Chapter 7 — Prayer: Calling on the Lord
The Incarnate Christ and His Critics (Komoszewski & Bowman, 2024)
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Is it okay to pray to Jesus?
For many Christians, that's a strange question — of course you pray to Jesus. But it's actually a question that divides Christians from nearly every alternative view of Christ. Muslims pray to Allah, not to Jesus. Jehovah's Witnesses pray to Jehovah (the Father), not to Jesus. Progressive Christians who have redefined God as "Being itself" have largely redefined prayer too, turning it from communication with a personal God into something more like centering meditation.
The question matters because prayer is one of the most intimate acts a creature can offer toward God. It is speech addressed to a personal being with the expectation that he hears and responds. If you pray to someone who is not God, you are either confused or committing a very serious error. The biblical tradition is utterly clear that prayer belongs to God alone.
So when the New Testament shows people praying to Jesus, and commending that practice, it is making a very strong claim about who Jesus is.
What Is Prayer?
Before looking at the evidence, it's worth being clear about what prayer actually is. The Lexham Bible Dictionary offers a straightforward definition: "Communication with God, primarily offered in the second-person voice (addressing God directly). May include petition, entreaty, supplication, thanksgiving, praise, hymns, and lament."
Biblical prayer presupposes that God is a real, personal being — not a force, not a symbol, not a ground of being — who genuinely hears and responds. Prayer is not magic; it's not transferring information to a God who doesn't already know it (he knows everything, Matt. 6:8). Prayer is communion — a personal conversation with the God who made you and loves you.
Given this definition, the question becomes: Does the New Testament present Jesus as an appropriate recipient of this kind of communication?
The Answer Is Yes
The clearest example is Stephen, the first Christian martyr. As he was being stoned to death, he cried out: "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit" (Acts 7:59). And then, just as Jesus had prayed for his executioners from the cross (Luke 23:34), Stephen prayed: "Lord, do not hold this sin against them" (Acts 7:60).
Notice what Stephen does in his dying moments: he addresses Jesus directly, as a personal being who hears and can respond. He asks Jesus to receive his departing spirit — something only God can do. And he intercedes for others through Jesus. This is prayer in the fullest sense.
Paul refers to praying to Jesus in 2 Corinthians 12:8-9: "Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me. But he said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.'" In context, "the Lord" almost certainly refers to Jesus — and the exchange describes genuine two-way communication, with Jesus responding.
The book of Revelation's closing liturgy — "Come, Lord Jesus!" (Rev. 22:20) — is a prayer addressed to Jesus asking him to return. And John opens Revelation with a blessing from "Jesus Christ the faithful witness" alongside the Father and the Spirit, treating all three as co-sources of divine grace (Rev. 1:4-5).
The Significance of "CALLING on the Name"
The phrase "calling on the name of the Lord" is a significant one in the Old Testament. It describes specifically the act of invoking God in prayer or worship. "Everyone who calls on the name of the LORD will be saved" (Joel 2:32) — quoted by both Peter (Acts 2:21) and Paul (Romans 10:13) in contexts where they apply it to Jesus. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 1:2 that the church is "all who in every place call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ."
"Calling on the name" of Jesus was how the first Christians described their prayer life with him. And they borrowed that language directly from Old Testament descriptions of calling on the name of YHWH.
Progressive Christianity's Objection
Progressive Christianity redefines prayer entirely. John Shelby Spong argues that "the God who answers our prayers has ceased to be a believable God in our day" — God cannot be a personal being who intervenes in history, because prayer doesn't always produce the results we ask for.
But this confuses unanswered prayer with the impossibility of prayer. God is all-powerful but not a vending machine. He hears every prayer and responds in wisdom that exceeds our own — sometimes "yes," sometimes "not yet," sometimes "I have something better." The mystery and the paradox at the heart of prayer is that it genuinely matters to God while he remains utterly sovereign. Scripture teaches both truths and doesn't smooth the tension.
Closing Thought
I find it deeply meaningful that Jesus himself prayed. He prayed in Gethsemane. He prayed for Peter. He prayed for those crucifying him. He prayed for us (John 17). He modeled prayer as a real, personal communion with the Father.
And now, the risen Jesus intercedes for us before the Father (Hebrews 7:25). Prayer, in the fullest Christian sense, moves in both directions: we call on Jesus, and Jesus intercedes for us. It is one of the most intimate expressions of what it means to be in Christ.
So yes — we should pray to Jesus. Not because we've decided it's okay, but because he is who he is, and because he invites it.