Matthew 15:28 (LEB)

Then Jesus answered and said to her, “O woman, your faith is great!

Let it be done for you as you [will].”

The Greek here is similar to what Jesus says later in Matthew 26 in His prayer to the Father about letting this cup of the cross pass from Him.

Matthew 26:42 (NKJV) Jesus said, “Your will be done.”

For some reason, the translators, which almost always translates ‘thelo’ and ‘thelema’ (Strongs 2307 and 2309) as “will” puts Jesus’ words to the Canaanite woman as “desire.” (Maybe bias?) Nothing wrong with the word “desire,” but it might hide the fact it is the same meaning that Jesus uses in His own prayer. And thus, to make sure we do not miss the impact of this, we will use the same word of “will” for both verses. It is the same used in the Lord’s prayer, “Your Will be done on earth.”

Jesus referring to the broad category of God’s plan to only minister to the Jews, and not the gentiles, says by implication that it is “not God’s will” to heal her daughter. Jesus further argues that it is wrong to take what belongs to someone else, and then give it to another person. As Vincent Cheung states, she “asserts an argument of faith.”[1]  Jesus, God in the flesh, God’s Will in the flesh, the most God centered man who ever lived, does a 180 concerning God’s will.  Jesus ignores God’s will and says, “woman, your will be done.”  Jesus declares, “let man’s will be done on earth.”

When people have faith in God’s promises, Jesus over and over, affirmed the will of man. This is not some overly makeup guy, sitting in a gold chair on TBN. This was God Himself, in direct verbal revelation, affirming the “will of man,” when man engages God’s promise with faith. Your theology must deal with this. Your theology must include “man’s will being done on earth,” is as God-centered as Jesus Christ is God-centered, because He is the one who taught the doctrine. The issue people have man’s will being done on earth, is that Jesus is too God-centered for them. There is just too much God involved. They hate that God gets to do whatever He wants, and what He wants is man’s will to be done. 

When James says in chapter one of his letter that if you have faith you will be given wisdom, he does not say, “only if it is God’s will.” Rather, he says it is man’s accountability to get wisdom from God. If you lack faith, then you will lack wisdom when you ask. And if you failed to get the wisdom, then the accountability is on “your” lack of faith, not the will of God. That is, if you have faith, and you are in a trouble of life that you need some wisdom and you ask, then God’s response is that the will of man (“Lord, I want wisdom”) is to be done on earth. James says the same thing about healing and forgiveness in chapter 5:15. When man’s faith engages the promises of God, then God Himself affirms “let man’s will be done.”

————Endnotes————-

For more see on this topic, see the essay by Vincent Cheung. (Healing: The Will of Man)
(I am not affiliated with Vincent Cheung.) 

[1] Vincent Cheung. Faith Override. 2016