1 John 5:14–17

14 This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. 15 And if we know that he hears us—whatever we ask—we know that we have what we asked of him.

16 If anyone sees his brother commit a sin that does not lead to death, he should pray and God will give him life. I refer to those whose sin does not lead to death. There is a sin that leads to death. I am not saying that he should pray about that. 17 All wrongdoing is sin, and there is sin that does not lead to death. 18 We know that anyone born of God does not continue to sin; the one who was born of God keeps him safe, and the evil one cannot harm him.

I never know on a Sunday morning who will be touched by God in the service.  

In one of Jesus’ parables, he told of four responses that a message may receive.  The first is that a message can fall on hard ground.  Some people who hear a message have no intention of responding even before they listen. 

In the same way, some people are emotionally challenged by a message.  They say to themselves, “Yes, that is me!  I need to do something and I am going to!”  But by the time they arrive home, they have forgotten the word of God and it falls by the wayside. 

A third group listens and made a determination to do something.  But the cares and concerns of the world choke out obedience to God.  They start off strong, but are soon distracted by other things going on in their lives. 

A fourth group hears, responds and it bears fruit in their lives.  I am very aware of all four groups because I have been in each one of them.

John makes an assumption in this book of 1 John.  He assumes that his readers want to have fellowship with God.  He assumes that they want to know God.  The false teachers claimed to have special knowledge of God.  They claimed that they knew God.  John makes the assumption that his readers also have fellowship with God.  He writes this book in part to distinguish between those who really do have fellowship with God and those that don’t.

When we use the word “worship” in this church, we are speaking about your personal relationship with God.  To worship him is to have God in your life, to know Him, to rely on Him and to obey Him.   The worship of God is for your relationship with him to be your number one priority.  We express that relationship in our songs, but as the songwriter said, “We bring you more than a song for a song in itself is not what you desire…” 

But, you ask, “Should by relationship with God be higher than my commitment to my parents or my wife or my children?”  The answer to that is “yes.”  One major reason is that when you make God your number one priority, he makes other people your number two priority.    As the disciples said, “We are to obey God rather than man.” 

This idea is illustrated in our passage before us.  After we have confidence that we have eternal life, we have confidence that God hears our prayers.

What more natural thing is there for us to do than to talk to the one we love?  After cementing the confidence in the relationship by telling us that if we have the Son we have eternal life, God tells us to pray, to talk with him.

Notice that John shows us our need to talk to God first.  We are to make God our number one priority.

We saw last week, we have God in our lives when we have Jesus, the Son of God.  Let me read the text to you.

14 This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. 15 And if we know that he hears us—whatever we ask—we know that we have what we asked of him.

God wants us to talk to him.  This passage has a controversial part in it.  We ask, “We can ask anything?”  Faith healers, theologians, scholars and people argue this point and miss the main point.   We can become engrossed in the controversy that we miss the bigger teaching.  It is clear from this whole passage that God wants us to pray, to talk to him. He wants us to be in fellowship with him, to talk and work with him.

John goes a step further.  To paraphrase what John says, “If we ask God to do what he wants to do, it will be done.” This is how the Bible puts it.

14 This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. 15 And if we know that he hears us—whatever we ask—we know that we have what we asked of him.

This promise does not go as far as some make it.  We cannot ask whatever we want.  We can ask whatever we want according to his will.  God is not going to promise to answer your prayer unless it is within his will.

This promise also goes further than some make it.  Some would say that God will answer the prayer, but he will answer it with “wait” or “no.”  But verse 15 says we know that we have what we asked of him.  

So the promise is limited by his will, but is expanded by telling us that the answer to this prayer is always a “yes”!

That is why I paraphrase this verse in this way, “If we ask God to do what he wants to do, it will be done.”

How do we have this confidence in our own prayer lives?

First, because Jesus is the Son of God, all things are possible to him.  There is nothing that is impossible to God.

Second, the more you talk to God, the more you will understand what he won’t and will answer.  As couples who are married for a long time are able to finish each others sentences, so those who talk to God will learn what pleases him.  That is real fellowship.

Third, when you are able to see the bigger picture, you will be able to pray with greater confidence. 

I want to share my own learning on this.  God gives free will.  If I pray for someone else to do something that I know God wants them to do, I understand that the prayer might not be answered.  Why?  Because they can refuse to do what God wants them to do.  They can rebel against God.  They can grieve the Holy Spirit.  They can walk in disobedience.  God will not overrule their free will in order to answer my prayer.  I understand that and though I pray for others, I do so knowing that God has set certain rules in place that he will not violate.  I find these in the Bible. So when I pray for a person to be converted or I pray for a person to change, I understand from my time with God that there is no guarantee that my prayer will be answered. It is God’s will for them to be saved, but it is not in God’s plan to force them to believe.  That is understanding the bigger picture.

