What the Bible Says About Prayer
The short answer
When people ask what does the Bible say about prayer, they often expect a technique: the right words, the right posture, the right length. But some of the most striking bible verses about prayer are less about method and more about what prayer does to the person praying.
In Luke 18:9-14, Jesus tells of two men praying in the Temple. The Pharisee's prayer is a list of his own virtues, sharpened by a sideways glance at the other man: he thanks God that he is not "like the rest of men" — and certainly not like that tax collector. His prayer has quietly stopped being prayer at all. It has become a speech for the prosecution, with his neighbor as the defendant. The tax collector, by contrast, can barely lift his eyes. He says only, "God, be merciful to me, a sinner!" And Jesus delivers the verdict: it is this man, not the Pharisee, who "went down to his house justified." The few honest words win; the polished résumé loses.
John 17 shows another side of prayer. On the night before his death, Jesus prays at length for his followers — for their protection, their unity, their joy. It is sometimes called the high priestly prayer, and it gathers up the whole story of the gospel to that point. This is not a one-off performance but a prayer meant to be returned to, absorbed, and handed on, until a whole community can pray it as its own.
Taken together, these passages sketch a picture: prayer can curdle into self-congratulation when it becomes a contest, but at its best it is a repeated, shared language of dependence — a way of throwing ourselves, again and again, on the mercy of God.
What scholars say
In the first excerpt, N. T. Wright shows how the Pharisee's prayer turns a religious moment into a contest — self-exaltation built on denouncing a neighbor — while the tax collector casts himself on God's mercy and goes home vindicated. In the second, Wright pictures John praying Jesus' great prayer over and over, shaping its phrases so that the continuing community could pray it too.
“The second parable looks at first as though it is describing a religious occasion, but it, too, turns out to be another lawsuit. Or perhaps we should say that the Pharisee in the Temple has already turned it into a contest: his ‘prayer’, which consists simply of telling God all about his own good points, ends up exalting himself by the simple expedient of denouncing the tax-collector. The tax-collector, however, is the one whose small faith sees through to the great heart of God (see 17.6), and he casts himself on the divine mercy. Jesus reveals what the divine judge would say about this: the tax-collector, not the Pharisee, returned home vindicated.”
“Nor, we may suppose, is John remembering it all without having prayed through it himself, over and over again. The mention of ‘Jesus the Messiah’ in verse 3 sounds very strange from Jesus himself; perhaps here, and maybe elsewhere too, John the praying teacher, in order to make the prayer his own and pass it on to his own followers, has turned phrases round so that they become (so to speak) prayable by the continuing community. But in essence the prayer draws together everything that the gospel story has been about up to this point.”
What it means for you
It is worth asking, honestly, which man in the Temple our own prayers resemble. Prayer can drift into keeping score — cataloguing our efforts, comparing ourselves favorably to the people who irritate or offend us. The tax collector's prayer offers a simpler starting point: a handful of words that admit need and ask for mercy. That is a prayer anyone can pray today, in a car or a kitchen, without polish.
And John 17 suggests that repetition is not failure. Praying the same words over and over — a psalm, the Lord's Prayer, a borrowed phrase — is how prayers become truly ours, and how they knit us into a community that prays them too.
In context
The parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector comes in Luke 18, right after the parable of the persistent widow — Luke pairs two stories about prayer, one on persistence and one on humility. Luke tells us Jesus aimed it at people who trusted their own righteousness and despised others. John 17 sits at the close of Jesus' farewell conversation with his disciples (John 13-16), on the night of his arrest. It is his final extended prayer before the passion, and it draws the threads of John's whole gospel together.