If Jesus is God, who was He praying to?
Jesus prayed to God, called the Father greater, and said he did not know the day or hour. Nobody prays to himself. If Jesus depended on God like this, he cannot be God.
Jesus wasn't praying to himself. He, the Son, was praying to the Father, a distinct person. The objection would refute the idea that Jesus and the Father are the same person, but Christians have never believed that. And because the Son truly became human, he lived a fully human life of dependence, including prayer. His prayers show his true humanity and his relationship with the Father; they do not cancel his deity.
What Scripture says
1When Jesus had spoken these things, He lifted up His eyes to heaven and said, “Father, the hour has come. Glorify Your Son, that Your Son may glorify You. 2For You granted Him authority over all people, so that He may give eternal life to all those You have given Him. 3Now this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom You have sent. 4I have glorified You on earth by accomplishing the work You gave Me to do. 5And now, Father, glorify Me in Your presence with the glory I had with You before the world existed.
Jesus prays for the glory he shared with the Father 'before the world existed', a prayer no mere creature could pray.
1In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2He was with God in the beginning.
The Word was 'with God' (a distinct person) and 'was God' (fully divine) from the beginning.
5Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus: 6Who, existing in the form of God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, 7but emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in human likeness. 8And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to death— even death on a cross.
Existing in the form of God, the Son took the form of a servant and humbled himself to the point of death.
7During the days of Jesus’ earthly life, He offered up prayers and petitions with loud cries and tears to the One who could save Him from death, and He was heard because of His reverence. 8Although He was a Son, He learned obedience from what He suffered.
In the days of his flesh, the Son offered prayers with loud cries and learned obedience.
17For this reason He had to be made like His brothers in every way, so that He might become a merciful and faithful high priest in service to God, in order to make atonement for the sins of the people.
He had to be made like his brothers in every respect to become a faithful high priest.
36“Abba, Father,” He said, “all things are possible for You. Take this cup from Me. Yet not what I will, but what You will.”
In Gethsemane Jesus submits his human will to the Father: 'not what I will, but what you will'.
59While they were stoning him, Stephen appealed, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.”
Stephen prays to Jesus as he dies, entrusting his spirit to him.
The case
Who the objection actually refutes
The question "Who was Jesus praying to?" assumes that if Jesus is God, then Jesus and the Father must be one and the same person. That is a view called modalism: one divine person who appears sometimes as Father, sometimes as Son. If modalism were true, Jesus' prayers really would be strange, a person talking to himself.
But the church rejected modalism as early as the third century. The Trinity teaches that the Father and the Son are distinct persons who share the one divine being. So Jesus' prayers are exactly what the doctrine predicts: real conversation between the Son and the Father. In fact, they are one of the strongest pieces of evidence for the distinction of persons within God.
The Son became truly human
The second key is the incarnation. Christians do not claim that Jesus was God disguised as a man. The eternal Son "became flesh" (John 1:14). He took a complete human nature, with a human body, mind and will, without ceasing to be what he always was.
A genuine human life includes:
- Dependence. Jesus grew, learned and was hungry and tired (Luke 2:52; John 4:6).
- Obedience. He "learned obedience through what he suffered" (Hebrews 5:8).
- Prayer. A sinless human being would pray more, not less, because he lived in perfect fellowship with God.
If Jesus never prayed, it would suggest his humanity was a costume. His prayers are part of his being "made like his brothers in every respect" (Hebrews 2:17) so that he could represent us.
Reading the Gospels with both truths
Early theologians such as Gregory of Nazianzus gave a simple rule: statements about Jesus' lowliness (hunger, prayer, ignorance of the hour, death) speak of him as man; statements about his glory (creating, forgiving sins, sharing the Father's eternal glory) speak of him as God. It is one person throughout, the Son, who can be described in both ways.
| What Jesus did | Shows his humanity | Shows his deity |
|---|---|---|
| Prayed to the Father (John 17:1) | ✓ | |
| Asked for glory he had "before the world existed" (John 17:5) | ✓ | |
| Slept in the boat (Mark 4:38) | ✓ | |
| Calmed the storm by command (Mark 4:39) | ✓ | |
| Wept at Lazarus' tomb (John 11:35) | ✓ | |
| Raised Lazarus by his word (John 11:43) | ✓ |
The same prayer that shows his dependence also reveals his deity. In John 17:5, Jesus asks the Father to restore the glory he shared with him before creation. In Isaiah 42:8 the LORD says he will not give his glory to another. A creature could not ask for what Jesus asks.
