80 - