1 John 5:14-15

The confidence in prayer which this faith in Jesus inspires; with its one exception.

1 John 5:14-15. A second time the apostle dwells on the boldness of prayer: this closed the second part as the confidence of obedient love; it closes here the third part as the confidence in the Son of God, which was there introduced as the transition to the third part, and is now resumed.

And this is the boldness, the more specific characterization of the confidence before referred to, that we have toward him, toward God, whose children we are in virtue of the eternal life, the life of regeneration. Throughout the New Testament, confidence towards the Father in prayer is represented as the first privilege of the adoption: we have received ‘the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father' (Romans 8:15). St. Paul says of that Spirit that He ‘helpeth our infirmity: for we know not what we should pray for as we ought; but the Spirit itself maketh intercession with groanings which cannot be uttered. And He that searcheth the hearts knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit, because He maketh intercession for the saints according to the will of God.' This, and our Lord's word, ‘All things, whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive' (Matthew 21:22), furnish the best commentary on our passage. As Jesus, the Intercessor in heaven, presents with confidence for us the prayers which the Spirit, the Intercessor in the heart corresponding with Him, teaches us according to the will of God, we may be assured that, if we ask any thing according to his will, he heareth us: He in fact heareth the voice of His own Spirit within us, and we do not really pray when we ask not according to His mind. This is the sublime perfection of the only prayer which St. John knows; and it is in harmony with the tenor of the whole Epistle, always and in everything making real the highest ideal.

And, if we know that he heareth us whatsoever we ask, all forbidden and doubtful petitions being left out of consideration, as being suppressed before they are uttered, we know for the hearing means hearing with acceptance that we have the petitions that we have asked of him. These last words are very emphatic. We have in the very asking; there is a blessed sense in which the highest prayer is the very experience of the thing prayed for; such asking for forgiveness and peace and holiness is the enjoyment of holiness and peace and pardon. Moreover, ‘we have,' and not, as before, ‘we receive;' for the Christian life is no other than the constant inheritance of multiplied prayers ‘that we have asked' from the beginning, that have been the sum of past supplications. Observe here, without being reminded by the apostle, that the ‘fellowship with the Father and the Son,' the main subject of the Epistle, reaches here its highest consummation, so far as the present life and its privileges are concerned.