God knows from all eternity what we need and what we shall pray and yet it is God the Spirit, eternally proceeding from the the Father and the Son who works in us, who energizes us to pray in the name of Jesus, the eternally begotten Son incarnate, to the eternally unbegotten Father, who loves and actively cares for us constantly and always hears our prayers.
A regular and thoughtful reader of the HB writes to ask whether it is proper in Christian prayer to address the Son and the Spirit in prayer as well as the Father. This is a difficult question for a couple of reasons. First, though we have a number of prayers in the Hebrew Scriptures (the Old Testament), the doctrine of the Trinity was certainly embedded and implied in the Scriptures it was not revealed with the same degree of clarity we find in the New Testament. See Belgic Confession (1561) articles 8–9 for more on this. So, most of the prayers in Scripture do not specify a Trinitarian person. Second, when the disciples asked our Lord to teach them to pray, the pattern he gave them addresses the Father.
Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name.
Your kingdom come,
your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread,
and forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil.
(Matt 6:9–13; ESV).
Thus, at the same time that the truth of the Trinity is being made more clear for us by our Lord himself, the eternally begotten Son of God (Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed,381 AD) was teaching us to address the Father. So, we take this as our baseline. As Calvin (with the great Christian tradition) notes in Institutes 3.20, in his wonderful discussion of prayer, we use the Lord’s Prayer—contra those Dispensationalists who deny that it is for today—but not slavishly so, as if those are the only words that we may use.
The general rule then is that we address the Father, in Christ (John 14:13; 15:16; 16:23, 24; Eph 5:20) and more fundamentally, beyond merely saying Christ’s name, praying to the Father in Jesus’ name is something we do, whether or not we actually say the same. An ambassador represents his nation. He comes to another government in the name of his government. At every meeting he may not say, “I come in the name of my government,” but insofar as he represents his government, he comes in the name of that government. The question is one of stance, of one’s an attitude in approach to God.
It is a great privilege to come to our Father (Abba) as adopted sons, in the name of the Son and on the basis of his mediation for us (Rom 8:15; Gal 4:6). To come to God apart from Christ as representative is, as Owen notes, a terrifying prospect:
God, therefore, on a throne of grace is God as in a readiness through Jesus Christ to dispense grace and mercy to suppliant sinners. When God comes to execute judgment, his throne is otherwise represented. See Dan. 7:9, 10. And when sinners take a view in their minds of God as he is in himself, and as he will be unto all out of Christ, it ingenerates nothing but dread and terror in them, with foolish contrivances to avoid him or his displeasure, Isa. 33:14; Mic. 6:6, 7; Rev. 6:16, 17. All these places and others testify that when sinners do engage into serious thoughts and conceptions of the nature of God, and what entertainment they shall meet with from him, all their apprehensions issue in dread and terror.1
As we come to the Father through Christ, as Owen argues, we do so with the Holy Spirit working within us, energizing us to pray. When we pray, we are praying “in the [Holy] Spirit” (Eph 6:18; Jude 20). So that Christian prayer is nothing but a Trinitarian enterprise. We are not deists. We do not image an divine monad but we think rightly of the One God in three, distinct, consubstantial, co-eternal, co-glorious persons, simple, and immutable, who nevertheless condescends and is pleased to hear our prayers for Christ’s sake. In this respect, prayer is a great mystery is it not? God knows from all eternity what we need and what we shall pray and yet it is God the Spirit, eternally proceeding from the the Father and the Son who works in us, who energizes us to pray in the name of Jesus, the eternally begotten Son incarnate, to the eternally unbegotten Father, who loves and actively cares for us constantly and always hears our prayers.
Further, though, as Graham Cole notes, we have no clear example, in Scripture of prayer addressed to the Holy Spirit (the 9th-century prayer of Rabanus Marus, Veni Creator Spiritus, is widely said or sung but it is obviously non-canonical), we do have a clear example of the invocation of our Lord Jesus in prayer.
But he [Stephen], full of the Holy Spirit, gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. And he said, “Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.” But they cried out with a loud voice and stopped their ears and rushed together at him. Then they cast him out of the city and stoned him. And the witnesses laid down their garments at the feet of a young man named Saul. And as they were stoning Stephen, he called out, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.” And falling to his knees he cried out with a loud voice, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.” And when he had said this, he fell asleep (Acts 7:55–60; ESV).
Stephen’s was a Trinitarian prayer and a model for us.
