Rogate—Praying in Jesus’ Name: What It Really Means
In the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
"Amen, Amen, I say to you, whatever you ask the Father in my name, He will give you" (John 16:23).
There is not a limit to this promise of our Lord Jesus: whatever you ask. On top of that, this promise has a solemn oath attached to it. He doesn't just say, "Whatever you ask in my name to the Father, He will give you." He says, before giving us this promise, "Amen, Amen, I say to you." He does not always say that. That's a solemn oath He adds to this promise. So He says, "Whatever you ask," and He attaches a solemn oath to this promise concerning whatever you ask in His name.
Right off the bat, we might ask some things. We might think about our own experience in this life. What does this mean? What does this promise mean? What about this solemn oath? Haven't you ever prayed for something to the Father in the name of Jesus, and it wasn't given to you? Doesn't that mean that the prayer wasn't answered, that this promise of our Lord Jesus wasn't kept? And right off the bat, we can say, of course not. But we still might be confused.
What does it mean that Jesus tells us, "Whatever you ask the Father in my name, He will give you"? If there are times in our own experience where we've done just that and it doesn't seem that the Father gave it to us, we might still ask that. Part of our confusion has to do with what it means to pray in Jesus' name. To ask the Father in the name of Jesus isn't simply to utter the words, "In the name of Jesus, Amen," or "In Jesus' name, Amen," as you conclude a prayer.
After all, Mormons, who believe that Jesus is a god among many gods, and Jehovah's Witnesses, who believe that Jesus isn't God at all, both pray in Jesus' name. And false teachers, like Joel Osteen. I remember listening to Tabletalk Radio growing up, like when I first became Lutheran. Brian Wolfmuller, pastor out in Austin, Texas, and they used to do this segment—I can't remember what they called it, I think they called it "Sermon Cruncher"—but they'd evaluate sermons for how much content was about the law and how much was about the gospel.
They took one of Joel Osteen's sermons, and there was nothing in it that was the forgiveness of sins. The only thing they were able to play of a 30 to 45-minute sermon was him saying "in Jesus' name" at the end. Saying that phrase is not a magical sort of utterance, like we're practicing, like we're in Harry Potter or something, and you can ask for whatever you want and say "in Jesus' name" at the end, and that is what Jesus is talking about. But we can kind of think that sometimes, if we're not really chewing on it.
When we hear the word "name," we might simply think of a dictionary definition of that word, such as "a word or set of words by which a person, animal, place, or thing is known, addressed, or referred to." But Christians know that the word "name" means more than that in the Bible. Yes, it can be this—a word or set of words by which a person, animal, place, or thing is known, addressed, or referred to—because of things like Genesis 2, where Adam's naming all the creatures, and he gives them a name; that's that definition.
In Genesis 3, at the end of it, Adam called his wife's name Eve because she was the mother of all the living (Genesis 3:20). We've got that definition. But "name" also can refer to the reputation or general estimation of a person.
If a man is proven to be a liar, falsely claiming that his bride was with other men prior to their marriage, and her parents prove that he's lying, God says, "They shall fine him one hundred shekels of silver and give them to the father of the young woman, because he has brought a bad name upon a virgin of Israel. And she shall be his wife; he cannot divorce her all his days" (Deuteronomy 22:19). And when the Prophet Samuel is exhorting the people of Israel at Saul's coronation as the first king of Israel, to follow after the Lord and warning them not to turn away after wickedness, he gives as the reason, "For the Lord will not forsake his people for his great name's sake, because it has pleased the Lord to make you his people" (1 Samuel 12:22).
So this use of this word "name" relates to the Second and Eighth Commandments with regard to misrepresenting the reputation of God or our neighbor by speaking lies against them. You think about James in the epistle, bridling the tongue. "If anyone among you thinks he is religious and does not bridle his tongue but deceives his own heart, this one's religion is useless" (James 1:26).
This has to do with the words and works of God or people. "Name" can also be used to speak of the authority of something understood by its name. The Levite priests were given authority to minister by the Lord, and this is confirmed when God says, "Then the priests, the sons of Levi, shall come near, for the Lord your God has chosen them to minister to Him and to bless in the name of the Lord; by their word every controversy and every assault shall be settled" (Deuteronomy 21:5). This happens now through the office of the keys when I say, "I forgive you all your sins in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit." That's me saying that it's not my authority but God's authority in His name.
