We are told that God hears our prayers. Then why doesn’t he listen? The most consoling words in the New Testament are, “Ask and you will receive. Seek and you will find. Knock and it will be opened to you” (Matthew 7:7 = Luke 11:9). The absolute assurance of this promise is something everyone wants to believe in. In an uncaring world, it is tremendously reassuring to be told, not only that someone is listening, but that help is available on request.
In most cases, however, the promise is not fulfilled. Prayers go unanswered. Desperate mothers pray for food for starving children, and there is no answer. Today, the silence of God is so profound that he has been proclaimed dead.
Did nothing like this happen in the first century? Didn’t the first Christians wonder why some—perhaps most—of their prayers were not answered? How did they explain it?
The New Testament indicates the earliest Christians were in fact keenly aware of the tension between the unconditional promise of Jesus—“Ask and you will receive”—and the fact that some prayers went unanswered. A number of New Testament passages show them struggling to understand why God heard some prayers and ignored others that were equally worthy. The solutions they came up with ranged from the self-serving to the selfish.
Jesus’ unconditional promise is stated in Matthew 7:7–12, which is paralleled by Luke 11:9–13 (see box). Clearly we have here two versions of the same saying. Both passages have the same structure. Each begins with the same three statements (“Ask and you 016will receive; seek and you will find; knock and it will be opened to you”), which are then justified by three identical assertions (“For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened”).a Then follows a description of a father-child relationship. The suggestion is that if a human parent, who is by definition evil, gives his child what it needs, how much more will the heavenly Father, who is by definition good, answer the requests of his children (“If you then, who are evil, know [how] to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those asking him!” [Matthew 7:11]).
Despite their close similarity of structure, however, the passages in Matthew and Luke are not identical. In describing the father-child relationship, Matthew writes, “What man among you, if his son asks him for bread will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish will give him a serpent?” Luke, however, mentions first a fish and a serpent, and then adds, “Or if he asks for an egg will give him a scorpion?” Luke thereby heightens the sense of danger; poisonous scorpions were common throughout Palestine, whereas the serpent mentioned by Matthew was a harmless water snake (tropidonotus tesselatus), which in the Sea of Galilee sometimes takes the bait of an angler (Matthew 17:27), who to his great surprise gets a snake instead of a fish! Luke thus makes the human parent’s actions seem even more 017improbable—and God’s more probable—than they are in Matthew.1
More importantly for our discussion of prayer, in place of the “good things” provided to the supplicant by God in Matthew, Luke substitutes “a holy spirit” (“how much more will your heavenly Father give a holy spirit to those asking him!” [Luke 11:13]). And, finally, Matthew alone concludes with the Golden Rule: “Whatever you wish that men would do to you, thus also you do to them” (Matthew 7:12). In Luke, the Golden Rule appears in a completely different context, as part of the Sermon on the Plain (Luke 6:31).
Most scholars believe that Luke substituted “a holy spirit” for Matthew’s “good things” because of his special interest in the Holy Spirit. I do not agree. Biblical authors sometimes use “a holy spirit” to refer to “the Holy Spirit”—originally a way of describing God’s action in history; subsequently identified as the Second Person of the Trinity. But this is not always the case. If “a holy spirit” is given its most generic meaning, it should be understood as “a spiritual blessing,” as in Wisdom of Solomon 9:17: “And who could ever have known your will, had you not given wisdom and sent your holy spirit from above.” Here, the holy spirit is the gift of wisdom.
The difference between “good things” and a spiritual blessing is that good things include all the physical requirements necessary for a normal life. Thus, according to Matthew, if you pray for bread, you get bread.
The problem with Matthew’s interpretation is that it is susceptible to verification. If one prays for food—the point of the father-child illustrations—it is perfectly obvious to everyone whether the prayer is answered or not. If starving people die, their prayer has not been answered, and the incontrovertible fact cannot be hidden.