So why ask?  Because I love God and I want to let him know my heart.  That is what fellowship is.  I know God already knows my heart, but that doesn’t stop me from asking.  When my children were involved in sports, I knew before they got in the car the outcome of the game and how they did.  I could tell by the expressions on their face how they were feeling emotionally. But in order to talk with them, I would often ask about the game.  Why?  Because talking with my children was important to me.

So often when we express our thoughts out loud to God, the Holy Spirit helps us understand ourselves better.  We pray, “God, please help the clothes I want to buy to be on sale…” and we hear a small voice inside us saying, “Selfish….”  So God can use our prayer life to bring us to reality and help in our transformation to be like Christ.  I have thought it a good exercise to tell God what we plan to do.  “Dear God, I am planning on unloading on my boss today.  Please help me not get fired!”  The minute you think that prayer, you know something is not right about it. If you cannot say it to God, you ought not to be doing it!

So we pray with confidence because Jesus, as the Son of God, can do the impossible.  We pray with confidence because we learn something about God.  We pray with confidence because we learn something about ourselves.  The more we pray the more we know, the more confidence we have in our prayers because our relationship, our fellowship with God is deeper.

When we make God our number one priority he makes other people our number two priority.   A relationship with other people will not always put you into a right relationship with God.  But a relationship with God will put you into a right relationship with others. That is why God must be first.

We see this here.  John does not talk about prayer as an abstract concept.  What I learned this week is that he had a specific example in mind.  Certainly this can be applied to more situations than this one, but John had one in mind.

Just as in the first section we can get bogged down in the controversy of wondering if the Bible means it when it says we can pray for whatever we want, this second section has a controversy about the sin unto death.  We can get so bogged down in this controversy that we miss the bigger teaching.

What surprised me this week was that John had a prayer request in mind.  I have been so caught up in the controversy of this passage, that the fact that John had a prayer in mind that he wanted us to pray escaped me. 

What is the prayer? I will let John tell us.

16 If anyone sees his brother commit a sin that does not lead to death, he should pray and God will give him life.

John wants us to pray for Christians who sin.  Immediately we wonder about the sin that leads to death, but I am asking you to ignore that for a moment and focus on what we are to do.  God wants us to pray for the brother or sister that we see sinning.

This is not always our first response. 

Our first response can be to criticize them.  How can so-and-so call themselves a Christian and do that?  Why are they saying that?  We set ourselves up as Pharisees, judging and condemning, as though we were so much better than them.  Instead, we should fall to our knees and pray for them.

Another response is to separate ourselves from them.  I don’t want to be around a Christian who acts like that.  I don’t want to fellowship with you.

John is writing this whole book to tell you that walking with God means fellowshipping with believers.  John sees that the church is weakened when we are not able to fellowship with one another.  Sin separates; love brings people together.  Instead of separation, God wants us to pray for that person who sins.

Why?  Sometimes we pray because the other person is a nuisance.  God change them so my life can be better.

John has a higher goal.  He tells us, “Pray so that they will find life.”  Sin destroys real life.  So many people really believe that life is better if they abuse alcohol or drugs, engage in sex outside of marriage or live for all that money can buy.  But over the long haul, these destroy real life.

What we believe is seen by what we do.  We can say we don’t buy into these things, but if we act as though we do, we do.  Jesus said you can see where a man’s heart is by what he treasures. 

The Christians who sin are losing out on life, on eternal life, on the quality of life God has for them.  Pray for them so that they have that kind of life.

So what does the prayer look like?  John doesn’t tell us.  Any answer is guesswork on our part.  Let me give you some guesses.

First, the prayer may be a prayer asking God to forgive the sinning Christian.

Jesus prayed this kind of prayer on the cross.  When he looked down at the Romans around the cross, he prayed, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do…”

In the Old Testament there were sacrifices for unintentional sins.  If you did something and then discovered later that it was wrong, you would bring an offering and receive forgiveness.

How many times have you done something only to discover a few seconds, minutes, hours, days or months later that it was wrong?  How many times have other people said to you, “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”  These are unintentional sins.  You might pray that God would forgive the person as Jesus did because they sinned with ignorance.

