Commentary on Matthew 6:10
Unpack the Lord's Prayer, and you will find references to:
Pray the Lord's Prayer in a meaningful way, and two phrases at the beginning -- "your kingdom come, your will be done on earth" -- unequivocally address the need for world evangelization.
For 2,000 years, Christians have memorized and recited the Lord's Prayer. Too often, we repeat those marvelous words in a sing-song fashion with little thought to their deep meaning. As a result, the words of Matthew 6:10 rarely bring global missionary outreach to people's minds. That's too because asking for God's Kingdom to be realized and for His will to be done all over the earth has to include Gospel proclamation worldwide.
In terms of God's will, sermons on the Lord's Prayer generally use Matthew 6:10 to talk about righteous living and perhaps even social justice. Those things are in God's will but doesn't His will include more? Doesn't God ask His people to make Christlike disciples in the nations? Telling the story of Jesus at the "ends of the earth" is, after all, an unambiguous scriptural command. Matthew 6:10 also feeds naturally into Matthew 9:38, which is powerfully rendered by The Message as, "What a huge harvest! . . . On your knees and pray for harvest hands!"
As long as there are people on earth who know nothing of the true God, God's will is not being fully done. As long as people serve other gods -- whether those be "worthless idols" (Jonah 2:8) or gods of wealth, power, or pleasure -- God's kingdom cannot fully come. Thus, praying Matthew 6:10 without world evangelism in mind misses a key thought of that verse.
The Great Commission of Matthew 28:19-20 -- "Go, make disciples of all nations" -- does not appear out of the blue. In teaching His followers to pray, Jesus used wording that should sensitize them to the Father's wish -- expressed multiple times in the Old Testament -- that the whole world be evangelized. Thus, it can be said that, early in His ministry, Jesus may have intentionally worded a model prayer in ways that would prepare the ground for the Great Commission that would come at the end of His earthly ministry.
We are often reminded that prayer should be more than handing our wish lists to God. Prayer is essentially about letting Him shape us. As we repeat the words of Matthew 6:10 -- "Your kingdom come; your will be done on earth" -- we must allow the Holy Spirit to truly turn them into the desires of our hearts. Every time we pray the Lord's Prayer, we must allow its majestic words to increase our passion for world evangelism.
-- Howard Culbertson,
This mini-essay on a world missions Bible passage is one of more than three dozen articles in the "Heart of God" series published in Engage, a monthly online magazine. That series explores what the Bible says about missions.
The inclusion of "on earth" (Matthew 6:10) in the Lord's Prayer points to the global scope of the Church's mission. When we pray "your will be done on earth," we are saying we want God's will to be accomplished everywhere in the world and not just in specific locations or among particular groups of people. About 180 Bible verses point to world evangelism. Among those is Jesus' Great Commission, reported in Matthew 28 and Mark 16. There are also Our Lord's words in Acts 1:8 about the Gospel reaching the "ends of the earth."
Praying the Lord's Prayer should create in all Christ-followers a longing to see every person in the world reached with the Gospel message. As we repeat the Lord's Prayer in corporate or personal worship times, let's feel a sense of solidarity with all Christ-followers as together we seek to make disciples in all nations.