Does prayer mean He’s not divine? Or does it reveal something deeper about His role and mission?
When people read the Gospels and see Jesus praying, they often ask: “If He is truly God, who was He talking to?” It’s a good question — but not a complicated one when we return to what the Scriptures actually show.
Jesus praying doesn’t prove He was someone different from God. Instead, it reveals the depth of His mission — that He came not only as God, but also as a man. The key to understanding this is realizing that Jesus wasn’t pretending to be human. He truly became human — with a body, emotions, and a mind that experienced hunger, tiredness, pain, and even the need to pray.
📜 Scriptural Insight
Let’s consider Hebrews 5:7:
“In the days of His flesh, He offered up prayers and supplications, with strong crying and tears unto Him that was able to save Him from death…”
This verse shows Jesus praying in the days of His flesh. That’s not a contradiction to His divine nature — it’s an affirmation that He truly took on human experience. He prayed as a man, not because He was separate from God, but because He was expressing perfect humanity.
💡 Think of It This Way
Imagine the sun shining through a window. The sun in the sky is vast and powerful. But when its rays enter the room, they come through a narrow opening. They don’t become something other than the sun — but they express the sun in a limited way we can see and feel.
Jesus is like that — not separate from God, but the focused expression of the invisible One. His prayers show submission and dependence, not separation. As the Son (meaning the visible expression of God’s plan), He showed us how to walk in obedience, how to trust in the Father’s will, and how to overcome through prayer.
📖 Jesus Taught Us How to Be Sons
Philippians 2:6-8 says He “humbled Himself.” That humility included praying, not because He lacked divinity, but because He modeled obedience.
He didn’t pray because He was unsure. He prayed because He was fully invested in the human journey — even though He carried the fullness of God inside.
🔍 Conclusion
So, why did Jesus pray? Because He came as a man, to show us what it means to walk with God. His prayers don’t reduce Him — they reveal Him. They show how deep His mission was: not to pretend, but to fully live as the Redeemer.
He wasn’t praying to another being in the sky. He was expressing trust, obedience, and alignment with the invisible God — the very One who dwelled in Him.
“God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself…” – 2 Corinthians 5:19