Many spoken prayers and church songs throughout the ages are addressed directly to Jesus. Formal liturgies dating back to the early centuries of the church include the Son in their addresses and sometimes even hail him singly. Even since the Reformation a significant number of hymns, whether “Rock of Ages” or “Thine Be the Glory,” remain directed to Jesus. Yet a good number of evangelical systematics and guidebooks to prayer insist that the Bible only models prayer “to the Father, through the Son, by the Spirit.” This pattern is often described as the “norm” and is sometimes even labelled the only “genuine” way to pray. There is an observable and disheartening mismatch between widespread, longstanding practice and published evangelical scholarship (a mismatch which, in some ecclesial contexts, may only serve to sour churchgoers’ views of intellectual endeavours).
Scholars who discount such entrenched addresses to the Son usually admit only two or three biblical prayers to him. Similarly, some proponents of Jesus-centred prayers count only as many. Such tallies appear to have missed the findings of several Christocentric studies (such as the doxological investigations of Bauckham and Hurtado). Admittedly there are only two prayers addressed to “Jesus” in the second person – but already we must add at least three more where “Lord” specifically addresses the Triune Son. Once we also start recognizing third-person prayer reports and a variety of additional prayer-wishes and benedictions and the like (per the epistolary research of Wiles and O’Brien), we can collate a dozen strong examples and another dozen corroborating glimpses.
A few evangelical studies are alert to these two dozen scriptural examples, but many are not. It seems necessary to focus a brighter spotlight upon the phenomenon, especially the diverse ways that the Son is addressed. This is not intended at all to displace God the Father as the common and appropriate recipient of Christian prayers. Yet neither should we want to be giving the impression, academically and pastorally, that believers who address Jesus the Son have failed to polish their prayers adequately. Rather, they preserve a longstanding tradition that finds support in the very grammatical constructions of the New Testament.
This paper outlines all the preceding points, especially the varied grammatical constructions that could and should be considered as evidence of biblical prayers addressed to Jesus. In what potentially may be the rarer direction, it is time to correct scriptural exegesis towards closer alignment with popular, commonplace Christian practice.