To Whom Shall We Pray?

It happened that while Yeshua was praying in a certain place, after He had finished, one of His disciples said to Him, “Master, teach us to pray just as Yochanan also taught his disciples.” (Luke 11:1)

Recently, I spent a great deal of time with a Pentecostal group. There were, of course, times when we would pray together and I was reminded of some things that I had thought about in the past in regards to prayer. What I’m about to address brings up many questions regarding the nature of God and what theologians call Christology. Christology is the study of the person of Christ, that is, the Messiah. I by no means think that I have even begun to truly understand the nature of God and the nature of the Messiah. No one fully understands the nature of God. To understand the nature of God would mean that you were on the same level as God. The reason why we don’t understand the nature of God is because we are the creation and He is the Creator. That being said, it is our duty to understand what the Bible says about the nature of God and respond to the truth accordingly.

What I want to address is the manner in which we are to pray, specifically if we should pray to Yeshua. Some Christians have never even questioned whether or not it’s appropriate to pray to Jesus. This would be because the doctrine of the Trinity clearly teaches that there are three persons that make up the one God. Jesus would be what they call “God, the Son,” and therefore it would be perfectly permissible to pray to Jesus as it would be to pray to the Father. In addition to this, I’ve noticed that even within the same prayer some will begin to pray to the Father and then speak as if they are speaking to Jesus. This seems odd to me because even though most Christians understand the three persons of the Trinity to be one, the actual doctrine of the Trinity teaches that the three are distinct persons. In other words, the average Christian might begin their prayer addressing the Father (“Father, thank you…”) but at some point in their prayer, they will speak as if they are speaking to Jesus (“when you were here on earth you died for our sins…”). Some even sporadically interchange the phrases “Lord God” and “Lord Jesus” (“Thank you Lord God, for all that you’ve done, O Lord Jesus, thank you for being with us.”)

It’s beyond the scope of this post to explain how I understand the nature of God and the Messiah. I reject the traditional understanding or at least the wording of the doctrine of the Trinity. The word “trinity” is not found in the Bible and neither is the concept that God is three persons. The traditional Trinitarian doctrines are not Biblical in the sense that they are not concepts directly taught in the Bible. Instead, the doctrine of the Trinity is simply man’s attempt at unravelling the mystery of the nature of God. I have taken the approach that many in the Messianic Torah movement have in regard to defining the nature of God; I only use Biblical language. For example, the Bible never explicitly states that Yeshua is God but it does say:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God…And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth. (John 1:1, 14)

So, it is Biblical to say that I believe Yeshua is the Word of God in the form of a human being. When God’s Word became a human being, did God cease being the omnipresent God? No, of course not! The Apostle Paul says that Yeshua is the “image of the invisible God.” Is the image of something the actual thing itself? 

The Bible offers hardly any explanation in regards to God’s and Messiah’s ontological nature. Instead, the Bible describes God’s nature by using terms that describe what He has done and what He will do (“Creator,” “Healer,” “Ruler,” etc) and Yeshua is described by terms that describe who He is and what He has done (“Master,” “Saviour,” “Redeemer,” etc). One detail that we know for sure: God is spirit and cannot be seen (John 4:24, John 1:18). In a mysterious way, though, the Bible also states that God has appeared to people (Genesis 12:7, Exodus 24:10). Take for instance, the burning bush that appeared to Moses. The burning bush spoke as God and yet we know that the burning bush itself was not not God. Rather, it was an earthly expression of God’s voice. It was a way for God to interact with humanity. God interacting with humanity this way in no way diminishes the reality that God is omnipresent and transcends everything in our reality. He is the Creator and therefore is outside of all space, time and matter.

What does all of this have to do with the way we pray? It’s my opinion, and I could be wrong on this, but I don’t believe it’s appropriate to pray to Yeshua. This in no way diminishes the Apostolic teaching that He is the Word made flesh (John 1:14), the glory of God (2 Corinthians 4:6), the image of the unseen God (Colossians 1:15) and that the fullness of Deity dwells in Him in bodily form (Colossians 2:9). Rather, it’s to simply place things in their proper perspective. As much as the above quotations are true, the Apostles also teach that Yeshua is fully human. It says in 1 John:

“By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Yeshua the Messiah has come in the flesh is from God; and every spirit that does not confess Yeshua [came in the flesh] is not from God; this is the spirit of the anti-Christ…” (1 John 4:2-3)

And the epistle to the Hebrews says:

“He had to be made like His brethren in all things, so that He might become a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. For since He Himself was tempted in that which He has suffered, He is able to come to the aid of those who are tempted.” (Hebrews 2:17-18)

There is no way to separate the man Yeshua from His divine attributes. What that means is that even if a Christian understands that they are not praying to Jesus as a man, they are praying to Him as God, they are still, in reality praying to a man.

In the Apostolic Scriptures, there is no instruction to pray to Yeshua. Instead, we have the teaching of Yeshua Himself on how to pray. He says:

“Pray, then, in this way: ’Our Father who is in heaven,” (Matthew 6:9)

It would be prudent for us to carefully choose our words when we pray. The Master would have us pray to His Father, not to Him. This does not deny or diminish the amazing reality that Yeshua is the Word made flesh. It will simply make our prayers more Biblical and that really should be the goal of all of our actions.