Request your free, three-month trial to Tabletalk magazine. You’ll receive the print issue monthly and gain immediate digital access to decades of archives. This trial is risk-free. No credit card required.
Try Tabletalk NowAlready receive Tabletalk magazine every month?
Verify your email address to gain unlimited access.
Certain practices have become so familiar among Christians that believers can be in danger of thoughtlessly performing them. We are all prone to simply going through the motions in our Christian lives. For instance, how often have we prayed the Lord’s Prayer without reflecting on the petitions that we are presenting to God? How often have we recited the Apostles’ Creed or the Nicene Creed without giving due consideration to the truths that we are confessing? We can easily go through the liturgical motions in a worship service without focusing on what we are doing before God. Similarly, it is altogether possible for believers to close their prayer with the words “in Jesus’ name” or “in Christ’s name” or “for Christ’s sake” as a sort of mindless mantra.
This raises the important question, Why should believers pray to God “in Jesus’ name”? If we are going to employ the name of Jesus in a conscientious way at the end of our prayers, a proper amount of theological reflection is required. Ultimately, we pray in Jesus’ name because He is the only Mediator between God and man, He fulfills all the covenant promises of God, and He is the object of our faith in God. Consider the following.
the only mediator
During His earthly ministry, Christ taught His disciples how they should approach God in prayer. He said: “Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask me anything in my name, I will do it” (John 14:13–14). “Whatever you ask of the Father in my name, he will give it to you” (16:23). Jesus teaches us to do so because He is the exclusive Mediator between God and man. As Thomas Boston explained:
In whose name are we to pray? In the name of Jesus Christ, and of no other, neither saint nor angel, John 14:13. “Whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, says he, that will I do.” We must go to the Father, not in the name of any of the courtiers, Col. 2:18 but in the name of his Son, the only Mediator.
As the Mediator of the covenant of grace, Jesus brings God near to sinners and sinners near to God. He came to make peace through the blood of His cross. Jesus abolished the enmity between God and man in the body of His flesh through death. He propitiated the wrath of God and atoned for the sin of His people on the cross.
the fulfiller of covenant promises
Jesus is the fulfiller of the covenant promises that God gave His people in the Old Testament. By His death and resurrection, Jesus fulfilled all the promises in the Scriptures. John Owen helpfully tied together the covenant promises and praying in Jesus’ name when he explained how Jesus is the procurer of the things promised by God:
The things which God would have us ask . . . we look upon them as promised, and promised in Christ; that is, that all the reason we have whence we hope for attaining the things we ask for, is from the mediation and purchase of Christ, in whom all the promises are yea and amen. This it is to ask the Father in Christ’s name,—God as a father, the fountain; and Christ as the procurer of them.
the object of personal faith
Mere intellectual knowledge that Jesus is the only Mediator and the One who fulfills the covenant promises is insufficient for us to receive the promised blessings—we need to exercise personal faith in Christ as the object of the blessings. God has chosen to make faith the instrument of union with Christ. This affects our invocation of the name of Jesus in our prayers to God. Jonathan Edwards drew attention to the connection between faith, Christ, and prayer, when he wrote:
Faith in the Lord Jesus Christ is expressed in praying to Christ and praying in the name of Christ, and the promises are made to asking in Christ’s name in the same manner as they are to believing in Christ. John 14:13–14, “And whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If ye shall ask any thing in my name, I will do it.”
Looking to Christ by faith in His name means trusting in Him to supply what He has secured. We pray in Christ’s name as an act of faith in Him as the only Mediator and the fulfiller of the covenant promises. Edwards again explained:
Whatever we offer to God [we are] to offer it in Christ’s name, as expecting to have it accepted no other way, than from the value that God has to that name. Col. 3:17, “And whatsoever ye do, in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God, and the Father by him.” To act in Christ’s name, is to act under him, as our head, and as having him to stand for us, and represent us to God-ward.
The Scriptures make it abundantly clear that believers are to pray to God “in Jesus’ name.” Yet we must resist allowing these words (or variations of them) to become a mere mantra rather than an expression of our faith in Him as the only Mediator between God and man and the fulfiller of the covenant blessings. When we pray to God by faith in Christ, we bring our requests to God in light of what Christ has accomplished in the work of redemption. When we pray by faith in Christ, according to Scripture, we can expect God to freely provide all that He has promised.