LCMS Convention Workbook St. Louis, Missouri — 2013, Page 349

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THEOLOGICAL DOCUMENTS­­—COMMISSION ON THEOLOGY AND CHURCH RELATIONS
tion and thanksgiving, confession (of sin), profession (of faith), intercession
(for others), or petition (for one’s self). In the Bible,
Holy place and private room, sanctuary and sickbed are all
places of prayer. Set times and any time, morning and night
are all times of prayer. The Scriptures identify prayer as an
act that could be set in particular moments and places and
routinized in definite ways. But it was not confined to such
settings. Formality and fixity interchange with openness and
freedom in the time and place of prayer.23
Regardless of the type or circumstance of prayer, however, what needs to
be emphasized first of all and above all is that God-pleasing prayer in the Scriptures is always a response of the believer to the grace of God freely given in His Son
Jesus Christ.

the man to whom God reckons righteousness apart from works: ‘Blessed
are those whose iniquities are forgiven, and whose sins are covered; blessed
is the man against whom the Lord will not reckon his sin’” (Rom. 4:6–8;
cf. Ps. 32:1).
Prayer in the Scriptures, therefore, “has to do with a dawning awareness
of God’s loving closeness in Christ (Eph. 3:14–21) and with our response to this
in a variety of forms (e.g., praise, thanksgiving, petition, intercession, confession, self-offering).”25 It is clearly “God’s loving closeness in Christ” that fills
the heart and mind of St. Paul as he pours out his soul to God on behalf of his
brothers and sisters in Christ in Ephesus:
For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom
every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according
to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened
with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that
Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being
rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend
with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height
and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses
knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.
Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that
we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to
him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all
generations, forever and ever. Amen. (Eph. 3:14–21)

The vital relationship between prayer and the Gospel
“If we want to learn to pray we must become like children. For that’s who
we really are, children of God through faith in Jesus Christ. Thus the first step
in prayer is to step into the presence of God our loving Father as His beloved
children. And there’s only one way to do that: in the name of Jesus.”24 The
Christian recognizes that prayer can never be separated from the incarnate
Word and Lord by whom and through whom alone it is possible for sinners
to stand in God’s presence, to speak to Him and hope to be heard. “Out of the
depths I cry to you, O Lord; O Lord,” pleads the Psalmist, “hear my voice. Let
your ears be attentive to my cry for mercy. If you, O Lord, kept a record of sins,
O Lord, who could stand? But with you there is forgiveness; therefore you are
feared” (Ps. 130:1–4). According to Scripture, however, “without the shedding
of blood there is no forgiveness” (Heb. 9:22). Therefore it is only “by the blood
of Jesus,” by “the new and living way opened for us through the curtain, that
is, his body,” that we are privileged and invited to “draw near to God with
a sincere heart in full assurance of faith” (Heb. 10:19–22). Only by virtue of
our adoption as God’s children through our baptism into Christ’s death and
resurrection are we enabled to cry out “Abba, Father!” (Rom. 8:15). Only
through the reconciling work of our high priest, Jesus, the Son of God, can we
“approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy
and find grace to help us in our time of need” (Heb. 4:16).
“Abraham believed God,” says Paul, “and it was reckoned to him as
righteousness” (Gen. 15:6; Rom. 4:3). In this righteousness—the righteousness
of faith—Abraham and other Old Testament saints prayed and were heard
(e.g., James 5:10–11, 13–18). David penned the greater part of the greatest
prayer book in the Bible, which proclaims again and again “a blessing upon
23

Miller, 50.

24
Harold L. Senkbeil, Dying to Live: The Power of Forgiveness (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing
House, 1992), 142.

Paul’s words illustrate powerfully how impossible it is to understand,
discuss or practice prayer as portrayed in the Scriptures apart from the Gospel
of Christ through which the gift of prayer is freely given and to which it freely
responds.
It is the claim of the gospel—and it was the discovery of the
early church that that claim is true—that everything in our
relation to God is and happens through Jesus Christ, in virtue
of Jesus Christ, that the one who lived and died as God’s
tabernacling among us (John 1:14) mediates every dimension
of our life and death with God. So, surely, there fore, is every act
of thanksgiving, every prayer of blessing, every supplication
for others also through Christ.26
For Lutherans the doctrine of justification by grace alone through faith
alone in Christ alone is central to faith. Luther called it “the chief article of
our faith,” without which “the church cannot exist”27—or, as it is often para25

John Koenig, Rediscovering New Testament Prayer (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1992), 7.

