Nuts & Bolts - Tim Staples

It's Good to Have Friends in High Places
What the Bible says about asking our departed brothers and sisters in Christ to pray for us.

Scenario:

It's 7:00 Friday morning. You and your wife are hustling to perform the daily miracle of getting the kids ready for school. You've both noticed that one of your boys, Christopher, has not been the energetic, jovial and sometimes mischievous 15-year-old you know and love. You ask him what's wrong. He asks if he could talk to you about it after you get home from work. Since you both must leave soon, there's not enough time to explain.

You encourage him not to worry. "Whatever the problem is, Son, it's nothing you and I and our Lord can't handle together." That one gets a little smile out of him, and you give him a hug as you gather your coat and briefcase and head for the door. As you kiss your wife good-bye, you whisper, "We'll get to the bottom of the problem tonight." Off to work you go.

Upon returning from work at 5:30 and gathering the troops for dinner, you notice Chris has brought a Bible to the dinner table. He is quiet throughout supper until finally he asks, "Can we talk now, Dad?" Your curiosity increases as you lead him into your study and sit him down.

After you convey your concern once again, Chris begins to tell you about an Evangelical in his class at his Catholic school who is challenging everyone concerning their Catholic Faith. Chris had been defending the Faith, but he ran into a few points to which he could not respond. He didn't know what to say, and was afraid to tell you for fear he would disappoint you.

You assure Chris he can always come to you with any problem, and the only way he would disappoint you would be by not coming to you. "So now, Chris, let's get down to business," you say with a smile.

"Well, Dad, he challenged me to prove to him that it's biblical to pray to the saints. He quoted Matthew 6:9 where Jesus commands us to pray to the Father. And in Philippians 4:6, St. Paul tells us to 'let [our] requests be made known to God.' My friend says we're making gods out of the saints. Then he challenged me with Deuteronomy 18:10-11, which condemns necromancing, which is communicating with the dead. That sounds like what we do when we pray to the saints.

"And finally, he told us that Catholics go to the saints as mediators, even though 1 Timothy 2:5 says, 'For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.' I must admit that the last few days I've been pretty confused about things, Dad."

Your response:

You reassure your son, "First of all, it's not a sin to be confused or have questions about our Faith. But we must remember where to turn when we do have questions. We must always turn to our Lord in prayer and remember: The Church that He built for us has final say in matters of faith and morals. And the Bible teaches this about His Church:

"The apostles in union with St. Peter (and the apostles' successors the bishops, in union with St. Peter's successor the pope) are given authority in Matthew 18:15-18 for just such a situation as this. Scripture says if a dispute cannot be settled among the brethren, the Church makes the final decision on the matter.

"But now we need to respond to the charges made by your friend. First, he seems to be confused about the nature of prayer. Second, about the context of Deuteronomy 18:10 and necromancing. And third, the mediation of Christ as it relates to the mediation of the saints."

Step One: The Nature of Prayer

You begin by telling your son that when we say we're praying to God and when we say we're praying to the saints, we're talking about two different kinds of prayer. However, we use the same word for both in English.

Prayer to God includes worship that is given to God alone. Prayer to saints includes the honor that is their due, but never worship. The problem is, at least in part, semantics.

Any good dictionary will tell you prayer can simply mean a petition or entreaty from one person to another. That's what we mean by praying to the saints.

Back when people spoke old English, there was no problem. One could say to someone else, "Pray tell" or, "I pray thee, my Lord." In the King James Bible, which was written in old English, we see many examples of this. One is when Bathsheba makes a request of King Solomon in 1 Kings 2:20. She says, "I pray thee, say me not nay." There was never a question as to whether or not Bathsheba was worshipping her son. She wasn't. Nor are Catholics when we pray to saints.

Step Two: The Accusation of Necromancy

It's true the word "necromance" means "to communicate with the dead." It's also true that God condemns this practice in Deuteronomy 18:10-11.

However, the context of the passage makes it very clear: God is condemning communicating with the spiritually dead through wizards and mediums, not condemning praying to saints. This is even more obvious when we see believers praying both for and to those who have "died in the Lord," as well as saints in heaven praying for those on earth in both the Old and New Testaments.

