Matthew 6:10

10. Thy kingdom Thy dominion over all hearts and souls. Come By our willing submission to it, and by its universal spread. In this petition, truly offered, we do truly submit to God; we do truly give him our hearts, and are consequently truly Christians. Thy will be done Thy laws be obeyed; thy commandments be executed. A class of commentators make a distinction, for which there is little ground, between the revealed will and the secret will of God. Thus Professor Owen, in his Commentary, says: “His secret will or purpose is being accomplished at all times and in all places of his dominion.” If this be true, then all the vices, crimes, and abominations of fiends and the most wicked wretches, though forbidden by the law of God, are in accordance with “his secret will!” What is this, but to make a hypocrite of the most holy God? What is it, but to make him will the wickedness of the sinner, that he may damn him? What is it, but to make God the original determiner of all sin; and therefore the responsible author of all sin; and therefore, again, the only real sinner in the universe?

In earth as it is in heaven And thereby men would be as obedient as angels, and the earth would be a counterpart of heaven.

The phrase, in earth, clearly indicates the expectation that obedience to God’s will, bringing on the coming of his kingdom, should overspread the earth. This universal hope is placed in the very body of this universal prayer. It is instinct with the very life of missionary enterprise. That kingdom is to be introduced, not by the convulsion of the world’s dissolution, but by the submission of all hearts to its extending sway. The Church, therefore, cannot pray this clause of the divine prayer in the full spirit of its power, without becoming a missionary Church. In this petition is the concentrated germ of all holy enterprise, of all aggressive energy, of all Christian sacrifice; for the conversion of men, for the blessing of the race, and for the recalling of an apostate world to God.