In the parting words of Christ to His disciples He gave them His most important lesson concerning prayer. He fastened to their prayer an amazing possibility in the expressions “whatsoever,” “anything,” “what ye will”; but a new and necessary element was disclosed to them in these last hours. They had been taught to pray and how to pray, but not to pray in His name. This was henceforth to be their plea and their power. They were unworthy; He was worthy. This was to be their confidence. That name would forever be recognized at the throne and would always assure the answer. Prayer now depends upon the right use of His name. That signature attached makes the prayer pass in the commerce of heaven.
There are three great ideas associated with the words “in My name”. We pray in the name of Christ (1) when we rely on the redemption that He has wrought for us; (2) when we have the spirit of Christ and seek the things which He seeks; and (3) when we are in vital union with Him.
1. It was in the power of the ritual sacrifice that the high priest in Israel passed through the veil on the day of atonement. It is in the power of the accepted offering of the Lamb of Divine appointment that we are privileged to come into the presence of God. “Having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the holy place by the blood of Jesus, by the way which he dedicated for us, a new and living way, through the veil, that is to say, his flesh; and having a great priest over the house of God; let us draw near with a true heart in fulness of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, and our body washed with pure water; let us hold fast the confession of our hope that it waver not; for he is faithful that promised.” Not only has the Son of God bridged the chasm of nature by becoming Son of man, but as Son of man, representative of our common humanity, He takes upon Him the awful burden of human guilt, gathers it about His holy life, feels the sting of it as none but a sinless soul could feel it. If any one suggests a difficulty about this, let him think of Moses in the idolatrous camp of Israel, the one man entirely innocent being the one man of all the multitude who felt the guilt to be intolerable. So it was that the Son of God felt the guilt of our sins as none but His sinless soul could feel it. What a Nessus’ shirt He wears that day, as He accepts sin’s righteous condemnation, welcomes the sentence of God’s righteous law upon it, dies, the Just for the unjust, takes away the sin of the world to bury it in His grave, and rises victorious over sin and death, having exchanged the lamentable cry, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” for the glad utterance, “Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit”. All this He does as Son of man, as representing us if we will have Him, as the forerunner of all who will follow Him, entering into the presence of God for us, and inviting us to enter into the presence of God with Him by the way He has opened for us: “through him we both have access by one Spirit unto the Father”. The enmity is gone. We are “reconciled to God by the death of his Son”.
Suppose that I, a sinner, be walking along yon golden street, passing by one angel after another. I can hear them say as I pass through their ranks, “A sinner! a crimson sinner!” Should my feet totter? Should my eye grow dim? No; I can say to them, “Yes, a sinner, a crimson sinner, but a sinner brought near by a forsaken Saviour, and now a sinner who has boldness to enter into the Holies through the blood of Jesus”. [Note: A. A. Bonar, Heavenly Springs, 176]
I recall distinctly a certain section of this country where I was for awhile, and very rarely did I hear Jesus’ name used in prayer. I heard men that I knew must be good men praying in church, in prayer-meeting and elsewhere with no mention of Jesus. Let us distinctly bear in mind that we have no standing with God except through Jesus. If the keenest lawyer of London, who knew much of American law, and of Illinois statute, and of Chicago ordinance—suppose such a one were to come here, could he plead a case in your court-house? You know he could not. He would have no legal standing here. Now you and I have no standing at yonder bar. We are disbarred through sin. Only as we come through One who has recognized standing there can we come. [Note: S. D. Gordon, Quiet Talks on Prayer, 156.]
No one truly prays who does not pray in the freedom of Christ’s life, and work, and death. The measure of faith in His merits and sacrifice will be found to be the measure of prayer in the case of any individual or of any Church. The two great branches of our Lord’s family differ so widely as to all which constitutes the government and administration of Divine grace, that any communion between them, except that of charity, is little short of an intellectual impossibility. But the Catholic and the Protestant are at one as regards redemption. Each agrees as to the facts of man’s fall, and sin, and need. Each for his restoration relies upon the supernatural help which Christ’s work for man obtained; therefore, though these two may misunderstand and misrepresent the other, they are none the less brethren.
See,
Their speech is one, their witnesses agree.
Each believes, each loves, each prays, and that from the very depth and ground of the heart. And, as regards any individual member of either communion, we shall find that it is the sight of the cross, and of all the tremendous associations that are bound up with it—the sense of guilt, of condemnation, of deliverance, of infinite loss, and everlasting gain,—that brings, that binds the soul to prayer. [Note: Dora Greenwell, Essays, 124.]
