The Lord’s Prayer: A Puritan’s Doorway to Traditional Liturgy (Part 1)

“Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven.”
On Earth as it is in Heaven. What exactly does that mean? Of course it has an eschatological dimension. We look forward to the day when all of the earth will be subdued to Christ and His rule of law will be complete and absolute. This same dimension finds expression in the Eucharist, because our communion declares the Lord’s death, looking forward to the day when He will return in glory. At the Lord’s table we look forward to the blessed marriage supper of the Lamb.
However, like the Eucharist, these words are relevant to the Church for the here and now. If we are to continually pray “thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven,” should we not seek to see God’s will done in the present? As the Church disciples nations, as it teaches families and individuals how to relate to one another as Christians ought, it is becoming God’s instrument for the fulfillment of this prayer in the world, one step at a time.
“On Earth as it is in Heaven.”
If this is an end toward which we have a part in working, that phrase sort of demands that we ask a question, doesn’t it? If we seek to see God’s will done here as it is in heaven, then what are we looking for? In other words, just how is it done in heaven? Instead of writing the petition off as some vague wishful hope for a future reality, perhaps we should look at the passages of Scripture that give us lucid pictures of how things are done Heaven and . . . well, do that on Earth!
When we petition God to give us our daily bread (probable direct reference to the Eucharist aside), we do not expect God to simply drop bread out of the sky. We must work for that bread, trusting God to ultimately provide. In the same way, when we petition that God’s will might be done here as it is in Heaven, this does not mean that we ought to sit passively by just waiting for it to happen. Especially when we are given such clear visions of how it is to be done.
I suggest that the clearest view we have of the heavenly workings is in the Book of Revelation. It reveals things to us about Heaven that are only hinted at or shown in glimpses throughout the rest of the Bible, though there are many other passages that we can and should draw from to form a clear picture of what is done in heaven and how it relates to Christians in the New Covenant. And the context of Revelation is the Lord’s Day. John receives the vision as he is “in spirit.”
From that point on, the great theme throughout the book—what we see first and foremost happening in Heaven—is worship. Surely this has direct application for how our worship on Earth ought to look. When we read of the hosts of heaven—the angels, the saints, the martyrs, the elders—praising God, glorifying Christ, eating a feast, etc., we need to take note of those things. Just as importantly, we ought to take note of how they do those things. If the worship of Heaven looks like that . . . how does that inform our worship on Earth, if we pray as Christ taught us to pray: “Thy will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven”?
I was planning to do this all in one post, but I think it would best be spread over several, point by point. So let this serve as my introduction. Through the next several posts in this series (or however many it takes) I want to show that if we remain faithful to our Reformed heritage of Sola Scriptura, we will find that the Biblical text not only doesn’t forbid traditional liturgies of the Church, but also properly leads us into a rich form of liturgical worship, which has been grasped and developed by the Church throughout the last 2,000 years.
And lest we get stuck in man’s tradition, we must understand that as the Spirit guides the Church to maturity, our worship should move from glory to greater glory, and our liturgy must be progressively purified, refined like gold, and brought closer and closer to that which we will be doing for eternity in the presence of Christ. This maturation has been taking place throughout the last 2,000 years, and we should expect to see it continue. God’s Spirit is not done with the Church.