Luke takes care of this by substituting “a holy spirit” for “good things.” According to Luke, whatever one asks for, God will reply with exclusively spiritual gifts. A hungry person who prays for food might receive the gift of humility or resignation instead. The consequence of Luke’s addition is that one can never say with certitude if a prayer has been answered, because the effects of divine grace are hidden deep within the personality. The recipients who tell us that they feel wiser, humbler and the like have to be trusted.
Luke’s solution to the problem of unanswered prayer, therefore, is to make us uncertain if there is a problem. We can never be fully convinced whether a prayer has been answered or not. This is undeniably elegant and economical. But is it Christian? That is, does it reflect the self-sacrificing love of Christ, which is the model of authentic behavior? Believers in the first century were no different than those of today in that they did not always live up to the high ideals of the Jesus movement. A couple at Corinth, for example, thought that incest was appropriate Christian behavior, and the community approved, which forced Paul to correct them (1 Corinthians 5:1–13).
If Luke’s tactic in 11:13 was to limit God’s response to prayer to the purely spiritual, other New Testament writers impose very specific restrictions both on the object of prayer and the comportment of the petitioner.
The Gospel of Mark stresses the need for faith. In order to have your prayers answered, you must believe. “For this reason I say to you, everything you pray and ask for believe that you have received it, and it will be so for you” (Mark 11:24). Matthew reformulated the passage: “Whatever you ask in prayer, you will receive, if you have faith” (Matthew 21:22).
Mark’s reasoning inevitably leads to the conclusion that if a prayer is not answered, it must be because the petitioner lacked sufficient faith. Thus the desperate mother whose prayer for food for a starving child is denied, is in addition condemned as an unbeliever. It is impossible to think of this solution as Christian. Nonetheless, 018it enjoyed great popularity in the early Church.
Mark’s approach to the problem of unanswered prayer is taken a step further by James, the brother of Jesus, and the first leader of the Jerusalem church after Jesus’ death.b In his epistle, James writes: “If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives to all generously, and without reproaching, and it will be given him. But let him ask with faith, with no doubting, for he who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind. For that person must not suppose that a double-minded person, unstable in all his ways, will receive anything from the Lord” (James 1:5–8).2 James thus limits the unconditional promise of Jesus both in terms of subject and object. The only appropriate object for the prayer of petition is “wisdom,” an entirely spiritual gift. If it is not granted, it is because the “faith” of the one asking was shadowed by “doubt.”3
The effect of such restrictions is to virtually nullify the prayer of petition. No one but a saint could or would have his prayers answered, and all he would be rewarded with, at least according to James, was wisdom! It’s not bad, but it’s not bread.
To blame the petitioners for God’s failure to respond to their prayers runs counter to the basic tenet of Christianity that God’s goodness towards his flock was not based on anything we were or had. “It is proof of 019God’s own love for us, that Christ died for us while we were still sinners,” Paul tells us (Romans 5:8). The inference is simple, “Since he did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for the sake of us all, then can we not expect that with him he will freely give us all his gifts?” (Romans 8:32). That God is willing to give, whatever the condition of the petitioner, must be absolutely taken for granted. The only question is, How does he give?
This brings us back to the passage in Matthew 7 that begins with “Ask and you will receive” (7:1) and ends with the Golden Rule (7:12). By making the Golden Rule serve as the conclusion to Jesus’ unconditional promise, Matthew reveals his understanding of how God responds to petitions: God uses intermediaries—our fellow men—who in some cases act like genuine Christians and in other instances fail in their duty. For Matthew, this explains why some prayers are answered, while others are not. If a mother prays for bread, she will get bread (and not the holy spirit), as long as someone in her community provides it and she in turn provides what she can for her community. For Matthew, the Golden Rule means: “If you wish others to answer your prayers, then answer their prayers.”
Only now does the absolute character of the promise of Jesus become intelligible: If people ask for what they truly need in a community of love, then the response will certainly be forthcoming. No woman desperate for food for a starving child will be turned away empty-handed if her neighbors are dedicated to meeting the needs of others. Her degree of faith or her moral character is completely irrelevant. Her need and that of her child are paramount.
