“‘Thy will be done.’ But a great deal of it is to be done by God’s creatures; including me. The petition, then, is not merely that I may patiently suffer God’s will but also that I may vigorously do it. I must be an agent as well as a patient. I am asking that I may be enabled to do it.” (C. S. Lewis)
Lewis sees a helpful distinction between two kinds of obedience: active and passive. These two kinds of obedience correspond to two expressions of God’s will. One actively (responsively) obeys God’s revealed will (a.k.a., his moral or declarative will). For example, when God commands us to love one another, then our love is the active obedience to his command. On the other hand, one passively (receptively) obeys God’s secret will (a.k.a., his providential or decretal will). For example, when it is God’s will that we suffer hardship for the sake of discipline, then our submissive acceptance of our circumstances is passive obedience. Jesus alone is perfect in both active and passive obedience; he has always and fully kept all his Father’s commandments, and he submitted himself entirely to his Father’s will even when it meant his death on the cross.
When we pray, “Your will be done,” it is both a submission of our own wills to God (passive obedience) and a request for our further sanctification (active obedience). In this petition is an implicit confession: we do not want what God wants. We are not, by sinful nature, given to obeying God. We pray this way because, somehow, at some level, we want to want what God’s wants. Somehow, we’re acknowledging that his will is better than ours. We don’t do his will, but we want to do it, because we trust that it is good. We don’t just want to do his will reluctantly, but happily, vigorously. If we are to delight in doing God’s will, he is going to have to grant it as an answer to this prayer. He is going to have to realign our wills with his own. So we look for those points where his will feels like a contradiction to our wills, and we pray for him to enable us to submit to him at those points. We are praying against our own nature as sinners opposed to his will. The fact that we would pray this way at all is a miraculous work of God’s Spirit—and a bit paradoxical!
How is this petition connected to Jesus’ prayer in Gethsemane, “Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me; nevertheless, not my will, but yours, be done” (Luke 22:42)? How is this petition connected to our repentance? Do you believe that God’s moral will is good? His providential will? Always better than your own? Why should you believe that God’s will is good? Why would we think God’s will is good, and ask for it to be done, yet still struggle to submit to it? What are some particular points in your own life where you wrestle with God’s moral or providential will, and need God to answer this petition? Are you discouraged or encouraged by the reality of this struggle in your life, and why?