Finally, the word "name" is used in Holy Scripture to refer to the presence of an entity—usually God, but also can refer to people—represented by its name. Of people, Scripture says such things as, "God will deliver their kings into your hand, and you will destroy their name from under heaven. No one shall be able to stand against you until you have destroyed them" (Deuteronomy 7:24). Here, destroying their name from under heaven means to wipe them out, for them to die and no longer be kings. And he talks about it as their name being wiped out. The same was said of God's people to Moses when they worshipped the golden calf.
God said, "Let me alone, that I may destroy them and blot out their name from under heaven; and I will make of you a nation mightier and greater than they" (Deuteronomy 9:14). And concerning God's name as His presence, the Lord spoke these words concerning the time when He would cause Israel to dwell in safety in the promised land. When He finally made that happen, He said, "Then there will be the place where the Lord your God chooses to make His name abide. There you shall bring all that I command you: your burnt offerings, your sacrifices, your tithes, the heave offerings of your hand, and all your choice offerings which you vow to the Lord" (Deuteronomy 12:11). All of these different ways of using the word "name" concerning God are bound up with His being present to His people in such words as Exodus 20:24: "You shall make an altar of earth for Me and sacrifice on it your burnt offerings and your peace offerings, your sheep and your oxen. In every place where I cause My name to be remembered I will come to you and I will bless you."
With these different ways that the word "name" is used throughout Scripture, let's return to what Jesus promises to His disciples and to us: "Amen, amen, I say to you, whatever you ask the Father in my name, He will give you" (John 16:23). To pray to the Father in the name of Jesus means—it does mean to say those words, it means to pray that you call upon the actual name of the God-man, the second person of the Trinity, Jesus of Nazareth. It does mean that.
Praying in His name, in Christ's name to the Father, also means that you bring before the Father not your own reputation, your own words and work, but always and only the words and work and reputation of Christ—what He says and what He has done. That is also what it means to pray in the name of Jesus to the Father. Praying in the name of Jesus also means you do not pray that things are done according to your will or authority, but according to the will and by the authority of Jesus of Nazareth.
And prayers in the name of Jesus are prayers made with the certainty that the Lord Jesus is present with you as your gracious God, alongside you and covering you so that you might enter into the presence of the Father before His throne and make your petitions known for yourself and others. These are all what Jesus means when He says, "Ask anything in my name to the Father and He will give to you" (John 16:23). The Lord's name—the name that the disciples had not used in praying to the Father before this, because the name of the Son of God had not been given until Christ's incarnation and His birth—this is the name by which we are saved, like Peter says: "Nor is there salvation in any other, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved" (Acts 4:12).
This is the name that we bring before the Father's face when we make our petitions—not just written on a piece of paper, but Jesus actually present, His word and His work put there, His will and His authority there in front of the Father's face. A Mormon praying in the name of Jesus is praying with a false name because the reputation of Jesus that they are attempting to bring before the Father is one where Jesus is not unique in His divine sonship, but really one of a myriad of humans that have become or will become gods. So it's not Jesus' name.... This is one of the many examples of what Jesus is getting at when He says, "Not everyone who says to Me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven. Many will say to Me on that day, 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name and drive out demons in Your name and perform many miracles in Your name?' Then I will tell them plainly, 'I never knew you. Depart from Me, you evildoers'" (Matthew 7:21–23).
It is not enough just to have His name on your lips literally, like just written on a piece of paper. That is not what "in His name" means. But what about when it seems that our prayers are not answered in the way Jesus' words say they should this morning? What about when we have, when you have, prayed in the name of Jesus as it is properly understood in the Scriptures? Here we must understand that every time—and I've already said it, but I'm going to emphasize it again—every time we as Christians, trusting in the Lord Jesus and believing on His name for salvation, every time we're praying to the Father in His name, whether we say these actual words or not, when a Christian prays in Jesus' name, they are saying, "Thy will be done" (Matthew 6:10).
Every time, even if you don't say those words, even if you don't say out loud, "But not my will, Your will be done" (Luke 22:42). When you are truly as a Christian praying in Jesus' name, that is assumed in your prayer. Praying in Jesus' name means to pray in faith and submission to His holy will, His desires, based on His words and promises, not our own.
Alongside the promise Christ makes to His disciples and to us this morning in the gospel, we must also hold St. John's words in his first epistle where he says, "Now this is the confidence that we have in Him, that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. And if we know that He hears us, whatever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we have asked of Him" (1 John 5:14–15). That's what it means to pray in the name of Jesus.
Our flesh doesn't like to hear that. Our flesh might want to say, "Well, what's the point of praying at all if His will is the thing that's always going to be done? What about my will? What about the thing right here in front of me that I want to have done, that I want to have exactly done the way I think it should be done? What's the point of praying at all if it's not ever going to be that, it's only going to be the way He wants it to be?" But again, that's our sinful flesh. That's not a part of you that's ever going to be praying in Jesus' name.