26

Miller, 318.

27
AE 4:60: “This [teaching of salvation by grace alone and faith alone] is the chief article of
our faith; and if you either do away with it, as the Jews do, or corrupt it, as the papists do, the

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phrased, “the article on which the church stands or falls.” As such, it is vitally
and organically related to every other teaching of Scripture, including Scripture’s teaching regarding prayer. The close connection between prayer and
the Gospel is strongly emphasized in Luther and the Lutheran Confessions.
“[T]rust in the divine promise and in the merits of Christ must provide the
basis for prayer,” says the Apology. “For we must be completely certain that
we are heard on account of Christ and that by his merits we have a gracious
Father.” 28 In his exposition of Psalm 51, Luther reminds us that the God to
whom David pours out his heart is not just any god, but the God who
. . . is dressed and clothed in His Word and promises, so that
from the name “God” we cannot exclude Christ, whom God
promised to Adam and the other patriarchs. We must take
hold of this God, not naked but clothed and revealed in His
Word; otherwise certain despair will crush us.29
Non-believers, says Luther,
. . . speak with God outside His Word and promises, according
to the thoughts of their own hearts; but the Prophets speak with
God as He is clothed and revealed in His promises and Word.
This God, clothed in such a kind appearance and, so to speak,
such a pleasant mask, that is to say, dressed in His promises—
this God we can grasp and look at with joy and trust.
This is the reason why the Prophets depended so upon God’s
promises in their prayers, because the promises include Christ
and make God not our judge or enemy, but a God who is kind
and well disposed to us, who wants to restore life and save the
condemned.30

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It is a dangerous error, surely very widespread among
Christians, to think that the heart can pray by itself. For then
we confuse wishes, hopes, sighs, laments, rejoicing—all of
which the heart can do by itself—with prayer. And we confuse
earth and heaven, man and God. Prayer does not mean simply
to pour out one’s heart. It means rather to find the way to God
and speak with him, whether the heart is full or empty. No
man can do that by himself. For that he needs Jesus Christ. 33
“Only in Jesus Christ,” he says, “are we able to pray, and with him we also
know that we shall be heard.”34 Those who “grope after God” in their instinctual prayers need to be pointed to Christ so that they can truly understand and
benefit from God’s great and gracious gift of prayer.
As Jesus Christ makes it possible to pray, those who are in Christ are continually at prayer. “Pray without ceasing,” wrote Paul to the Thessalonians
(1 Thess. 5:17). This is not an encouragement to repeat, thoughtlessly and
incessantly, rehearsed religious formulas or spontaneous spiritual sentiments
in the hopes of “making points” with God or moving him to action. In fact,
Jesus explicitly warned against such attempts to manipulate God and impress
others (Matt. 6:7), which are contrary to the spirit of the Gospel on which
prayer is based. What Paul’s words to the Thessalonians mean to encourage is
a life and attitude of continual dependence upon God the Father and the regular expression of this dependence in prayerful words, thoughts and deeds.
Luther describes it this way:
Where there is a Christian, there is the Holy Ghost, who is
always engaged in prayer. For though the Christian does not
continually move his lips to utter words, nevertheless the heart
is beating and pulsing, like the arteries and the heart in the
body, unceasingly sighing: O dear Father, may Thy name be
hallowed, Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done among us and
all people, etc. And as the attacks, trials, and troubles press and
crowd harder, also such sighing and begging becomes more
urgent, even audible. So, then, you can not find a Christian
who is not always praying, as little as a living person is without
a pulse, which never rests, but beats continuously, though the
person may be sleeping or is occupied otherwise, so that he is
not aware of its beating.35

“It is impossible,” he says, “for a conscience to expect anything from God
unless it first gains the conviction that God is gracious for Christ’s sake.”31
Therefore, as Korby reminds us, “although there is in our creature life an
‘instinct’ to pray,” “there is nothing merely ‘natural’ about Christian prayer.”32
Rather, it is made possible by the divine, faith-creating activity of God’s Spirit
working through the Gospel. Dietrich Bonhoeffer writes:

church cannot exist.”
28

Ap XXI, 20, KW, 240; emphasis added.

29

AE 12:312.

30

AE 12:312–313.

What Luther Says: An Anthology, Ewald M. Plass (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House,
1959), 1079.
31

32

Korby, 114.

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33
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Psalms: The Prayer Book of the Bible (Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing
House, 1970), 9–10.
34

Ibid., 11.

35

AE 24:89.

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2013 Convention Workbook