If you are, say, leading a Bible study in Genesis, you might notice that right after the covenant is renewed and circumcision is established (ch 17) that we see Abraham eating and drinking with God (ch 18). After that meal, God makes a point of saying the he should share all his business with Abraham because of their relationship, and informs him of his intentions to judge a culture. Abraham immediately starts lobbying for concessions to spare the culture and wins them.
The story leaves Abraham for a chapter (19) and then comes back where we read God say this: “Now then, return the man’s wife, for he is a prophet, so that he will pray for you, and you shall live.”
This is the first time the word, “prophet” is used in the Bible and it is associated with intercession rather than relaying messages from God. The role description certainly makes sense of what we see Abraham doing in interceding for the nations earlier in chapter 18.
This role of a prophet as interceder is amplified by the example of Moses. Take three passages and consider their import:
And the Lord said to Moses, “Go down, for your people, whom you brought up out of the land of Egypt, have corrupted themselves. They have turned aside quickly out of the way that I commanded them. They have made for themselves a golden calf and have worshiped it and sacrificed to it and said, ‘These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!’” And the Lord said to Moses, “I have seen this people, and behold, it is a stiff-necked people. Now therefore let me alone, that my wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them, in order that I may make a great nation of you.” But Moses implored the Lord his God and said, “O Lord, why does your wrath burn hot against your people, whom you have brought out of the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand? Why should the Egyptians say, ‘With evil intent did he bring them out, to kill them in the mountains and to consume them from the face of the earth’? Turn from your burning anger and relent from this disaster against your people. Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, your servants, to whom you swore by your own self, and said to them, ‘I will multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven, and all this land that I have promised I will give to your offspring, and they shall inherit it forever.’” And the Lord relented from the disaster that he had spoken of bringing on his people. (Exodus 32.7-14)
When Moses entered the tent, the pillar of cloud would descend and stand at the entrance of the tent, and the LORD would speak with Moses. … Thus the LORD used to speak to Moses face to face, as a man speaks to his friend. (Exodus 33.9, 11)
And there has not arisen a prophet since in Israel like Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face, none like him for all the signs and the wonders that the Lord sent him to do in the land of Egypt, to Pharaoh and to all his servants and to all his land, and for all the mighty power and all the great deeds of terror that Moses did in the sight of all Israel. (Deuteronomy 34.10-12)
Plainly, not every prophet in Israel’s history got the same level of intimacy. But Moses’ privileges are presented as those of the ideal prophet. He speaks with God face to face so that he not only delivers God’s messages, but can, like Abraham the prophet, intercede for people. (Moses did not believe in “Bobsled Sovereignty.”) Access to God’s presence provides the opportunity for effective prayer.
And Moses was not the only one who interceded. Consider this passage (Amos 7.1-6):
This is what the Lord GOD showed me: behold, he was forming locusts when the latter growth was just beginning to sprout, and behold, it was the latter growth after the king’s mowings. When they had finished eating the grass of the land, I said,
“O Lord GOD please forgive!
How can Jacob stand?
He is so small!”
The LORD relented concerning this:
“It shall not be,” said the LORDThis is what the Lord GOD showed me: behold, the Lord GOD was calling for a judgment by fire, and it devoured the great deep and was eating up the land. Then I said,
“O Lord GOD, please cease!
How can Jacob stand?
He is so small!”
The LORD relented concerning this:
“This also shall not be,” said the Lord GOD.
[Excursus: notice that the word “forgive” is used for the removal of planned punishments, even though the sin remains and other judgments are going to be sent because of them.]
So like Moses the great prophet and Abraham the first named prophet, Amos as a prophet does not simply relay messages, but actively intercedes.
A prophet, I submit, is a counsellor to God, one granted access to God’s council. That is, in fact, what Jeremiah says made the difference between false prophets and true prophets:
Thus says the LORD of hosts: “Do not listen to the words of the prophets who prophesy to you, filling you with vain hopes. They speak visions of their own minds, not from the mouth of the LORD They say continually to those who despise the word of the LORD ‘It shall be well with you’; and to everyone who stubbornly follows his own heart, they say, ‘No disaster shall come upon you.’”For who among them has stood in the council of the LORD
to see and to hear his word,
or who has paid attention to his word and listened?
Behold, the storm of the LORD!
Wrath has gone forth,
a whirling tempest;
it will burst upon the head of the wicked.
The anger of the LORD will not turn back
until he has executed and accomplished
the intents of his heart.
In the latter days you will understand it clearly.“I did not send the prophets,
yet they ran;
I did not speak to them,
yet they prophesied.
