Amen is a Hebrew word (ʾā·mēn), expressing agreement with what has just been said. It means something like, “Truly so! May it be!”
Some examples:
- When Israel accepted God’s covenant, they affirmed even the punitive clauses of the law by responding with, “Amen!” (Deuteronomy 27:15-26).
- When David said, “Praise be to the Lord …” all the people said “Amen” and “Praise the Lord” (1 Chronicles 16:36).
- When David’s assembly proclaimed Solomon as his successor, the response was, “Amen! May the Lord, the God of my lord the king, so declare it” (1 Kings 1:36).
Amen is a response of communal agreement. It’s calling out “Yes!” when the preacher says something that resonates with you. It’s interjecting, “Here! Here!” when a politician makes a good point.
Pray to a politician for a national park, and her first response will be to find out what other people want for that space. Most times there are competing agendas: the current owners, mining groups, conservationists, real estate developers, or the city’s needs. That’s why a politician’s job is tough: granting your request will upset someone else. They need to know what’s in the common good.
In the 2003 movie Bruce Almighty, Jim Carrey discovered how God listens to competing prayers too. Of course, God doesn’t need to keep everybody happy to get re-elected, but God has our communal good at heart. God tends to favour those who don’t have the power to get what they want. It’s not real estate development but human development that is close to God’s heart. Maturity involves praying for what he wants rather than merely what I want.
When my little sister was very young, she’d ask our parents, “Can Allen have a chocolate?” She’d already figured out she was more likely to get one if she asked for her brother’s benefit, and I provided the “Amen!”
The Amen God looks for is from the heart. Jesus taught us to live what we pray: Forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors (Matthew 6:12). When our heavenly parent sees us releasing each other from the social and financial obligations we feel they have failed to meet, our Father gladly releases us from our unfulfilled obligations to him:
For if you together release people from their obligations when they wrong you, your sovereign father who rules from heaven will also release you all from your obligations. But if you together don’t release people, your sovereign father won’t release you all either (Matthew 6:14-15, my translation).
I guess God looks for the Amen in our communal relationships. It’s not just words. A meaningful Amen requires mutual understanding and agreement (1 Corinthians 14:16).
That’s why prayer feels vulnerable. There’s no place to hide in the presence of the one who knows us better than we know ourselves, no makeup to cover our blemishes.
As we learn to live in that raw authenticity, our relationship with God transforms our relationship to each other. We discover a new kind of Amen: relationships of genuine affirmation.
Isaiah says that’s where the world is headed. As God deals with everything that’s wrong, the community can forget the conflicts of the past and live in God’s authenticity. We speak blessing and truth to each other in God. Isaiah calls him, the Amen God (ʾělō·hîm ʾā·mēn) (Isaiah 65:16).
Jesus taught us to trust our Father’s heart like that. Our Father wants to say Amen to our prayers. When our hearts affirm his, he can.
Everything God has promised finds his “Yes!” in his Anointed. When we respond to God’s “Yes” with our “Amen,” the weight of his majesty is revealed (2 Corinthians 1:20).
God invites us to present our needs to him in prayer, and he looks for the communal Amen. There’s another side to the prayer conversation too. He presents his requests to us, so the community cradled in his leadership hears the words of his Amen (Revelation 3:14).
What others are saying
Klyne R. Snodgrass, “Amen” in Baker Encyclopedia of the Bible (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1988), 1:69:
Amen. Hebrew word meaning “so it is” or “let it be,” derived from a verb meaning “to be firm or sure.” …
“Amen” has much more significance than merely being the last word in a prayer. In fact, that practice is not evidenced in the Bible, and was not especially frequent in ancient times. In the 30 times it is used in the OT, “amen” nearly always occurs as a response to what has preceded. …
An “amen” after a statement of praise has the connotation, “That is what I say too.” As a response to a benediction or a prophecy the idea is “Precisely! May God do it.” …
The use of “amen” in the Gospels, however, is entirely different from its use in the OT, the early church, or anywhere else in Jewish literature. Excluding Matthew 6:13 (kjv) and Mark 16:20 (both passages with textual uncertainty), all of the 100 occurrences of “amen” are spoken by Jesus and always precede what is said rather than coming after as a response. In the synoptic Gospels (Mt, Mk, Lk) the form is always “Amen [Truly rsv], I say to you”; in John it is always the doubled form “Amen, amen [Truly, truly rsv], I say to you” (Jn 3:3, 5, etc.). That unique use of “amen” stresses both the authority with which he taught and his majesty: Jesus’ words come with absolute certainty and are binding on all.
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