For example, in Jeremiah 31:15-16, we see Rachel interceding for her children (Israel). Jeremiah was written during the time of the Babylonian exile hundreds of years after Rachel's death, yet the text says her "voice [was] heard," and her prayers were answered.

In 2 Maccabees 12:39-45, as Judas Maccabeus is surveying the battlefield the day after Israel had engaged in battle, he and his companions come across the corpses of those who had fallen. Finding amulets under their coats, they surmise the deaths of their comrades to be because of their superstition. So what does Judas Maccabeus do? He takes up a collection to provide a sin offering for the dead and "made atonement for the dead, that they might be delivered from their sin."

Though our Protestant friends don't accept the inspiration of 2 Maccabees, you can at least point out it's invaluable for understanding the faith of the Jewish people shortly before the advent of Christ. 2 Maccabees was written around 100 B.C.

This was about the time the sects known as the Pharisees and the Sadducees developed. The Sadducees denied there was a resurrection (Luke 20:27). The author of Maccabees emphasizes what we know is the truth of the resurrection (2 Mac. 12:44). Notice he uses the then common practices of offering sacrifice for the sins of the dead and praying for the dead as his proof that there is a resurrection.

The faith described in Maccabees is the faith in which Jesus was brought up. In Luke 9:28-31, we have proof. Our Lord ascends a mountain with Peter, James and John. There, He is transfigured before them, and Moses and Elijah appeared and "talked with him" about His death (Luke 9:30).

Remember, Chris' friend claimed "communicating with the dead" is condemned. Here our Lord is communicating with the dead. If there's any question as to whether or not Moses did in fact die, check Deuteronomy 34:5. At His transfiguration, Jesus is praying to saints. And aren't Christians supposed to imitate Christ? (cf. 1 Cor. 11:1)

A key to understanding why we can pray to saints is found in Luke 20. Here, Jesus is dealing with the same Sadducees we mentioned before, who denied the resurrection. In verses 28-33, they attempt to trip up our Lord and prove the resurrection to be untenable. They use Deuteronomy 25:5-6 where Moses commands that if a man's brother dies with a wife and no children, he must "raise up seed" for his brother. The Sadducees ask what if seven brothers all marry the same wife? Whose wife will the woman be in the resurrection? Jesus' response is twofold. First, in verse 34 He declares marriage to be only for this world. This is why we believe marriage to be "until death do us part." More important, however, is His second response to the Sadducees.

He says those who die in the Lord "cannot die . . . they are equal to angels . . . But that the dead are raised, even Moses showed, in the passage about the bush, where he calls the Lord the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob. Now he is not God of the dead, but of the living; for all live to him" (Luke 20:36-38).

Jesus uses Moses' words to demonstrate that Abraham, Isaac and Jacob are not dead. They're alive and well in the Spirit. When Catholics pray to saints, we're not praying to the dead (the spiritually dead described in Deut. 18:10-11), but to those who are alive in the Spirit. We use the language "Masses for the dead" and "prayers for the dead," but it's understood we're talking about those who have died in friendship with God.

Step Three: The Mediatorship of Christ

Finally, you need to straighten out the confusion surrounding 1 Timothy 2:5: "For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus."

First, notice the context of 1 Timothy 2:5. In the first two verses, St. Paul commands "supplications, prayers and intercessions to be made for all men." Intercession is a synonym for mediation in the New Testament.

Hebrews 7:25 refers to Jesus as our one unique intercessor. Yet in 1 Tim. 2:5, all Christians are called to be intercessors (or mediators). Notice the first word in verse five: "For there is one God and one mediator." And in verse seven, St. Paul says, "For this I was appointed a preacher and apostle." "Apostle" is another synonym for mediator. The classical definition of an apostle is: "one sent with the authority of the one who sent him." That's also the definition of a mediator.

