s Prayer becomes not merely the aspiration of our lips, but the one purpose of our deeds, and with an earnestness undaunted by failures, no matter how many, we set ourselves to hallow God’s Name, to build His Kingdom, and to do His will – on earth, even as in Heaven.