The Jesus Prayer: A Simple Guide
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.
There is a long-standing tradition that surrounds the Jesus prayer. And this prayer is beautiful not only for its simplicity but also for its fullness.
Many in the protestant/evangelical world are very unfamiliar with this prayer, and there are even those who are contemptuous towards it as some violation of Jesus' prohibition of vain repetitions in the Sermon on the Mount. Far from this, this simple prayer has been a cornerstone of Christian Spirituality and a way into greater awareness of God’s mercy for anyone on the pathway to Christ, be they new converts or seasoned monks.
I am certainly no expert in this. However, I do want to help you make some sense of this prayer and help you pray it. My hope is that this will enrich you and make this prayer come alive for you. There are four things I want to highlight:
This prayer is both Trinitarian and Christocentric.
The fullness of Mercy.
Reality of our sonship as those who still sin.
The emphasis of your prayer speaks to where your heart may be.
Let’s take each in turn.
First, this prayer is Trinitarian and Christocentric. The latter is far more obvious, as the prayer is an invocation of the name of Jesus and a petition to Christ; after all, it starts with Lord Jesus Christ. What is beautiful about this is that each title for the Word made flesh reveals and draws our minds to who Jesus is: The Divine Son, born of the Virgin, sent to save.
Lord—Kurios, a Divine title given to YHWH in the Septuagint, is applied to Christ throughout the New Testament. We boldly confess that Jesus is the LORD. He is Divine.
Jesus — which means YWHW saves. This reminds us of His human nature and mission. The angel told Joseph and Mary that they were to name the child Jesus, for He would save His people from their sins. So we are called to remember that when the fullness of the time came, Jesus, who is fully and truly human, was born of a woman, as one under the law, for us, to deliver us from the curse and offer us adoption as sons. He came to save us - in the fullest sense of that word.
Christ — is not a last name, of course, but a title—the Anointed One, the Messiah. The one whom the prophets foretold and the people of God had been waiting for has arrived. He is now our Messiah, our Anointed One, ascended on high, ruling the nations with the Ancient of Days.
Son of God - not a son of God by adoption like us, but the unique Son of God, the Divine person, the Word, the Logos, the Son. Again, we affirm that Jesus is God from God, light from light, true God from true God.
All of these are brought to the intellect as we utter the words, Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God. Each a confession.
Yet, this is also explicitly Trinitarian, for as we think of one, we are brought to three, and as we think of three, we are brought to one. Consider that we, of course, have made mention of Christ, but we confess Him to the Son of God, the Son of the Father. This brings our hearts to the One God we confess in the creed. But, we cannot call Christ Lord truly, but by the Spirit (1 Cor. 12:3). Therefore, to speak this prayer in earnest is done by the power of the Spirit. We may not utter His name, but it is done in His energeia.
Then, we make our petition known, have mercy on me, a sinner. Now, what trips a lot of people up is that in the West we have essentially reduced mercy to a single component of its nature - a response to the penitent. Of course, there is a significant penitential reality to the mercy of God as His response to our repentance, but this is not simply a prayer asking for God's forgiveness, it is asking for God’s fullness. In the Septuagint, the Hebrew word for God loving kindness, covenantal love - hesed - was translated as mercy. Asking for His mercy is asking to have more of Him, to know His Love, His kindness, His presence, His strength, and yes, to receive His forgiveness. When you call out for mercy, there need not be a feeling of grovelling but of an honest need. Not of condemnation but joy-filled mourning over sin as we encounter Him. There is never a minute in your life where you cannot use a greater experience and awareness of His mercy. This is a simple yet powerful petition, and words won’t do it justice.
But it ends with something that makes many a protestant evangelical uneasy - on me, a sinner. “But I am not a sinner anymore; I am son?!” is what I have heard almost every time I talk about this prayer. And I never deny that what they say is true. We have been adopted in the mercy of God, and made family by grace. Yet, we still sin. And in that moment of turning my will against the Good, I embrace sin, and it ought not be a pain for us to admit it. It is not a denial of grace. It is no stain on my blood-bought identity. It is a humble assessment of my present condition. It is taking the lowest seat at the table so that the Host will say come up higher. It is the prodigal returning again and again to find the Father is yet again waiting and running. In my world, I am the chief of all sinners. I am a wandering sheep. A son who stumbles on his way home. I am a sinner in need of mercy, and when I - with humble boldness, in the confidence of Christ’s work - approach God, I am met with the fire of His love, compared to which my sin is but a droplet of water.
Lastly, in this post, what you emphasize during the prayer can often reveal the condition of our heart. I want to quote from the fifth meeting in The Pilgrim Continues His Way, where it is written that,
“…the Holy Spirit may also bestow His gifts of grace on each, according to each one's strength: to one, a reverent fear of God; to another, Love; to still another, a steadfast faith; and to yet another, profound humility, and so on. This is why the recipient of the gift is filled with reverence and glorifies the power of the Almighty; and in his prayer, he utters the word Lord with special feeling and rapture, understanding that it signifies the greatness and the power of the Creator of the world. The one who has received this mystical outpouring of love in his heart is, above all, enraptured and permeated with the sweetness of calling on Jesus Christ—like the starets who could not hear the name of Jesus pronounced, even in a passing conversation, without experiencing a special ecstasy of love
and sweetness. It is in the person with an unwavering faith in the divinity of Jesus Christ, that is of one essence with God the Father, that faith is kindled and grows more steadfast as he utters the words Son of God. The one who receives the gift of humility, and who deep within his being acknowledges his own powerlessness, is broken and humbled as he says the words have mercy on me. And with all his strength, he utters the last words of the Jesus Prayer in a total outpouring of himself, sustaining his hope in God's mercy and abhorring his own sins.pg. 123, in Olga Savin’s translation.
This is simply to put an idea in your heart and be discerning when you pray. There isn’t a science here. But, as the Spirit leads us in our prayers, we may be able to discern where we are at and what is being impressed upon us.
It should be said that the point of the Jesus prayer is nothing less than Jesus himself. The Rev. Dr. Thomas Hopko, who was an Eastern Orthodox Christian priest and the Dean of Saint Vladimir's Seminary, said, “Everybody wants the Jesus Prayer, but nobody wants Jesus.”1 The heart of prayer is Christ. To know Him. To be in Him. Communion.
It should also be said that there are many more traditions and practices associated with this prayer that if one were to explore, I would suggest doing so with the aid of someone more seasoned. We all need fathers in the faith.
My hope again is that you will pray. That with these brief explorations, this simple and yet profound prayer will be one that you can truly pray and, through it, find Jesus.
Quoted in: https://www.frederica.com/2011/02/23/mysteries-of-the-jesus-prayer/