Jesus’ Grammar

Why did Jesus use the passive voice in the Lord’s prayer? “Thy will be done ...”  (Matthew 6:10) [Scripture 4 All Linear transliteration:  Let it being become the will of You.... ]

In using the passive voice, Jesus left open to interpretation who is the actor. 

• We might interpret this as ‘Let me know and do Your will,’ or ‘Help me to do Your will’. 
• Maybe He meant we should pray that others do the Father’s will, other believers or even the Godless heathen unbelievers. Praying to the Father to make them do His will or want to do His will and then do it? 
• Or are we praying that the Father bring His will to pass, even if He needs to overrule nature and the rebellion of people against Him? 
• Doesn’t God’s sovereignty mean that that ultimately everything and everyone in the universe will conform to His will anyway? The Bible shows this to be the culmination of human history.  (Daniel 7:9-14; Revelation 20:11-15) Are we to pray for the end times, the return of Christ, and the final judgment? 

Since Jesus did not elaborate further on this topic in His prayer, we can only infer that the answer is yes to all of the above. Properly understood, His command to us is to pray, ‘Father, bring it on!’

But Jesus did say something related. “For Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory...” (Matthew 6:13) God’s glory is unconditional. Everything that He does is perfect, holy, and loving. The manifestation of His power will therefore bring glory. If we pray for God to display His glory in responding to a prayer or petition of ours, or in a certain situation, what are we really asking for? 

In “The Weight of Glory”, C. S. Lewis defines glory as the approval of God. It seems circular to ask God to approve of Himself by intervening miraculously or providentially in some situation. Is His glory the approval by men of Him and His actions? In a different context, C.S. Lewis made the following speculation.

I know very well that in logic God is a ‘substance’. Yet my thirst for quality is authorised even here: ‘We give thanks to thee for thy great glory.’ He is this glory. What He is (the quality) is no abstraction from Him. A personal God, to be sure; but so much more than personal. To speak more soberly, our whole distinction between ‘things’ and ‘qualities’, ‘substances’ and ‘attitudes’, has no application to Him. Perhaps it has much less than we suppose even to the created universe. Perhaps it is only part of the stage set. 

— C. S. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm, XVI.

This suggests that we are trying to split hairs. From Jesus’ eternal perspective, His glory is inseparable from His existence and presence. Our Lord’s instruction to pray for The Father’s will to come about is that we proactively align ourself with His eternal plan, regardless of grammatical construction.