Praying in Jesus’s name aims at his glory, and the Father’s glory in him. “Whatever you ask in my name,” he says, “this I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son” (John 14:13). When we pray with others, and they hear our prayers, invoking Jesus’s name redounds to his fame, his praise, his glory. Our prayers honor Jesus when we appeal to his Father in conscious reliance on Jesus — because of who he is, what he has done for us, and what he promises to be for us forever.

Before I was old enough to remember, I learned to pray in Jesus’s name. What a gift. Praying in his name is a reality simple enough for a child to acknowledge, and yet profound enough to keep saints in awe for eternity. Like learning to sing “Jesus Loves Me.”

And of course, when we teach young children such simple and profound truths (which we must), familiarity may breed neglect as they grow. So it is for any of us with the dear truths we repeat. At whatever age, we might make “in Jesus’s name, I pray, amen” into a throwaway closing at the end of our prayers, instead of the precious and massive theological reality it is.

For two thousand years, Christians have been praying in Jesus’s name, and for good reason. But when was the last time you paused to ponder why?

In the Name of Jesus

Jesus himself instructed his disciples to “ask the Father in my name” (John 15:16; 16:23, 26). The apostle Paul spoke of Christians as those who “call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Corinthians 1:2), and give thanks “to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ” (Ephesians 5:20).

Praying in Jesus’s name is just one act among many in a whole life under the same banner: “Whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus” (Colossians 3:17). Unsurprisingly, in the book of Acts, we see the earliest Christians making the name of Jesus explicit in all they did — whether baptism (Acts 2:38; 10:48; 19:5), or healing and exorcism (Acts 3:6; 4:30; 16:18), in all their teaching and preaching (Acts 4:18; 5:40; 8:12; 9:27), even risking their lives and embracing imprisonment and death in his name (Acts 15:26; 21:13).

Such living, and performing various actions, for the world to see, in the name of Jesus has a particular end in view: to glorify him. To honor him. To act in Jesus’s name is to act for Jesus’s fame. To aim to make him known and admired and appreciated and enjoyed, as he ought to be. But what about when we turn Godward in prayer? How is prayer, in directing our words Godward, instead of our actions toward fellow humans, distinct from other acts undertaken in Jesus’s name?

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