Prayer goes both ways
It is also worth noticing that the New Testament shows believers praying to Jesus. Stephen prays, "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit" (Acts 7:59). Paul pleads with "the Lord" to remove his thorn, and the Lord answers with words about "my power" (2 Corinthians 12:8-9), which the context ties to Christ. Christians are those who "call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ" (1 Corinthians 1:2), a phrase the Old Testament uses for calling on the LORD (Joel 2:32). Jesus both prays as man and is prayed to as God.
Why it matters
The prayers of Jesus are good news. Because the Son became fully human, we have a high priest who sympathizes with our weakness and who knows what it is to pray with tears (Hebrews 4:15; 5:7). Because he is fully God, his intercession for us cannot fail. In Gethsemane he prayed "not my will" so that we could be welcomed by the Father as his children.
Word study
greek · “form, nature as it appears” · Philippians 2:6
Paul says Christ existed in the morphē of God and took the morphē of a servant. Whatever 'form of a servant' means for his humanity (real, not a disguise), 'form of God' means for his deity. The parallel shows the Son genuinely possessed both.
greek · “to empty, make of no effect” · Philippians 2:7
Christ 'emptied himself'. Paul immediately explains how: by taking the form of a servant and being born in human likeness. The emptying was by addition (taking on humanity and its limits), not by subtracting his divine nature. Theologians debate the details, but the text does not say he ceased to be God.
“But what about…?”
Didn't Jesus say, 'The Father is greater than I' (John 14:28)?
'Greater' can refer to position or role, not nature. A president is greater in office than a citizen, but not more human. During his earthly mission the Son took a lower place in order to serve. Notice that Jesus never said 'the Father is better than I'. The comparison would be pointless if he were an ordinary creature; no human feels the need to say God is greater than he is.
How could God not know the day or hour (Mark 13:32)?
The early church read this as speaking of the Son according to his human nature, which grew in wisdom (Luke 2:52) and accepted limits during his mission. Christians have explained it in slightly different ways, but all agree it reflects the reality of the incarnation, not a lack in the divine Son. The same Jesus knew people's thoughts (Mark 2:8) and what was in every heart (John 2:24-25).
Does God the Son still pray now?
Scripture says the risen Christ 'always lives to make intercession' for his people (Hebrews 7:25). As the one mediator who is both God and man (1 Timothy 2:5), he represents us before the Father. This is the work of a priest who shares our nature, not evidence that he lacks God's.
Doesn't this mean God is divided against himself in Gethsemane?
No. In Gethsemane we see a true human will shrinking from suffering and freely submitting to the Father's will. The Sixth Ecumenical Council (681) affirmed that Christ has both a divine and a human will, always in harmony. The struggle shows how real his humanity was, and how great the cost of our salvation.
Where Christians differ
Go deeper
- book · 2016God the Son Incarnate: The Doctrine of ChristStephen J. Wellum
- book · 2007Putting Jesus in His Place: The Case for the Deity of ChristRobert M. Bowman Jr. & J. Ed Komoszewski
- ancientOn the IncarnationAthanasius
- ancientTheological Orations (Oration 30, the Fourth Theological Oration)Gregory of Nazianzus
- book · 1998The Person of ChristDonald Macleod
Sources (4)
- Definition of the Council of Chalcedon (451): one Christ in two natures, without confusion, change, division or separation
- Third Council of Constantinople (681): two natural wills in Christ
- Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration 29.18–20 and Oration 30: rule for reading Christ's lowly statements as referring to his humanity
- Athanasius, Orations Against the Arians 3, on Mark 13:32
Related questions
Isn't the Trinity a logical contradiction?
A contradiction says something is both one and three in the same sense at the same time. The Trinity does not. It says God is one in being (one 'what') and three in person (three 'whos'). That is a mystery that stretches our minds, but it is not nonsense. And it is not a philosopher's invention: it is what you get when you take seriously both the Bible's insistence that there is only one God and its treatment of the Son and the Spirit as truly divine.
Wasn't the Trinity invented at the Council of Nicaea?
Nicaea did not invent belief in Jesus' deity; it defended it. Christians were worshipping Jesus as God within weeks of the resurrection, as the New Testament letters show, and second-century writers called him God openly. The council met because Arius denied this inherited faith. Nearly every bishop rejected his view, and Constantine later favored Arius' allies anyway. The council clarified an old belief; it did not create a new one.
Isn't Jesus really Michael the archangel?
No text in the Bible says Jesus is Michael. The identification rests on an inference from 1 Thessalonians 4:16. Meanwhile Scripture draws a sharp line between them. Daniel calls Michael 'one of the chief princes', but the Son is unique. Michael would not rebuke Satan on his own authority, but Jesus did. And the letter to the Hebrews spends a whole chapter showing that the Son is not an angel at all, but the Creator whom angels worship.
This entry is a draft and has not yet been theologically reviewed.