Does the Bible promote or prohibit praying to angels?

Answer

There is no verse that explicitly states, “You shall not pray to angels”; at the same time, praying to angels violates the Bible’s clear teaching on prayer and ignores the role angels play. Prayer is an act of worship. The holy angels, being fellow servants of ours, reject our worship (Revelation 22:8–9), so they would also reject our prayers. Offering our worship or prayer to anyone but God is idolatry.

Jesus Christ never prayed to anyone but the Father. When instructing His disciples to pray, He started with, “Our Father in heaven” (Matthew 6:9; cf. John 16:23). If praying to angels were appropriate, He would have modeled such a prayer for us. But Jesus addressed all of His prayers to the heavenly Father (e.g., Matthew 11:25; John 11:41; 17:1). Further, the content of Jesus’ prayers usually involved requests for assistance that could only be granted by someone who is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent—i.e., God.

In His High Priestly Prayer, Jesus prays on behalf of His followers, requesting their sanctification, glorification, and preservation (John 17:1–26). These three blessings can only come from the One who has the power to grant them. Angels cannot sanctify us, they cannot glorify us, and they cannot guarantee our inheritance in Christ (Ephesians 1:13–14).

In John 14:13–14, Christ tells believers that, whatever we ask in His name, He will accomplish because He pleads directly with the Father. Offering a prayer to angels falls short of an effective and biblically guided prayer. In John 16:26–27, Jesus says that “in that day you will ask in my name” and that the Father will hear because “the Father himself loves you.”

Jesus Christ is the one and only intercessor between the Father and believers (1 Timothy 2:5). Neither angels nor any other created being is ever depicted in the Bible as our intercessor. We pray to the Father in the name of the Son and in the power of the Holy Spirit. Why pray to angels, who have no power to mediate on our behalf?

First Thessalonians 5:17 tells the believer to pray without ceasing. Angels are finite beings and not capable of hearing incessant prayer. God is infinite—He is always present and available to listen to the pleas of every person all the time. God can answer prayer through the agency of an angel (see Daniel 9:20–23), but the angel has no power in himself to receive and answer our prayers.