In short, St. Paul says we are all called to be mediators, for (or because) Christ is the one mediator, and for this reason, St. Paul was called to be a mediator of Christ's love and grace to the world. Does our mediatorship conflict with the mediatorship of Christ? Not at all. Show Chris that the Bible also declares: "But you are not to be called Rabbi, for you have one teacher (Greek: didaskolos), and you are all brethren" (Matt. 23:8), yet James 3:1 and Ephesians 4:11 tell us we have many teachers (Greek: didaskoloi) in the Church. (Okay, Chris is only 15, but he can handle learning a couple of Greek words once in awhile.)

The key is to understand that the many teachers and mediators in the body of Christ do not take away from Christ as the one teacher and mediator, they fulfill His command to teach and mediate on this earth in Him. They are, and we are, members of His body. With St. Paul in Galatians 2:20, we say, "It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives [or teaches or mediates] in me."

Now turn to 1 Corinthians 12:12-27. This is the text that refers to Christians as "the body of Christ." We are so intimately one with one another that in verse 21, the text reads, "The eye cannot say to the hand, 'I have no need of you,' nor again the head to the feet, 'I have no need of you.' " Then add the fact that we are so radically one with Christ that He can say in Matthew 25:40: "Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me."

The question is, does this intimate union with Christ and with one another cease when we die? Of course not. In fact, it becomes more radical.

The saints in heaven are even closer to us than when they were here on earth, because it's Christ Who makes us one. They are free from all sin, which hinders our prayers (cf. Matt. 17:20, 1 John 3:22, Psalm 66:18), and they're experiencing a union with God (and therefore with us) beyond anything we can fathom. "[They are] like him for [they] see him as he is" (1 John 3:2). As "partakers of the divine nature" (2 Peter 1:4) in the fullest sense, they have gifts and powers beyond what "eye has seen [or] ear heard" (1 Cor. 2:9). If we could ask them to pray for us when they were here on earth, of course we can -- and should -- ask them to pray for us now.

And finally, the Bible presents to us a number of good examples of the mediation of the saints in heaven. In the Old Testament, 2 Maccabees 15:12-16 tells of a vision Judas Maccabeus has, in which he sees both Onias (a former high priest who had died) and Jeremiah the prophet (who had died over 500 years earlier) interceding, or mediating, for Israel.

Now turn to Hebrews chapter 12. This chapter is preceded by the great "hall of faith" chapter wherein the lives of the Old Testament saints are recounted. Then, the inspired author encourages a persecuted church (cf. Hebrews 10:32-34) to consider that they are "surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses" (Heb. 12:1). He then contrasts the Old Testament "church" with the New: "For you have not come to what may be touched, a blazing fire, and darkness, and gloom . . . and the sound of a trumpet, and a voice whose words made the hearers entreat that no further messages be spoken to them" (Heb. 12:18-19).

"But you have come to . . . the city of the living God . . . and to innumerable angels . . . and to the assembly of the first-born who are enrolled in heaven, and to a judge who is God . . . and to the spirits of just men made perfect . . . and to Jesus" (verses 22-24).

Notice the author of Hebrews says, "But you have come to . . . and to . . . and to . . . and to . . ." In the same way that we come to God and Jesus, we also come to the angels, our brothers and sisters on this earth in the Church, and to the spirits of just men made perfect. Those are the saints in heaven. We come to them all by way of prayer.

The Book of Revelation gives us an even better description of the mediation of both the angels and saints in heaven. In Revelation 5:8, 14, "the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb, each holding a harp, and with golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints . . . the elders fell down and worshipped." Notice these elders are offering the prayers of the saints. This is the same ministry of mediation we see the angels performing in Revelation 8:3-4 and the martyrs in Revelation 6:10.

Chris is smiling now. As he scribbles the last of the Scripture references in his notebook, he looks as though he'll burst with excitement. "Thanks, Dad. I'm looking forward to Monday morning. It's a bummer I have to wait all weekend before I can use this stuff."

As Chris walks out, once more his carefree 15-year-old self, you realize you've just experienced a first. It's Friday night during the school year, and your son just wished it were Monday.

As you follow him out to spend the rest of the evening with your family, you marvel at the miracles that never cease, and you ask all the angels and saints to pray for him at school on Monday.

Tim Staples can be reached at St. Josephs Radio, PO Box 2983, Orange, CA 92859, (714) 744-0336.