“The Lord’s Prayer. ‘Thy Will Be Done’”
How different the Lord’s Kingdom is from the kingdoms of this world, we found in our talk about it last week. The kingdoms of this world are gained and held and ruled, not by love, but by force. The power of the nations is measured by the size of their armies and navies, and the number and deadliness of their weapons of warfare, And the laws that they make have to be “enforced” by magistrates and police courts, and prisons and punishments for those who do not obey them. This is the only way that the kings of this world can cause their will to be done.
But in the Kingdom of God it is not so. “God is love; His nature, His law, is love;” and this is the power by which He does His will. Remember the text we quoted last week, showing that “the kingdom of God is within you.” When we let Him reign within us, we can say as Jesus did, “Thy law to within My heart.”
“Out of the heart are the issues of life,” God’s Word tells us. The life blood from the heart carries life to every part of our bodies; so when the law is in the heart, all our members will be “instruments of righteousness unto God.” He will rule our whole bodies by His law of love, and use our hands, our feet, our tongues, and all our members, to do His own sweet and holy will. “For it is God that worketh in you both to will and to do of His good pleasure.”
And since He is love, “His good pleasure” will always be our highest good and happiness, and the blessing and helping of others through us. So shall we not say, as Jesus, “I delight to do Thy will, O my God; yea, Thy law is within my heart”?
Jesus has taught us to pray, “Thy will be done on earth, as it is done in heaven.” So if we would know how God’s will is to be done on earth, we must see how it is done in heaven. In the book of Ezekiel we have a picture of the Kingdom of God, a description of His living throne, which shows us the nature of His Kingdom, and how His will is perfectly done in heaven.
After describing the different living creatures that form the throne, Ezekiel says, “Whithersoever the Spirit was to go, they went; thither was their spirit to go; and they went every one straight forward.” That is, whatever it was the will of God that they should do, that was the only thing that they wanted to do, and they did it. They knew the will of God, they delighted in it, and they did it.
Then the prophet explains how this was by saying: “For the Spirit of life was in them.” The Spirit of God’s own life filling these living creatures makes them know and do His will perfectly, and delight in it.
And this is the only thing that makes it possible for the will of God now to be done in us as it is in heaven. In the eighth chapter of Romans we learn that the only way for us to do His will is to be filled with “the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus,” and then “the righteousness of the law may be fulfilled in us” even now. For it is His Holy Spirit that brings His Kingdom into our hearts, and puts His laws there, so that He rules our whole bodies, and controls all our life.
As “God is love,” His will is to make every one and everything in His Kingdom just as happy as it is possible for them to be, and to have every place beautiful and perfect, and filled with that which will give pleasure. So think what a glorious, happy time it will be when His will is as fully done on earth as it is in heaven. “And the Lord shall be King over all the earth; in that day there shall be one Lord, and His name one.”
Then sin, and all the results of sin, sickness, sorrow, pain, death—all these shall flee away. The Spirit of God shall fill all things with the knowledge of the will of God, and give them the power to do it. The animals will be peaceful and gentle, so that the wolf and the lamb, the lion and the ox can live and feed together, and “a little child shall lead them.”
How the loving heart of God must long for this happy time when His will shall be done on earth as in heaven. Shall we not pray more earnestly than before “Thy Kingdom come,”
“And sum up all our prayers in one
When we pray, ‘Thy will be done.’”
The Present Truth – December 6, 1900
E. J. Waggoner