Don’t Pray for the Lost to be Saved – its not scriptural! (part 1: Paul)

Don’t Pray for the Lost to be Saved – its not scriptural! (part 1: Paul)

10 Friday Apr 2015

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By Thomas Fortson

The title of this post is not a clever trick to get you to read it: it really isn’t scriptural to pray for the lost to be saved.  I will try to show you this from scripture, and all I ask is that you think objectively about what this post says and allow Holy Spirit to lead you into all Truth.  This is a two part series: this one covers Paul and the next is about Jesus’ teachings on this subject.

[A disclaimer: I am NOT speaking of when a nonbeliever approaches a believer and asks them to pray for something; that is certainly a godly thing to do.  I am strictly speaking of believers praying for nonbelievers to become believers.]

“Praying for the unsaved is clearly scriptural!” you say?  Really?  Prove it.  You will find it is actually much more difficult to make a Biblical case for it than you think.

Think about this: if praying for the lost was so important, why didn’t Paul instruct the churches to do it in his letters?  I extoll you to verify this yourself.  Prayer was clearly part of his life and ministry based upon his letters, but exactly what did he pray?  In his letters, when he does describe how he prays for them, or when he asks for prayer, or even when he writes out his prayers in the letter itself, he never (that I have read) asks for prayer for the lost.  Think about that.

Lets go through some examples.

When he asks for the Ephesian church to pray for his evangelistic messages, he does has for prayer, but not that people would respond: he asks that his words would be clear.

Eph 6:18-19 “Pray for Gods holy people and pray that I would proclaim the message clearly.”  Ephesians was one of the last letters he wrote; if praying for the lost was something he endorsed, wouldn’t this be the perfect place to include it?

Lets consider the last letter Paul wrote: 2 Timothy.  In it he basically gives Timothy instructions on how to lead the churches in times of crisis etc…   In 1:8 he encourages him to proclaim the truth without being ashamed, but nothing about prayer.

When I was first realizing this, I did a study of the New Testament and could only find one clear example: when Paul is before Herod, he alludes to praying for it: Acts 26:29.

Paul is speaking before King Agrippa and starts evangelizing to him and Agrippa rebuffs him and Paul responds “…whether quickly or not [for you to convert], I pray to God that both you and everyone here in this audience might become the same as I am, except for these chains.”  So thats it.  Thats the only example I came up with in all of the New Testament.  (I could have overlooked something, and I’d appreciate it if someone else could provide one…)  Given the amount of text that is given to prayer and the instructions of both Paul and Jesus, it would seem that Paul’s prayers for them was not nearly as frequent as his prayers for the churches.  Also, lets not forget that this was an event that Paul had anticipated for a long time, and was likely more focused on it than his daily witnessing activities.  In that sense, he would be more likely to ‘branch out’ from his typical pattern.  [It’s the same argument that surrounds whether or not Christians are to pray prior to every meal.  Simply because Jesus prayed before the last passover meal, and gave thanks when feeding the 4/5,000, that doesn’t mean that he prayed every single time physical food entered his body.]

I told a brother my thoughts on this years ago, and his response was: “Thomas, that means we don’t pray for the great commission…” implying that he disagreed with me because it was too ludicrous to imagine not praying for something so important.  To this argument, I have two things to say. 1. the “great commission” is the name we have given to Jesus’ last words to the 120 before he ascended and not what Jesus himself entitled it…also, the point of this statement has been overblown and misconstrued (see blog entitled the great assumption).  2. Even if you disagree with reason #1 and the other blog entry, think of it like this: its not that I think we shouldn’t pray for evangelism, its that I think we should pray DIFFERENTLY than we traditionally have been, to greater reflect how the Kingdom operates and how Jesus displayed.

In the second half of this 2-blog series, I focus on Jesus and his prayers and how he instructed his disciples to evangelize and pray.  Stay tuned :)

Thomas.