Intercession

Intercession is prayer offered to God on behalf of other people — asking him to grant them wisdom, strength, protection, or salvation — rather than prayer that concerns only the one praying.

The letters of the New Testament show this kind of prayer in practice. In Ephesians the writer prays that God "may give to you a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him" and that "the eyes of your hearts" be enlightened to know hope and power (Ephesians 1:17–19); later he asks that God "would grant you… that you may be strengthened with power through his Spirit in the inner person" (Ephesians 3:16). The text says these requests are addressed to God about the readers, not to the readers about themselves, and their content is largely spiritual rather than material. Ephesians 6:18 makes the practice a standing command: "with all prayer and requests, praying at all times in the Spirit… and requests for all the saints." Linguistically, the Greek vocabulary behind the English word carries the sense of falling in with someone, meeting them, and speaking on their behalf; historically, the term entered English theological usage through Latin intercessio, a going-between.

Several epistolary benedictions are intercession in written form — prayers addressed to God for a congregation's well-being. The text says, "May the God of peace himself sanctify you completely" (1 Thessalonians 5:23); it asks that "our Lord Jesus Christ himself, and God our Father… comfort your hearts" (2 Thessalonians 2:16–17); it prays that God would "make you complete in every good work to do his will" (Hebrews 13:21); and it asks the "God of all grace" to "perfect, establish, strengthen, and settle you" (1 Peter 5:10). A related biblical image underlies much Christian thinking about intercession: believers are described as "a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices" and as "a royal priesthood" (1 Peter 2:5, 2:9). Interpreters differ over how directly that priestly language should be applied to praying for others, but it is the textual root of the idea that God's people stand before him on behalf of the world.

Christian traditions read the scope of intercession differently. In this tradition — Catholic and Orthodox — Christians on earth ask the saints and the Virgin Mary in heaven to intercede for them, understanding the church's priestly character as extending across death. In this tradition — most Protestant, and especially Reformed — Christ alone is mediator, and the practice of invoking saints is not accepted; intercession means believers praying directly to God for one another and for the world, a reading often anchored in 1 Timothy 2:5. Pentecostal and charismatic traditions commonly connect "praying at all times in the Spirit" (Ephesians 6:18) with prayer in tongues as a form of intercession beyond one's own understanding. One way to read the whole range is that the differences concern who may be asked to intercede, not whether intercession itself belongs to Christian life.

AI-generated reference entry, grounded in the passages where this term appears — history and Scripture stated as such, interpretation labeled as interpretation. Not a substitute for the text itself.