Will/desire
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θέλημα (thelēma) names a will, desire, intention, or what someone purposes and wants carried out. The noun can refer to God’s will, human resolve, bodily desires, or even the devil’s will, so it is not automatically a sacred term.
Reader summary
Full entry for θέλημα (G2307) · Open the biblical lexicon
θέλημα (thelēma) names a will, desire, intention, or what someone purposes and wants carried out. The noun can refer to God’s will, human resolve, bodily desires, or even the devil’s will, so it is not automatically a sacred term.
The BSB source-word alignment has 62 aligned rows for this entry. Common renderings include will (48), [the] will (6), [the] desire (1), by [the] will (1), desires (1).
The source-word alignment first shows this entry at Matthew 6:10. Its strongest book concentrations include John (11), Ephesians (7), Matthew (6), Hebrews (5).
This entry includes 1 verse guide that explain exact original-language forms in context.
θέλημα (thelēma) names a will, desire, intention, or what someone purposes and wants carried out. The noun can refer to God’s will, human resolve, bodily desires, or even the devil’s will, so it is not automatically a sacred term. In the Lord’s Prayer, disciples ask for the Father’s will to be done on earth as in heaven. In Gethsemane, Jesus brings a real human desire before the Father and yields Himself to the saving path appointed for Him.
John’s Gospel identifies the Father’s will with the Son’s keeping and raising of those given to Him. Paul states plainly that God’s will includes the holiness of His people, and Hebrews says believers have been sanctified through Christ’s once-for-all offering according to that will. Scripture therefore uses the noun for commands already revealed, saving purposes accomplished in Christ, intentions that govern action, and desires that may resist God.
It should not be reduced to a hidden blueprint for personal decisions or invoked to excuse passivity, abuse, careless planning, or fatalism.
θέλημα can name divine purpose, revealed moral desire, human intention, or another agent’s will. The selected passages move from prayer for God’s reign, through the Son’s obedient submission, to the Father’s saving purpose, the church’s holiness, and Christ’s sufficient offering.
Your kingdom come, Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.
The petition joins God’s will to the coming of His kingdom and the obedience of earth to heaven. Jesus teaches disciples to desire God’s rule, not merely to discover private guidance.
“Father, if You are willing, take this cup from Me. Yet not My will, but Yours be done.”
Jesus voices the horror of the cup without rebellion and submits His human will to the Father. His prayer is filial obedience in suffering, not emotional numbness or uncertainty about the Father’s goodness.
And this is the will of Him who sent Me, that I shall lose none of those He has given Me, but raise them up at the last day.
The Father’s will is stated rather than guessed: the sent Son will keep those given to Him and raise them at the last day. Divine purpose is disclosed through Christ’s mission and resurrection promise.
For it is God’s will that you should be holy: You must abstain from sexual immorality;
Paul identifies a revealed ethical demand as God’s will. Holiness here includes embodied sexual obedience, which prevents appeals to uncertain guidance from displacing commands Scripture has already made plain.
And by that will, we have been sanctified through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.
Hebrews connects God’s will with the Son’s obedient offering of His body. Sanctification rests on Christ’s once-for-all sacrifice, not on repeated offerings or the believer’s success at deciphering providence.
BSB source-word alignment connects this entry to exact verse rows, English rendering, source form, transliteration, and parsing.
How English Renders ItA compact distribution from source-word alignment before the full evidence tables.
Verse-level guides showing how this original-language form works in its specific context, including grammar, verse function, and guarded interpretation.
Greek word. God's will as the objective content of what He ordains, not merely subjective desire or preference
Textus Receptus witness, full corpus Greek token appearances from Scrivener 1894 Textus Receptus in the full New Testament corpus.
16 of 64 Greek text appearances shown. Linked morphology labels have verse guides.
will, wish, desire
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Read verseFull New Testament corpus: 260 chapters, 7,957 verses, 140,628 tokens. Data source: honza/textus-receptus (data only), with authority check against byztxt/greektext-textus-receptus.
How this word appears across different grammatical cases and numbers.
This word appears as a noun across 5 case and number patterns. The form changes show how the word functions in a sentence; they do not change the basic lexical meaning by themselves.
Selected passage-level study witnesses for this word. This section is not the full occurrence list.
Showing 7 selected witnesses from 62 lexical occurrence verses.
θέλημα is built from this root:
Defines obedience as covenant family marker. 1 John 5:13-17
Defines covenant alignment with God. Acts 21:7-14
Expresses divine mission governing Jesus' ministry. Mark 3:31–35
Affirms submission to God’s sovereign purpose. Matthew 12:46–50
Effective prayer aligns with God’s revealed purposes rather than personal preference.
Compound and idiomatic phrases that include this word. Follow a link to study the phrase and how its parts work together.
God’s will is not first a puzzle but the holy and saving purpose of the Father made known in Scripture and accomplished through the Son. Jesus teaches His people to pray for that will to order earth as heaven is ordered. In Gethsemane, He does not pretend the cup is easy. He brings His desire honestly to the Father and obeys through suffering, displaying true human submission without division in the triune saving purpose.
John names part of that purpose directly: the Son will lose none of those given to Him but raise them at the last day. First Thessalonians makes another part unmistakable: God wills His people’s holiness. Hebrews then grounds sanctification in Christ’s once-for-all bodily offering. Together these texts move believers away from obsession with hidden information and toward trusting obedience.
Christians should pray, seek wisdom, read providence humbly, receive counsel, and make responsible decisions. Yet they must not call every preference God’s will or use the phrase to close conversation. Where Scripture has spoken, obedience is clear. Where choices remain open, wisdom acts without pretending to possess an infallible private decree.
Matt.6.10
θέλημα is a neuter noun built from the family of θέλω, to will or desire. The possessor or governing phrase is decisive: God’s will, human will, desires of flesh and thought, and the devil’s will are not interchangeable. English ‘will’ may refer to desire, command, purpose, or intended outcome, and context supplies the nuance.
Creation exists by God’s purposeful word, the law reveals His holy demands, the prophets call Israel back to covenant obedience, and the Psalms delight to do God’s will. Psalm 40’s language of coming to do God’s will is taken up in Hebrews to interpret Christ’s obedient incarnation and once-for-all offering. The New Testament also looks toward the day when God’s reign and obedient order fill the renewed creation.
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