The question, “Why not go straight to Jesus?” Is often brought up in conversation with Protestants in regard to prayer to the saints. Sometimes prayer to the saints is treated as a form of idol worship, as if it is positively prohibited. Other times it’s treated as if it is inefficient and creating an unnecessary layer of middle management between the believer and Christ.
However, I believe what is underneath both of these objections is an insufficient view on the relationship between Christ and His people. This view assumes a level of separation between Christ and His people that runs contrary to the evidence of Scripture. In Scripture, we see multiple places where the people of God are so united with Christ that they are identified with Him.
In Matthew 25:40 we see that deeds of charity done to members of Christ’s family are counted as deeds of charity done to Christ himself. The opposite is also the case in that neglect for the family of Christ is counted as neglecting Christ himself.
“And the king will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.’”
In Acts 22:6-8 this truth is shown in more extreme form. Saul, who has been persecuting the church is confronted by the risen Jesus and is admonished, not simply for persecuting the people of Jesus, but for persecuting Jesus himself. “While I was on my way and approaching Damascus, about noon a great light from heaven suddenly shone about me. I fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to me, ‘Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?’ I answered, ‘Who are you, Lord?’ Then he said to me, ‘I am Jesus of Nazareth whom you are persecuting.’”
All of this assumes the kind of union between Christ and His church that he envisions during the farewell discourse in John 14:20 when Jesus says, “On that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you.”
Paul sees this vision of union beautifully in Ephesians 4:15-16 where he says, “But speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by every ligament with which it is equipped, as each part is working properly, promotes the body’s growth in building itself up in love.”
When we come to a proper understanding of the deeply interconnected relationship between Christ and His church, we realize that prayer to the saints is neither idolatry nor a use of unnecessary middle men. In this view, 1+1=1. Just as in marriage, the husband and wife form one flesh, Christ and His church are one body.
This is not to say that Christianity collapses into some form of pantheism where all is God and God is all. Our individuality is maintained while we yet become mysteriously identified with the risen Christ.
This perhaps becomes most obvious through the lens of the Eucharist. The Eucharist is the summit of our communion with Christ, wherein the faithful each individually consume the body and blood of Christ, and yet in that consumption we are united by our sharing in the same body and blood.
Thus, prayer to the saints can, understood properly, be seen as prayer to Christ himself through the various members of His body because Christ does not separate Himself from His body and in fact identifies that body with Himself. Therefore prayer to the saints is not idolatry because it isn’t worship of a false God and it isn’t an inefficient middle man because the connection between Christ and His church is immediate.