But if they had stood in my council,
then they would have proclaimed my words to my people,
and they would have turned them from their evil way,
and from the evil of their deeds (emphasis added).
So like Abraham standing there before God and the two angels, or Moses in the cloud, or perhaps Isaiah (Isaiah 6.1ff) and others, a prophet is a council member. He stands in God’s court. He can be sent from there with a message as Isaiah was, but he can also approach God on behalf of others.
There are more examples, but I want to move on to another term applied to Abraham that I believe is somewhat related. In the time of the divided kingdoms, when Jehoshaphat prays, he reminds God of His relationship with “Abraham your friend” (Second Chronicles 20.7). This expression is picked up in the NT and actually associated with justification.
and the Scripture was fulfilled that says, “Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness”—and he was called a friend of God (James 2.23).
Why did Jehoshophat use this title for Abraham? I think the evidence would be that Abraham’s actions in Genesis 18, standing before God and actively interceding for others, acting as a member of God’s council, would lead Jehoshophat to use the word. Being a friend of a king seems, in Scripture, to have implications that one was a royal advisor of counsellor. In First Chronicles 27.33 tells us that “Hushai the Archite was the king’s friend.” The story of how David deals with Absolom, especially in First Samuel 15 and 16, makes it clear that as David’s friend, Hushai was David’s counsellor who could both offer counsel, and could be sent to do his bidding. In this case David sent him to go win Absolom’s trust and give destructive counsel to him (compare First Kings 22 and Second Chronicles 18 where God does the same thing).
So, having been welcomed into His council, Abraham was counted as God’s friend. It is noteworthy that James, after telling us that Abraham’s faith was credited as righteousness so that he was God’s friend, goes on (chapter 5) to exhort his readers to pray because “The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working.”
So, as I see it, being declared right with God, means being granted access into his council. Paul’s emphasis on this may not appear as strong to us as it really is because when we read, “saint,” we don’t always think in the Bible’s own virtually spatial categories. Being “holy” entailed access to God’s throne room.
[Another excursus: The term “sanctified by faith” has come to be used by Daniel Fuller and others as a way of stating how trust in God cannot help but transform one’s behavior. God uses that term, describing Paul’s calling “to open their eyes, so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me” (Acts 26.18). But I think the context here dictates that the phrase have virtually the same meaning as “justified by faith.” It refers to being granted access or counted as holy.]
While I could go in several directions here, let me close this post comparing God’s speech to the angels about Abraham with Jesus’ words to his disciples.
First in Genesis we read,
Then the men set out from there, and they looked down toward Sodom. And Abraham went with them to set them on their way. The Lord said, “Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do, seeing that Abraham shall surely become a great and mighty nation, and all the nations of the earth shall be blessed in him? For I have chosen him, that he may command his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing righteousness and justice, so that the Lord may bring to Abraham what he has promised him.” Then the Lord said, “Because the outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is great and their sin is very grave, I will go down to see whether they have done altogether according to the outcry that has come to me. And if not, I will know.” So the men turned from there and went toward Sodom, but Abraham still stood before the Lord. Then Abraham drew near and said…
Then follows Abraham interceding for Sodom and Gomorrah. Compare this to what we read Jesus saying in John 15:
This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you. 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, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you. These things I command you, so that you will love one another.
So there you have it. Christians chosen to love one another and bear fruit–chosen in other words to “command his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing righteousness and justice, so that the Lord may bring to Abraham what he has promised him”–are chosen to prophetically intercede with God. As his friends they stand in his council and he will do whatever they ask.
This is the prophetic calling that Christians have by being reconciled to God, not only to speak God’s word to the world, but to pray to God for the world. Among many other things we should pray for, as Prophets we should be interceding for sinners, both Christian and not, as our father Abraham the prophet and friend of God did before us.
Contrast Abraham asking God to spare Sodom His fiery judgment with the disciples’ reaction to the Samaritan village that refuses to receive Jesus (Luke 9:54): “When His disciples James and John saw this, they said, ‘Lord, do You want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?'”
Jesus rebukes them. Obviously they were not being faithful counselors and intercessors on behalf of the world at that moment.
Interesting relation between the “prophet-hood” of all believers and praying. Perhaps too commonly, the activity of prayer is related to the priesthood of believers. In either case, the corporate is normally in view for the offices of prophet and priest (I can, though, think of a few exceptions) and not the individual. This makes me wonder, if, in prayer, we ought to consistently and primarily be taking up the corporate and not the individual.
Will K.
Mark, this is helpful in understanding the place of the body of Christ in corporate worship as those who, as prophets, pray on behalf of the world, and as priests, we worship on behalf of the world.