Almost everyone these days knows that
the Aramaic term Abba, by which Jesus addressed God in prayer (Mk. 14:36),
means “Father”, though according to the German Aramaic scholar Joachim
Jeremias, the word is more akin to a child’s term for Father, roughly equivalent
to our endearing term “Papa” or “Daddy”. Indeed, it is almost certain that
Jesus’ own use of this term to address God underlies its extended use in the New
Testament Greco-Roman churches as an address to God, even though their language
was Greek and not Aramaic (cf. Ro. 8:5; Ga. 4:6). Such an address for God was
not typical within the Jewish community, but if this was the way Jesus prayed,
then it became the way Christians prayed.
A brief word, therefore, should be said about Jesus'
insistence that prayer be offered to the Father in his name (Jn. 16:23-28). On
the night of his betrayal, when Jesus spoke to his disciples about his
departure from the world and his return to the Father, he instructed them to
pray to the Father in his name. So far, they had heard Jesus’ teachings about
prayer in the form of what we call “the Lord’s prayer”, in several parables on
prayer, in the Sermon on the Mount, and so forth, but there had been nothing in
any of those teachings suggesting that they should come to the Father “in the
name of the Son”. Now, however, they were to ask in just this way. In that day, you will ask in my name, that is, in the soon-to-come
day when Jesus would no longer be physically accessible, since he was leaving
the world and going back to the Father. What Jesus seemed to be
saying was that their requests to the Father “in his name” could now be
made directly, since by his return to the Father, Jesus had made such intimate
access possible (Jn. 16:26-27; cf. He. 4:14-16; 10:19-22). Because of their love and loyalty to Jesus,
the Father was only too ready to hear their requests! Now, the incarnational mission was almost
complete. Jesus had come from the Father
into the world, and now he was returning from the world back to the Father
where he was before (16:28; cf. 6:62).
Because of this language, Christians
sometimes ask who should be addressed in prayer, whether the Father, the Son,
the Holy Spirit, or whether equal time should be given to all. This was
apparently a problem that the primitive Christian community did not address. In
the first place, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are not three
separated Beings but one God, as say all the ancient creeds. Each
interpenetrates the other so that prayer to one is sufficient (cf. 1 Jn. 2:23;
2 Jn. 9). However, one should not forget
that the common form of praying in the New Testament demonstrates a priority,
that is, prayer is invariably to the Father rather than to the Son or the Holy
Spirit. Prayer may be “in the name of the Son”, and it may be “by the Spirit”,
but it is “to the Father”. Indeed, prayer in general in the New Testament is never
addressed directly to the Son or the Holy Spirit. Rather, Jesus taught his
followers to pray to the Father (Mt. 6:9; Jn. 4:23), and further, that they do
so in the name of the Son (Jn. 16:23-24). It is significant that the nature of
Christ's mediatorship is not so much that he goes to the Father instead of us
(as though he goes where we cannot go), but because of his resurrection life
and ascension he goes to the Father with us. He has made the way open to us. To
be sure, on occasion Jesus was addressed directly in visionary experiences (cf.
Ac. 7:59; 9:13-17), but while this is true, one must concede that these
occasions are not the ordinary form of prayer, and they must be regarded as the
exception and not the norm. The standard form is for prayer to be directly
addressed to the Father in the name of the Son (Ro. 8:15; 15:6; 2 Co. 11:31;
Gal. 4:6; Ep. 1:17; 2:18; 3:14; 5:20; Col. 1:3, 12; 3:17; 1 Th. 3:11; Ja. 3:9).