2. To pray in the name of Christ is to pray in His spirit, according to His mind. It means that we pray for such things as will promote Christ’s Kingdom. When we do anything in another’s name it is for him we do it. When we take possession of a property, of a legacy in the name of some society, it is not for our own private advantage but for the society we take possession. Yet how constantly do we overlook this obvious condition of acceptable prayer! To pray in Christ’s name is to seek what He seeks, to ask aid in promoting what He has at heart. To come in Christ’s name and plead selfish and worldly aims is absurd. To pray in Christ’s name is to pray in the spirit in which He Himself prayed and for objects He desires. When we measure our prayers by this rule we cease to wonder that so few seem to be answered. Is God to answer prayers that positively lead men away from Him? Is He to build them up in the presumption that happiness can be found in the pursuit of selfish objects and worldly comfort? It is when a man stands detached from worldly hopes and finding all in Christ, so clearly apprehending the sweep and benignity of Christ’s will as to see that it comprehends all good to man, and that life can serve no purpose if it do not help to fulfil that will—it is then a man prays with assurance and finds his prayer answered.
Such prayer involves intelligent, loving, enthusiastic co-operation with His purpose: growing interest in all the higher communications of His truth; perseverance in sustaining the character and the work begun by His grace, so that the result of both may continue from generation to generation, when our own service, necessarily incomplete, is ended here; joy in seeing each measure of success, wheresoever it be, granted to that work. It was to His friends and neighbours that the Good Shepherd said, “Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep which was lost”. Comprehension, then, of the purpose of Christ, a spiritual imagination large enough to embrace a portion, at least, of His plans, a growth of love able to sympathize, a ready will to co-operate must accompany prayer in His name.
There is a law pertaining to human nature which demands that there should be active co-operation on our part before the beneficent purposes of God can be fulfilled. Jesus taught us to pray “Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven”. He knew that it was possible for the Divine will to remain undone, or even to be frustrated by the indifference or rebellion of man. As we grow and mature, God calls us increasingly to enter into His life and share His plans and operations. He takes us into His counsels, imparts to us His thoughts, and asks us to become His agents. There are two ways in which He does this, Sometimes there comes to us, all unsought, a revelation of His mind and will regarding something He would have us desire or do. To the eye of faith the vision is clear. The Transcendent God has for a moment lifted the overhanging veil of mystery and made His purpose plain. But only on rare occasions does He thus reveal Himself, else the human faculty of seeing would atrophy without its appropriate exercise. His ordinary means of guiding our thoughts and acts is by His indwelling. He is the Immanent God, and He would have us learn more and more to see Him in ourselves—to take our own thoughts, desires, aims, as the offspring of His, confident that He will not betray the trusting heart in which both by nature and by grace He dwells. [Note: L. Swetenham, Conquering Prayer, 139.]
“Do not try planning and praying and then planning again; it is not honouring to God,” wrote General Gordon. And it would be hard to measure how much of the extraordinary power of his life was due to this—that there was no reserve in his committal of himself to God; that he lived with an undivided trust; that he had marked and judged and dealt with the temptation to half-heartedness in prayer. [Note: Francis Paget.]
3. But prayer in Christ’s name also implies union with Christ and identification of interests. This it is that the Saviour Himself emphasizes when He says: “If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you” (Joh_15:7). Of this, too, the Apostle John says “Beloved, if our heart condemn us not, then have we confidence toward God. And whatsoever we ask, we receive of him, because we keep his commandments, and do those things that are pleasing in his sight. And this is his commandment, That we should believe on the name of his Son Jesus Christ, and love one another, as he gave us commandment. And he that keepeth his commandments dwelleth in him, and he in him. And hereby we know that he abideth in us, by the Spirit which he hath given us” (1Jn_3:21-24).
What is it to abide in Christ? That is the first question in settling the qualities of him who can hope to pray successfully. The phrase becomes familiar to us in the New Testament; and indeed we might find a parallel that would explain it to us in several of the different kinds of relation that exist between human beings. For instance, we should probably all understand what was meant if it were said of a young and dutiful child that he abode or lived in his parents. The child’s earliest years are so completely hidden behind the parents’ life that you look upon him not altogether as a separate individuality, but rather as almost a part of the same organism, one expression of the parents’ nature; so that, just as the arm, the tongue, the eye, are several media for the expression of the parents’ will, in the same way, though in a higher degree, the child is another limb of the parental life and utterance of the parental nature. The law owns this, and reaches the child only through the parent. We all expect children’s opinions on matters of religion, of politics, of taste, to be echoes of their parents’. The father acts and thinks for the child. The child acts and thinks in the father. Thus, until the time when the gradual departure takes place, the child’s home is not merely in his father’s house, but in his father’s character—he abides in him. Or take another case: the army and the common soldier “abide in” the general. The army does what its general does. As an army, it has no thought or action out of him. It moves when he moves, stops moving when he stops moving. We say the general has gone here and there, and we mean the army has gone. It lays aside all faculty of decision, or rather contributes it all to him, and he with the combined responsibility of the great multitude upon him goes his way, carrying their life in his. That is perhaps the most complete and absolute identification of two lives that it is possible to conceive of.
