New Living Translation (NLT)
9 Pray like this:
Our Father in heaven,
may Your name be kept holy.
10 May Your Kingdom come soon.
May Your will be done on earth,
as it is in heaven.
11 Give us today the food we need,
12 and forgive us our sins,
as we have forgiven those who sin against us.
13 And don’t let us yield to temptation,
but rescue us from the evil one.
At the onset, it is common mistake to treat the latter part of verse 10 as 2 separate halves. In the greek language it is actually one sentence with a brief interjection, more like this comma you just read. More important though is the need to understand where the interjection comes - it is not after the word done; it is after the word earth. This drastically changes the way we read the verse as it then becomes Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven rather than Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven; the latter being the way the mission school i attended as a child (as i'm sure many others) teach their kids the Lord's prayer. However, just for the purposes of understanding this verse better; we will break it down and join it all together again.
May Your Will be Done on Earth
1 John 2: 17 (NLT) says: "And this world is fading away, along with everything that people crave. But anyone who does what pleases God will live forever." What does it mean to please God? The noun used in the greek 'thelema' is actually from the root verb 'thelo' which carries the meaning 'to will, wish or purpose.' The same word when used as a noun however carries forward an additional set of meanings; giving us translations like 'desire, pleasure.' In terms of usage, the noun is used to express the meaning of desire / pleasure much more than the root verb meaning (especially in the Septuagint) - hence the NLT translation. Interestingly enough the same noun form is used Mathew 26:42 when Jesus prays to the Father in the garden of Gethsemane asking Him to take away his suffering but ultimately states "Not my will, but yours be done."
But in the usage of this noun we see the deep seated meaning of what it means to please God - doing His will. Because in terms of pleasing God in the light of Col. 1:10, as we are increasingly filled with the knowledge of God's will, we can walk in a way that increasingly pleases Him. John Piper tied it all down in this sentence - "God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him." He couldn't have been more profound because as the scripture tells us in Psalms 40: 8 "I take joy in doing your will, my God, for your instructions are written on my heart.” Even Jesus echoes this way of living as He makes it abundantly clear that His nourishment came from doing the will of God in John 4:34, 5:30, 6:38.
What does this mean to us as believers? After all we are taking about God, the creator of the universe(s) as we know them. The angelic host wait at His beck and call even though He is a God who creates, does and works by speaking His word. Everything in the universe(s) moves to the tune of His voice and will. Who are you and i to defy His will?
May Your Will be Done on Earth, as it is in Heaven
Herein lies the depth of this statement. To the God who is the creator of all and knows each of us by name, we are praying that His will be done on earth like it is in Heaven right now! To draw us back to the previous post for a bit - we talked about how God's Kingdom is here and now but not in a perfect manner. So us praying May Your Kingdom Come Soon signifies us asking Him and yearning for His Kingdom to grow in all the earth so that there is no corner where His dominion doesn't hold good. It is only when this happens that His will would be executed perfectly all across the earth; just like it is in heaven right now.
Again drawing reference to the previous article, we are actually asking for God to extend His Kingdom into all our hearts. By asking Him to extend His influence in perfection to the depth of what makes us human; we are in essence asking Him to enable us to submit ourselves completely to His dominion and therefore will.
That is a powerful thing to ask - for anybody. For we asking God our creator to take us whole and do His will in and through us. We are in essence then asking like Paul (or the author of Romans) directed us for the Lord to take us as living sacrifice as we offer ourselves in whole to Him. And we need to be careful when we make such statements, for God takes them pretty seriously even as the psalmist puts it in Psalms 19:14.
Let us be careful when we pray again "May Your Will be Done on Earth, as it is in Heaven," for it entails surrendering our whole being for Him to do as He wills. May the good Lord give us the grace we so need to live in this manner.
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