What part does God play in this? Matthew himself explains: “Again, amen I say to you [plural], if two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven. For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them” (Matthew 18:19–20).4
How does the New Testament envision God in our midst? At the very beginning of Matthew’s gospel, Jesus is identified as Emmanuel, “God with us” (Matthew 1:23). The God who answers prayers is present within history in the person of Jesus, who after his resurrection continues to be present in the community. Consider Matthew 28:20: “I will be with you all days until the end of the age.” In other words, God acts through Christ, who in turn acts through the community. As the Body of Christ (1 Corinthians 12:27), the local community is the physical presence of Christ in the world. When it comes to answering prayers, the members of the believing community are the hands and ears of God. If the community does not listen, God does not hear. The hands that offer bread to the starving are human hands animated by the self-sacrificing love of Christ. If those hands do not reach out, God’s will to give is frustrated.
According to Paul, faith is a divine gift, but it is mediated by humans. He writes, “What is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you believed” (1 Corinthians 3:5). Paul and Apollos, an Alexandrian Christian who ministered in Corinth after Paul had left (Acts 18:24–28), are instruments of God. (Note that they are referred to as instruments—“what” not “who.”) Paul and Apollos are “God’s co-workers” (1 Corinthians 3:9), just as are all those who by their love cooperate in the answering of prayers.
The Gospel and Letters attributed to John display the same mixed understanding of prayer that we have seen in the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke), Paul and James. In John 9:31, for example, the cured blind man tells the Pharisees, “We know that God does not listen to sinners, but if anyone is devout and does his will God hears him” (John 9:31). God answers only the prayers of the holy. The prayers of all others are refused. John presents this as an incontrovertible principle, which in fact it is, being well attested in the Old Testament—for example, Micah 3:4: “Then they will cry to the Lord, but he will not answer them; he will hide his face from them at that time, because they have acted wickedly” (see also Isaiah 1:15; Psalm 66:17–19; Proverbs 15:29; Job 22:23–27, 27:8–9).
Elsewhere the Johannine writings underline the importance of human intermediaries if prayer is to be answered (John 14:13–14, 15:7, 16–17, 16:24, 26–27). In John 15:16–17, however, we read: “You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should abide; that whatever you ask the Father in my name he may give it to you. This I command you that you love one another.”
Prayer is answered through the actions of Jesus’ followers.5 The prayer of petition in John 15:16–17 is bracketed by two statements highlighting “abiding fruit” and “love.” They provide the key to how prayers are answered. That the followers must “go and bear fruit” indicates that they must achieve something of lasting value. How are they capable of this? God is the source of their power; “cut off from me you can do nothing” (John 15:5). Verse 17—“This I command you, that you love one another”—clarifies the nature of that power. It is “love.” In context this term carries no ambiguity. Readers of the gospel have been told twice already, “love one another as I have loved you” (John 13:34, 15:12). This productive love must be modeled on the self-sacrificing love of Christ, which was directed to the benefit of others. If Christ gave everything for others, Christians can do no less. As Christ ministered to the needs of humanity, so Christians must minister to the needs of their fellows. When those needs are articulated in prayers of petition, Christians have no option but to respond. If they do not, they stigmatize themselves as no longer belonging to Christ and are in consequence condemned (John 15:6).
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One of the acute problems of the early Church was the contradiction between the absolute promise of Jesus and the fact that worthy prayers were not answered. Two types of solution developed. The more popular, drawing on Jewish precedent in the Old Testament, took the easy option, and blamed the petitioner for various forms of inadequacy. The other recognized the incarnational character of grace, and thus saw Christians as the hands and ears of God. When they listened to the needs of others, God heard. When they fed the poor and clothed the naked, God was present in their actions. If, however, they did not accept the responsibility laid on them to act with the love of Christ, prayers went unanswered. God had not gone deaf. Rather Christians had grown lazy, and compounded their sin by transferring guilt to the petitioner. Worst of all, the deaths of starving children became a divine mystery to be discussed by theologians instead of a simple problem easily solved by human generosity.
A fuller and more technical version of this article appeared as “The Prayer of Petition (Matthew 7:7 and par.),” in Revue Biblique 110 (2003), pp. 399–416.
