It is a very common thought in the writings of the early Christian ascetics that man must go through these three stages – slave, hireling and son. The slave is one who obeys for fear, the hireling is one who obeys for reward and the son is one who acts for love. We can see in Exodus how gradually the people of God had become more than slaves and hirelings and the law stands at the threshold, geographically speaking, of the Promised Land.
At this threshold they discover, each with the ability that is his, with the depth of spirit that is his, God’s own will, God’s own mind, for this law can be seen in several ways: if we take it formally, sentence by sentence, it is a series of commandments: ‘Thou shalt, thou shalt not,’ in that sense it is law in the mentality of the Old Testament. But on the other hand, if we look at it with the eyes of the New Testament, with the eyes of our human vocation, as an increasing number were able to look at this law in the course of time after Exodus, we see that these various commandments, these imperatives, coalesce into two commandments: the love of God and the love of man. The first four of the ten are the love of God expressed concretely; and in the six other commandments we have the love of man, also made concrete, tangible, workable. The law is discipline and rule for those who are still in the making, who are still in the process of becoming sons, but at the same time it is already the law of the New Testament. The problem between man and man and between man and God is that of establishing divine peace, peace in the name of God, peace which is not built on mutual attraction or sympathy, but which is built on more basic facts; our common sonship, our common Lord, our human solidarity and our narrower church solidarity. Divine and human love must be summed up first of all in the establishment of the right relationships, the right relationship with God, with men and also with one’s self.
We have seen that to exist in the desert, the absolute prerequisite is mutual forgiveness, now another step must be taken; whereas we find in Exodus the imperative law which expresses the mind and will of God, we find in the Lord’s Prayer ‘Thy will be done’. ‘Thy will be done’ is not a submissive readiness to bear God’s will, as we often take it to be. It is the positive attitude of those who have gone through the wilderness, who have entered the Promised Land and who set out to make the will of God present and real on earth as it is in heaven. St Paul says that we are a colony of heaven (Phil 3: 20; Moffat’s translation). He means a group of people whose mother city is heaven, who are on earth to conquer it for God and to bring the kingdom of God if only to a small spot. It is a peculiar type of conquest, which consists in winning over people to the realm of peace, making them subject to the prince of peace and making them enter into the harmony which we call the Kingdom of God. It is indeed a conquest, a peacemaking that will make us sheep among wolves, seeds scattered by the sower, which must die in order to bear fruit and to feed others.
‘Thy will be done’ seen in this way from within our situation as sons is something quite different from the kind of obedience, submissive or resistant, which we have seen in the beginning of Exodus, when Moses tried to put his countrymen in motion towards freedom. Now they have, we have, the mind of Christ, now we know the will of God, we are no longer servants but friends (Jn 15:15). He does not mean a vague relationship of goodwill, but something extremely deep that binds us together. This is the situation in which we walk into the Promised Land, when we say in a new way ‘Thy will be done’, not as an alien will, not as a will strong and able to break us, but as … a wil1 with which we have become completely harmonious. And we must, the moment we do this, accept all that is implied in being sons of God, in being members of the one body. As he came into the world to die for the salvation of the world, so are we elect for this purpose; and it may be at the cost of our own lives that we are to bring peace around us and establish the kingdom.
~Archbishop Anthony Bloom, Living Prayer
