Your will means the kingdom of God is personal. The kingdom of God: God “takes it personal”! We are talking about what God wants, intends, desires, is passionate about. Delights in. Cares about and is invested in—invested to the cost of a cross and the patient superintendence of history.
Don’t take seriously God’s kingdom, and you are offending God personally. God’s kingdom is God’s will—the will of the Father, the passion of the Son, the personal project of the Holy Spirit.
Be done. These are the next words, and in fact they are one word in the Greek. “Let it come about,” it means, much like in Genesis 1, “Let there be … ” But now humans are heavily invested and engaged in all the complex contingencies of the coming of the kingdom of God. This also is part of God’s will.
So, “your will be done” means: Let everything on earth be in fact, visibly, according to your purpose and plan, your wise shalom.
On earth. Two more key words. From a biblical standpoint, this is totally obvious: God’s whole plan is that things should be on earth consistent with the way they are in heaven. In other words: That things run on earth consistently with God’s own life and character.
Biblically, this is obvious, I say. For most Christians today, it seems not so obvious. God’s will done in heaven? Of course! So let’s all go there! But God’s will done on earth? Well—that seems kind of iffy. But at least we can, hope, I suppose …
No! Jesus is serious. Deathly serious. He says: Pray constantly that God’s will be done on earth as in heaven. Pray constantly that my disciples actually put into practice everything I am teaching you, as Jesus stresses in the Great Commission.
What Jesus is saying and praying, actually, is: May everything promised in the book of Isaiah and other high-point Old Testament prophecies actually come about now, in our history.
The final phrase: As it is in heaven. Now, our tendency is to think split-level here. So we tend to think: Heaven is the perfect place, where it’s easy to imagine everything running perfectly on God’s software, with no glitches or hacking. But here on earth? Things are really messed up; probably beyond repair. God just isn’t that great a software engineer.
Biblically, of course, this is wrong. Jesus’ project is precisely about God’s will being implemented and incarnated on earth as in heaven. Or better, more fully: Jesus’ project is the marriage of heaven and earth; the great Marriage Supper of the Lamb; all things in heaven and earth reconciled, so that truly we inhabit a new heaven and new earth. “All things made new” rather than taking the last exit from earth to heaven.