Question 103

Thy will be done—Connecting the previous Question with the present, Calvin says, “The most important part of God’s kingdom lies in His will being done.” Divines have drawn out the Scripture doctrine of the Divine Will under such heads as His decretive and preceptive, absolute and conditional will. The text deals with God’s preceptive will, or, as it has already been termed in the Catechism, His “revealed will.”

by his grace—Larger Catechism, “by His Spirit.” (See also Answer 20, Shorter Catechism.)

would make us able and willing to know, obey, and submit to his will—God’s will is good as God Himself is good, and He desires and commands us to imitate Him in our volitions as well as our actions. But a corruption and curse have fallen upon us, such that we naturally and necessarily will and wish that which is evil. We cannot help it. We may struggle against it, but we struggle in vain. It is the cross of our inner life that our will is so naturally, spontaneously, and unconquerably selfish and proud, inhumane and ungodly. It fills us with guilt and bondage; it wrings from our hearts groanings that cannot be uttered. It is not that we cannot see to the depth of things and to the issue of events. That sometimes causes division of mind and disharmony of will between man and man, and between man and God. But after all allowance is made for limitation of understanding and imperfection of judgment, there remains a terrible mystery of iniquity, an insoluble and inexpugnable mystery of evil in our heart. And it is into our mouth who are thus sin-mastered and sin-tormented that our Lord has put this penitential and submissive prayer. But apart from this evil opposition to the will of God there is another manner of occasional opposition which gives opportunity for the offering of this filial prayer. Every human will has two kinds of operation, one instinctive and spontaneous, and another instructed and deliberate. Now, the instinctive operations of my will may, without any vice in it or any blame to me, be opposed to the will and purpose of God concerning me. It may be so opposed for a season, yet without sin. It may be so opposed till my better will, my spiritually reinforced and instructed will comes forward to reduce and silence all opposition, and to choose and cause immediate and entire submission. We see all this finely illustrated in our Lord Himself, as the conflicting operations of His will are set before us in the gospel history. His will, acting naturally and instinctively, turned away with deep horror and strong recoil from His coming death, and especially from the curse that in His case accompanied death. But the next moment His nobler will, His will instructed and deliberate, resolved and devoted, put itself with all its weaknesses and fears into His Father’s hand. If I may say so, our Lord made a kind of correction and retractation of His first prayer of agony. Nature, oppressed and overwhelmed nature, had the first alarmed and astonied word, but grace and the Sonship soon had the second. The God of grace is first the God of nature, and nature has her dues before Him, her dues which He will not deny. And one of the dearest and most necessary of her dues is just her permission to recoil from and appeal against suffering and death. And our Lord is our ensample in nature as well as in grace. Let us be ready to imitate and follow Him in both; and if in the recoil and appeal of nature, then also in the surrender and victory of faith when our Gethsemane receives us, and our full cup approaches us.

in all things—“We pretend,” says a Puritan preacher, “to do God’s will in the general, but when we come to particulars we stick at it.” It is an excellent and profitable exercise to learn to reduce this large and general petition into its parts and particulars; into the particular drops that fill our cup, and the particular pains produced by our cross.

as the angels do in heaven. “The angels,” says the hundred and third Psalm, “that excel in strength, do His commandments, hearkening to the voice of His word.” And Dante, who was caught up into the heavenly places, reports to us that he heard the mighty ranks of the angelic and glorified hosts singing—

“As we from step to step
Are placed throughout this kingdom, pleases all,
E’en as our King, who in us plants his will;
And in his will is our tranquillity.”

That is to say, there is no rebellion, no disappointment, no discontent, no envy among the angelic hosts. Gabriel and Michael may be summoned into their Sovereign’s presence, and taken into His counsels, and sent down to earth on the most glorious of errands, and those who are not so summoned, and trusted, and rewarded, feel no bitterness, and entertain no malice toward their more honoured and promoted brethren. And as God’s holy angels are, such are His glorified saints. He in them also plants His will, and in His will is their tranquillity. Each saint occupies and fills, and is occupied and filled with the place prepared for him in his Father’s house. They aspire to no higher place than that He appoints them, and they humble themselves to no lower. And it is amid the ambitions, contentions, envies, jealousies, and detractions of this life that we are permitted and enabled to offer our submissive supplications, and say, “Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven.’

“Touching angels which are spirits immaterial and intellectual, the glorious inhabitants of those sacred palaces, where nothing but light and blessed immortality, no shadow of matter for tears, discontentments, griefs, and uncomfortable passions to work upon, but all joy, tranquillity, and peace, even for ever and ever doth dwell: as in number and order they are huge, mighty, and royal armies, so likewise in perfection of obedience unto that law, which the Highest, whom they adore, love, and imitate, hath imposed upon them. Such observants are they thereof, that our Saviour Himself, being to set down the perfect ideal of that which we are to wish and pray for on earth, did not teach to pray or wish for more than only that here it might be with us as with them it is in heaven” (Hooker). Isaac Walton tells us that when this great divine was on his deathbed, “Dr. Saravia visited him, and found him deep in contemplation, and not inclined to discourse, which gave the doctor occasion to inquire his present thoughts, to which Hooker replied ‘that he was meditating the nature and number of angels, and their blessed obedience and order, without which peace could not be in heaven; and oh that it might be so on earth!’”

Uses

Robert Traill says, “Learn to pray moderately and modestly;” and Jeremy Taylor, writing on the same subject, says, “For spiritual blessings let our prayers be particularly importunate, perpetual, and persevering; for temporal blessings let them be generally short, conditional, and modest.”
“Give up thy ways to God. It is not in man to direct his own steps. It is God that must direct them for thee, for He works all things according to His will. If any man in the world, if his understanding and will were a rule to mine, and I knew he were infallible, I would certainly go give up all my ways to what he saith. As you say you must be ruled by him that bears the purse, so must you be ruled by him that bears the understanding” (Goodwin).
“The firmest hold of theological truth is gained by habits of personal religion. When men begin all their works with the thought of God, acting for His sake and to fulfil His will, when they ask His blessing on themselves and their life, pray to Him for the objects they desire, and see Him in the event, whether it be according to their prayers or not, they will find that everything that happens tends to confirm them in the truths about Him which live in their imagination, varied and unearthly as those truths may be” (Grammar of Assent).

Questions

Study in connection, Ps. xl. 8; John ix. 31, vi. 38; Matt. xxvi. 39; Larger Catechism, Question 192; Confession ix. with Macpherson’s notes; and Dante, Par. iii.
Give outstanding examples of submission to the Divine Will in Scripture.
Explain the utterance of a great preacher dealing with this topic: Prayer is one thing, petition is another; and that life is most holy in which there is least of petition and desire.
In illustration of the text commit to memory and ponder the following lines:—

As we from step to step
Are placed throughout this kingdom, pleases all,
E’en as our King, who in us plants his will;
And in his will is our tranquillity.—Dante.

We, ignorant of ourselves,
Beg often our own harms, which the wise Powers
Deny us for our good.—Shakespeare.

Still raise for good the supplicating voice,
But leave to heaven the measure and the choice.—Pope.

Grant us not the ill
We blindly ask; in very love refuse
Whate’er Thou knowest our weakness would abuse.—Keble.

Thus God grants prayer, but in His love
Makes times and ways His own.—Newman.