Praying to Jesus

In the men's Bible study I attend known as Men of the West (yes it is a reference to Lord of the Rings), we are currently going through a book on prayer. Recently, the question came up as to which member of the Godhead we should pray to.

One common understanding of Christian prayer is that we should pray to the Father, in the name of the Son, by the power of the Spirit. In the book we are going through, for example, authors Kyle Strobel and John Coe point to the trinitarian formula in Ephesians 2 in support of this understanding: "For through him [Jesus] we ... have access in one Spirit to the Father" (Eph 2:18). Discussing this verse, Strobel and Coe note that, "It is through Jesus that we have access to the Father in the Spirit. This is why we pray to the Father, in the name of the Son, by the Spirit."¹

I do not wish to dispute this trinitarian understanding of prayer at all, nor do I necessarily disagree with Strobel and Coe's interpretation of Ephesians 2:18. (Though I note that in context this verse is not actually discussing prayer per se.) Another example of praying to the Father would be the Lord's prayer, which starts with "Our Father." So this is a fine way to pray, and I am not disputing this.

However, what I would like to do is take a brief look at another scripture that I think supports the legitimacy of praying directly to Lord Jesus as well.

Stephen's Prayer

In the narrative of the Acts of the Apostles we get a unique glimpse of the early Christians that we do not always get to see from other kinds of documents in the New Testament, such as letters. For example, we can see clues as to how the earliest Christians interacted with Lord Jesus in his risen, exalted state. In Acts 7, for instance, in the passage where Stephen is being stoned, we can see that Stephen prays directly to Lord Jesus:

While they were stoning him, Stephen prayed, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.” ‭‭(Acts‬ ‭7:59‬; ‭NIV)‬‬

In this verse it seems fairly clear that Stephen is praying directly to Jesus. So, it would seem that praying to Jesus is definitely a biblical and legitimate thing for Christians to do.

Or is it?

It is tempting to simply quote this verse in the NIV and call it good. However, the skeptic in me decided to dig a little deeper. Especially when an interpretation hangs upon a single phrase in English, it is generally a good idea to look at a few other Bible versions to see if there is any divergence in translation. Good exegesis demands nothing less from us.

Consider, then, the ESV translation of this same verse:

And as they were stoning Stephen, he called out, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.” ‭‭(Acts‬ ‭7:59‬; ‭ESV‬‬)

In the ESV, the word "prayed" does not appear. Instead, we find the words "he called out." Is this a significant difference? What exactly is going on here?

The word translated as "prayed" (NIV) or "called out" (ESV) in Acts 7:59 is ἐπικαλούμενον (epikaloumenon), which here has the sense of "to call upon deity for any purpose" (BDAG, "ἐπικαλεω," s.v. 1); or "to call upon, to appeal to, to ask for help" (Louw & Nida, "ἐπικαλέομαι," s.v. 33.176). By contrast, the official word for the verb "to pray" is προσεύχομαι (proseuchomai). Does this thus invalidate the idea that Stephen is praying to Jesus here?

Words and Concepts

One of the most helpful insights I have learned from my Greek professors has been the need to distinguish between words and concepts in interpretation. For example, while Paul never (in any of his extant letters) uses the Greek word for "hell" (γέεννα; Gehenna), he arguably has the concept in mind in places like 2 Thess 1:9. Likewise, Jesus does not use the word for "shepherd" in John 21, but since he tells Peter to "feed my sheep" he arguably has the concept of a shepherd in mind. So, in interpreting any particular passage, we need to go beyond the dictionary definitions of Greek words, and also think about the context and concepts in use.

As I think about the meaning of ἐπικαλούμενον ("he called out") in Acts 7:59 in context, a few things lead me to understand this as Stephen praying to Jesus.

First of all, as we have seen, the word ἐπικαλούμενον here involves the idea of Stephen calling upon Lord Jesus "as a deity" (cf. BDAG, "ἐπικαλεω," s.v. 1). So, Stephen is clearly reaching out to Jesus as more than a mere human being here.

Secondly, in the next verse, Stephen kneels down on his knees and again cries out to Jesus (here the word for "cry" is κράζω; krazō, which is yet another Greek word), "Lord, do not hold this sin against them" (Acts 7:60). To me, kneeling down and crying to Jesus sounds an awful lot like Stephen is praying to Jesus.

Finally, when Stephen cries out to Jesus to "not hold this sin against them" it sounds like he is saying something similar to Jesus himself when he said to the Father on the cross, "Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing" (Luke 23:34). This point is perhaps the most interesting, in light of the fact that Luke was the author of both Luke and Acts. There are a lot of profound theological parallels we could draw between Luke 23:34 and Acts 7:59-60, but that is a separate point. The question I would want to ask here is this: is Jesus praying to the Father in Luke 23:34?

I think we would want to say that yes, Jesus is clearly praying to the Father in Luke 23:34. Yet, this seems to be exactly what Stephen is doing in Acts 7:59-60, to Lord Jesus. The parallels between Stephen and Jesus are just too striking for this to be an instance of prayer in one case and not in the other.

Illustrating the word versus concept distinction further is the fact that the verb used in Luke 23:34 is yet another Greek word (λέγω; legō, the verb for "I say"). So, in these two passages we have no less than three different words (epikaleō, "I call out"; krazō, "I cry"; legō, "I say"), which I would argue all involve in context the same concept of prayer, that is, calling upon or speaking to someone as to a deity.

So, is Stephen praying to Lord Jesus in Acts 7:59? I would say the contextual and lexical evidence clearly point in this direction.

Thanks for reading, shirelings!

Notes

[1] Kyle Strobel and John Coe, Where Prayer Becomes Real: How Honesty with God Transforms Your Soul (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2021), 40.

Appendix: Verbal Tense in Acts 7:59

For those interested, my own translation of Acts 7:59 is as follows:

Acts 7:59 καὶ ἐλιθοβόλουν τὸν Στέφανον ἐπικαλούμενον καὶ λέγοντα· κύριε Ἰησοῦ, δέξαι τὸ πνεῦμά μου.

And while they were stoning Stephen, he is calling and saying, “Lord Jesus, take my life.”

The verb "stoning" is in the imperfect tense, which denotes an ongoing action in the past, and the participles "calling" and "saying" are in the present. The reason most English translations use the "historical present" past tense for all of these actions here is because it is much more readable. It is easier to read in English that they were stoning Stephen, and he was calling and saying. But in the Greek the second two are actually in the present.

A few more comments about translation choices. The verb δέχομαι can mean "take" or "receive," and πνεῦμα can mean "spirit," "breath," or "life." These are all valid meanings for these words here, so why not switch it up a bit to let our eyes see this verse with a fresh perspective? "Take my life" is especially provocative to me since in our modern English this connotes the idea of taking someone's life as in "sending them to the next life" (a.k.a. killing them), whereas here Stephen is asking that Jesus receive or take his life.

Food for thought.