Second, the prayer may be a prayer asking God to reveal the sin to the person.

If the sin was unintentional, then the person doing it might not see it as such.  So praying that they would see the sin might be the prayer you would pray.

Be careful at this point.  If the Christian still doesn’t see it as sin after you pray, it might be that it is not a sin at all, but that you are bent out of shape or your pride is wounded or that you are making a mountain out of a mole hill.  If God is going to answer this prayer with a “yes” and you don’t get a yes, it may be because the problem is with you. 

What kind of sin leads to spiritual death?  The kind of sin that stays with you.  The kind of sin that you refuse to let go of.  The kind of sin that you don’t care what God says, you are going to do what you want to do.

If you see a person locked in this mode of thinking, don’t pray for forgiveness for this person.  They know what they are doing and they don’t care. 

I want to warn you, that if you are living in sin, you are adamant that you are not going to change, John has a word for you.

18 We know that anyone born of God does not continue to sin; the one who was born of God keeps him safe, and the evil one cannot harm him.

Let me put this into a different set of words.  We know that anyone who is born of God does not continue to habitually sin.  Jesus, the Son of God, keeps him safe.  Satan cannot harm him. 

If you are habitually sinning with no desire to change, you are not born of God. 

So let me take a moment here to plead with you.  Some people won’t change because they don’t want to.  You need Jesus, but I fear for you because you are so set in your ways that you do not see how bad things really are for you.  Your sin is hurting others, usually the ones you love the most, they are hurting God, he created you to be better than this, and they are hurting you, putting out false promises that will never be fulfilled by your sinful life.

But some of you are stuck in intentional sin because you are discouraged and don’t think there is a way out.  I want to plead with you to keep looking to Jesus.  You may need to run from sin, get help from someone else, or take drastic measures.  But they will be worth it as your freedom from sin brings life.

In the Old Testament intentional sins are not clearly dealt with.  It appears that intentional sins either ended in death or they ended in the person repenting and making restitution before they came to sacrifice.  Intentional sins in the Old Testament described the kind of people who shook their fist at God.  It indicated a hard heart. 

When it came to restitution, they were to give back more than they owed.  If the person was dead, the restitution was made to the families of the victim.  If there were no families, it was to be given to God through the priests. 

If you are living in habitual sin, I do pray that God will give you repentance, but if your heart is hardened, God will not force it on you.  The person who does an unintentional sin will repent when they see it.  But the person who does an intentional sin in open defiance to God has a harder road to follow, though the road is open to you.

The first step is to repent and turn to Jesus.  That is the starting point.  The next step will be to get help.  Your pride at this point will be your downfall.  James tells us that, “God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble.”  When you don’t do what God wants you to do because you are afraid of what others might think or say, then your priorities are wrong and you are in for a fight with God.

Within First John the false teachers had shaken their fist at Jesus.  They denied his humanity, the fact that he came in a body.  They promoted sinful and shameful acts.  They were not brothers and sisters because they didn’t believe in the same Jesus.  John doesn’t suggest that the people pray for the false teachers, but for believers who sinned.

Some believe that this speaks about people who reject Jesus.  The sin of rejecting Jesus, which is blasphemy of the Holy Spirit, is a sin that cannot be forgiven.  If your heart is set against Jesus, that would fit into this category as well.  If you have examined the truth of Jesus and have rejected him, it is impossible to bring you back.  We can pray, as Jesus did on the cross, for forgiveness for an unintentional sin and God will forgive the other person, but if we pray for someone who intentionally rejects Jesus Christ, God will not forgive the person until they come to personal repentance and faith.

I am not sure what the sin unto death was.  But we do know that the person who is born of God is kept safe.  Kept safe by whom?  Kept safe by God.  There are those who believe they need to keep themselves.  But when a person becomes a believer the Holy Spirit comes into their life and keeps them.  This is the doctrine of eternal security.  The Holy Spirit not only keeps you safe, but leads you upward so that you do not continue to sin.  The evil one is unable to harm you.

18 We know that anyone born of God does not continue to sin; the one who was born of God keeps him safe, and the evil one cannot harm him.

Amazing!  God wants us to talk to him.  But he wants us to do so as a priest.  He wants us come to him as a priest for other people.  God love us.  He also wants to love other people through us.  When we make God our number one priority, he sends us out to help others. 

So step up to the plate.  Be a priest.  You see a Christian sinning?  Pray for them.  Pray that they would have the life God wants them to have.  In so doing, you will fulfill God’s plan for you.