We are told that God hears our prayers. Then why doesn’t he listen? The most consoling words in the New Testament are, “Ask and you will receive. Seek and you will find. Knock and it will be opened to you” (Matthew 7:7 = Luke 11:9). The absolute assurance of this promise is something everyone wants to believe in. In an uncaring world, it is tremendously reassuring to be told, not only that someone is listening, but that help is available on request. In most cases, however, the promise is not fulfilled. Prayers go unanswered. Desperate mothers pray for food […]
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Scholars generally agree that a passage like this, shared by Matthew and Luke but absent from Mark, derives from a common source called Q (from the German Quelle, for “source”) used by Matthew and Luke but now lost. See Stephen J. Patterson, “Yes, Virginia, There Is a Q,” BR, October 1995.
The changes could have taken place before the final versions of Matthew and Luke. In this case the two evangelists would have been working from different versions of Q. It is simpler, however, to side with those scholars who argue that Luke deliberately introduced the changes. See, for example, Joseph A. Fitzmyer, The Gospel According to Luke (X-XXIV), Anchor Bible 28A (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1985), p. 913; and Heinz Schürmann, Das Lukasevangelium 2.1, Herders theologischer Kommentar zum Neuen Testament (Freiburg: Herder, 1994), p. 218.
2.
It is generally recognized that James had access to a collection of the sayings of Jesus in a form that resembles Q rather than the edited form of Q that appears in the Gospels. (See Patrick J. Hartin, James and the Q Sayings of Jesus, Journal for the Study of the New Testament Suppl. Series 47 [Sheffield: JSOT, 1991].) However, the original saying about the prayer of petition that James found in Q emerges radically transformed from his hands.
3.
What gave James the authority to act in this way? How could he in effect contradict Jesus? It seems probable that James found a reason in another passage of Q, which dealt with the theme of avoiding anxiety and trusting in Providence (Matthew 6:25–34 = Luke 12:22–31). It advocates having no concern about sustenance or clothing, and concludes with the words, “Seek the kingdom, and these things will be added to you.”
The first part (“Seek the kingdom”) is clearly a condition that must be fulfilled before God grants the reward of nourishment and raiment. Even though the ostensible point of the Q saying is to give spiritual values primacy over material ones, the inescapable effect is to make spiritual perfection the prerequisite for the satisfaction of any material need no matter how basic.
While understandable, James’s solution to the problem of unanswered prayer is also surprising because he had the authentic solution within his grasp. Elsewhere in the letter he writes, “If a brother or sister is going naked and lacking daily food, and if one of you should say to them, ‘Go in peace! Be warmed and filled’ but does not give to them what is necessary for the body, what is the use? So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead” (James 2:15–17). Clearly James expected a Christian to go to the aid of another believer in dire need, but he lacked the empathy to realize that the naked and hungry were certainly praying for clothing and food. The reason why their prayer went unanswered was not because they failed to meet certain conditions, but because other Christians were lazy and unloving. Human intermediaries are necessary if God is to answer prayers.
4.
The initial “Again” is a clear indication that these verses did not originally belong in their present context, which has nothing to do with prayer. Thus in themselves they have nothing to do with the disciplinary function of the community, which is the theme of the previous verses (Matthew 18:15–18). The saying in Matthew 18:19–20 concerns community prayer in general without any connection to the disciplinary function of the community.
5.
A number of commentators understand “I chose you” and “you should go” as a reference to the mission of the apostles (see the list cited approvingly by George R. Beasley-Murray, John, Word Biblical Commentary 36 [Waco: Word Books, 1987], p. 275), which would imply that the saying is not of general application to all believers. In context however, the choice does not take the apostles from among the disciples in general, but rather takes the followers of Jesus from the world. In itself “to go” does not suggest an apostolic mission, but if this meaning is retained, we have to say that the apostles serve as exemplars for all believers. Their mission is one that all Christians must carry out. The petition, in consequence, is not limited in any way. It is the prayer of all Christians.
