I was reading my youngest daughter her bedtime Bible story the other night, when we came to the episode where Jesus taught his disciples the Lord's Prayer. The story opened with these words: "Jesus was praying. When he was done, one of his disciples said, 'Lord, please teach us to pray.'" My daughter stopped me and asked innocently, but insightfully enough, "Dad, Jesus is God. Why would he be praying?"
The kind of question every pastor-dad waits, bedtime story after uneventful bedtime story, to be finally asked.
I explained that as Christians, we believe God is three-in-one: God is Father, Son and Holy Spirit. I told her that Jesus is God the Son, and he was praying to God the Father. That's why his prayer begins with the words "Our Father in Heaven..."
She seemed satisfied enough with this answer and was ready to move on with the story; but I wasn't. This wasn't just some interesting tid-bit about the anatomy of some abstract god that we were discussing. Her simple question had driven us straight to the heart of how we know, and experience, and worship the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
I explained that Jesus is fully God, who receives our prayers; but he is also fully human, who offers them perfectly to the Father on our behalf. Because Jesus is fully God and fully human, he always prays in us, and through us, and with us whenever we pray; and because we are praying in, through and with Jesus the Son, God the Father always hears us. And even when we don't know how to pray the way we should (like those disciples), the Spirit of Jesus is at work in us, transforming our broken prayers into his perfect prayer to the Father. Then I told her that when she prayed, "Lord, please make ___ well, because I love her," Jesus was praying that very prayer with her, and in her and through her, making it into his perfect prayer: "Yes Lord, yes; that's our prayer. Let your will be done."
I was trying to explain the mediation of Christ to her, without using that term. And I was thinking of John 15-17, and Romans 8:12-27, and the whole book of Hebrews while I did so.
But after I had closed the picture Bible and kissed her goodnight, her question kept echoing in my spirit. It reminded me of a book a read a while ago that changed everything for me, James Torrance's Worship, Community and the Triune God of Grace. In this deceptively slender study of the mediation of Christ, Torrance shows how every act of Christian worship must happen in, through and with Jesus. We never praise, or pray, or worship, or serve alone, or directly. Jesus, our fully-God-and-fully-human-mediator, always worships in us, with us and on or behalf.
Of prayer,Torrance writes: "The Son of God became our brother that he might lift us up into [the] life of wonderful communion [with the Father], and so he sends his Spirit into our hearts and puts his prayer on our lips whereby we too can pray, 'Abba Father.' ... In the communion of the Spirit in the communion of saints, our prayers on earth are the echo of his prayers in heaven."
This is the fuller answer to my daughter's innocent question. Jesus prays so that our feeble prayers might become an echo of his perfect prayer in heaven. And I sometimes wonder if Worship, Community and the Triune God of Grace shouldn't be mandatory reading for all Christian worshipers and especially all worship leaders. If it were, our prayer and praise life as a church might be transformed by this truth: we need no longer depend on our own spiritual resources to generate an acceptable response to God, because our worship actually participates in that perfect response to the Father that the Son offers for us, through us, and with us.
Teach Us to Pray
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Greetings Dale Harris
Truly,
Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings thou hast perfected praise?
[Matt 21.16]
With childlike simplicity,
your youngest daughter has seen right through the charade of the doctrines of:
Jesus being God & God being three-in-one!
She has understood that GOD has no need to pray, so if Jesus prayed,
Jesus isn't GOD!!
Maybe you should reconsider how you answered her.
Because
1) The Bible does not speak of a "God the Son"
2) and there is no place in Scripture, where GOD is depicted as
three-in-one
Rather,
Jesus identified his Father
as the only true GOD
[John 17.3];
as the only GOD
[John 5.44];
and as "his GOD"
i.e. "my GOD"
[John 20.17, Rev 3.12].
Almighty GOD does not have a GOD; therefore Jesus cannot be Almighty GOD!
Your daughter could see this.
Also the early church concurred with Jesus' teaching; they did not believe
in a three-in-one God;
but rather:
(1 Cor 8:4) ... that there is none other God but one.
(1 Cor 8:6) But to us there is but one God, the Father, ...
So, how was Jesus taught
as a child?
Answer: the Shema i.e.
(Deu 6:4-7) Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD: 5 And thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might. 6 And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart: 7 And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up. ...
Dale, Jesus, himself, the Messiah, quotes this verse as the foremost (first) of all the commandments in Mark 12:28-34.
This was therefore, Jesus' creed; therefore, as Christians, followers of Christ, this ought to be our creed!
If Jesus was never taught such a concept as the trinity when he was a child in light of Deut 6.4-7 (the first of all the commandments), then is it right that we teach such things to children??
Surely we ought not to!
Jesus' creed stipulates that GOD is ONE i.e. ONE Being, ONE Person, for there is one God; and there is none other but he:
[Mark 12.32]
Thus, there is solely ONE GOD,
the Father.
[John 17.3; 1 Cor 8.4,6]
A child can easily understand that.
This teaching is indeed foundational for a child's understanding of GOD; i.e.
the fact that GOD is ONE & this ONE GOD is the Father;
indeed, the GOD & Father of our
Lord Jesus Christ.
[2 Cor 11.31, Eph 1.3, Col 1.3, 1 Pet 1.3]
Therefore, Dale, with all due respect,
I encourage you, as a truthseeker, to consider the difference between Jesus' creed and what you are currently teaching your children,
especially your youngest daughter.
For more info on this subject,
I recommend this video:
The Human Jesus
Take a couple of hours to watch it; and prayerfully it will aid you in your quest for truth.
Yours In Messiah
Adam Pastor
PS
John Milton also (rightfully)
rejected the doctrine of the trinity!!
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