We all know with what confidence the clerk of a business house goes to a bank with a draft “in the name” of his firm. If he were to present it in his own name, that would be a very different affair. The demand made on behalf of the firm is instantly honoured. We can see that there is all the difference in this instance between acting in a private and acting in a public capacity. To ask as belonging to a business corporation for the purposes of that corporation is one thing. To ask as a private individual, with merely personal ends in view, is quite another thing. Shall we be wrong if we say that Christ meant us to understand that whatever we ask as connected with Him, as belonging to Him, as members of the Body which is identified with Him, and which has the right to use His name, would be given to us? Some one has said that “to ask in Christ’s name is to ask with Christ’s authority for what He would ask”. We are not likely to arrive at a better definition than that. [Note: A. W. Robinson, The Voice of Joy and Health, 68.]
(1) Such a use of the name of a person may be in virtue of a legal union. A merchant leaving his home and business gives his chief clerk a general power, by which he can draw thousands of pounds in the merchant’s name. The clerk does this, not for himself, but only in the interests of the business. It is because the merchant knows and trusts him as wholly devoted to his interests and business that he dares put his name and property at his command. When the Lord Jesus went to heaven, He left His work, the management of His kingdom on earth, in the hands of His servants. He could not do otherwise than give them also His name to draw all the supplies they needed for the due conduct of His business. And they have the spiritual power to avail themselves of the name of Jesus just to the extent to which they yield themselves to live only for the interests and the work of the Master. The use of the name always supposes the surrender of our interests to Him whom we represent.
(2) Or such a use of the name may be in virtue of a life union. In the case of the merchant and his clerk, the union is temporary. But we know how oneness of life on earth gives oneness of name: a child has the father’s name because he has his life. And often the child of a good father has been honoured or helped by others for the sake of the name he bore. But this would not last long if it were found that it was only a name and that the father’s character was wanting. The name and the character or spirit must be in harmony. When such is the case, the child will have a double claim on the father’s friends; the character secures and increases the love and esteem rendered first for the name’s sake. So it is with Jesus and the believer: we are one, we have one life, one Spirit with Him; for this reason we may come in His name. Our power in using that name, whether with God, or men, or devils, depends on the measure of our spiritual life-union. The use of the Name rests on the unity of life; the name and the Spirit of Jesus are one.
(3) Or the union that empowers to the use of the name may be the union of love. When a bride becomes united to the bridegroom, she gives up her own name, to be called by his, and has now the full right to use it. She purchases in his name, and that name is not refused. And this is done because the bridegroom has chosen her for himself, counting on her to care for his interests; they are now one. And so the Heavenly Bridegroom could do nothing less; having loved us and made us one with Himself, what could He do but give those who bear His name the right to present it before the Father, or to come with it to Himself for all they need? And there is no one who gives himself really to live in the name of Jesus who does not receive in ever-increasing measure the spiritual capacity to ask and receive in that name what he will. The bearing of the name of another supposes my having given up my own, and with it my own independent life; but then, as surely, my possession of all there is in the name I have taken instead of my own.
“Prayer in the name of Christ,” though essentially a mystical phrase, also contains a surface meaning which is very valuable to those who grasp and apply it. And there are many who in their use of the words attach this very definite meaning to them. They are aware that name in olden days stood for character. Hence prayer in the name of Christ signifies to them prayer in the name or character of Christ involving the elimination from their supplications of all that is foreign to His nature, and the inclusion of all those virtues and ideals He taught and exemplified—in a word, it is prayer in the holy and obedient spirit of Jesus. Any demand upon life thus based upon the name or character of Jesus cannot fail to be according to the will of God—thereby fulfilling one of the conditions laid down for effectual prayer. The more Jesus becomes our standard and inspiration in prayer the more confident we may be of a favourable hearing. This is surely what He meant by the words, “If ye abide in me and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will and it shall be done unto you”. [Note: L. Swetenham, Conquering Prayer, 169.]
To attain that holy abiding in which there is such a perfect community of life with our true Vine that it is as impossible for us to ask amiss as for the branch of the fig-tree to put forth the buds and flowers of the thorn is, as we all confess, to reach the very highest ideal of discipleship. And yet on nothing short of this perfectness of union with our Lord has He predicated an unrestricted access to the treasuries of Divine blessing. The same condition is affixed to each of the highest and most longed-for attainments of the Christian life—sinlessness, fruitfulness, and prevalence in prayer; namely, “If ye abide in me”. [Note: A. J. Gordon, In Christ, 137.]