It's going to be praying in your sinful flesh's name. When we offer a prayer to fulfill our own will and desires rather than the Lord's, we are not praying in His name, and we have no reason to hope that these prayers are answered. So there's the first step.
If you're not praying at all, you have no hope that He's going to hear your prayers because you're not praying to Him. But then beyond that, if you're not praying in His name, according to His will, submitting to His will, in faith, not doubting, you have no reason to hope that these prayers are to be heard. We get this when we think of a person praying to be a trillionaire.
It's easy to be like, yeah, okay, sure. I shouldn't expect that I'm going to be a trillionaire just praying, "Lord, make me a trillionaire. In Jesus' name, Amen."
We can easily think of that when we hear that. And yeah, that's the sort of prayer that we might associate with the words of St. James where he says, "Where do wars and fights come from among you? Do they not come from your desires for pleasure that war in your members? You lust and do not have. You murder and covet and cannot obtain. You fight and war. Yet you do not have because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive because you ask amiss, that you may spend it on your pleasures" (James 4:1–3).
But it's not just prayers about being a trillionaire or having a Lamborghini or anything else like that that James is talking about. We must also understand that we can offer up prayers in Jesus' name asking for things that are good in and of themselves and still be asking according to our will and for the sake of our own pleasures. We may ask for a loved one's life to be preserved, and that is a good thing in and of itself, but are we asking just so that we don't have to live in this life without them? When we ask for their life to be lengthened, are we also praying for the other things, Jesus says, that we ought to be praying for in the Lord's Prayer? How many—think about it—how many petitions of the Lord's Prayer have to do with prolonging our earthly life, with physical blessings, and how many petitions of the Lord's Prayer have to do with spiritual blessings? I'll give you the answer: only one has to do with physical blessings.
When you are worried and scared for a loved one, or you can insert any sort of prayer in there, but that's a really tough one. Yes, pray that the doctors will have wisdom and God will work through them and prolong your loved one's life and your enemy's life.
Pray that. But there are six other petitions that don't pertain to this world where Jesus promised you would have trouble (John 16:33). Alongside that one petition, pray for that loved one that God would give them His Holy Spirit, that He would make His name hallowed in their life, that His kingdom would come to them through the means of grace, that His will would be done in their life here on earth as it is done in heaven, that their sins would be forgiven, that they would be delivered from evil, which ultimately means to die in the faith.
Those are in Jesus' name, too. We do not, as Christians, just pray for a person's life to be lengthened so that we don't have to experience physical pain and emotional pain. That's real and God cares for it, but praying in Jesus' name is more than just that.
And so remember this when you offer up your prayers. Remember the petitions of the Lord's Prayer as we sang them in our hymn of the day, and remember that alongside daily bread and physical blessings, there are far many more petitions related to these spiritual blessings that we ought to ask for for those we care about, for ourselves, that the Lord cares more about. He's not indifferent to our physical life, but remember the promise He made here alongside "whatever you ask in my name."
At the end, He said, "I have spoken these things to you, that in Me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world" (John 16:33).
And think on that, and on the spiritual blessings He has given to us to overcome the world with Him by faith. And I'll leave you with this. These are not my own words, these are Johann Gerhard's words on this same text.
“What then does such a believing, humble, devotional, and patient prayer to God in Christ provide for a promise? Christ also teaches us that in this Gospel lesson where He says, "Amen, amen, I say to you, whatever you ask the Father in my name, He will give you" (John 16:23). Understand, just so long as it simply redounds to the glory of His name, and for what is best for us. For sometimes God does not hear us in regard to external, temporal blessings in keeping with our will. Instead, He provides what is best for us. In such a case, we must follow the decision of the Spirit, and not the decision of the flesh. Our flesh thinks that if God does not at all times give us bodily things that we desire, then we have not been heard. However, the Spirit and truth decide quite differently about this. Namely, that we at all times are heard in our prayers (cf. 1 John 5:14–15).
Let us pray. Let us pray. Lord God, heavenly Father, through Your Son You promised us that whatever we ask in His Name You will give us. Keep us in Your Word and grant us Your Holy Spirit, that He may govern us according to Your will, protect us from the power of the devil, from false doctrine and false worship. Defend our lives against all danger and grant us Your blessing and peace, that we may in all things know Your merciful help and praise and glorify You as our gracious Father now and forever; through our Lord Jesus Christ, Your Son, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one true God, now and forever. Amen.
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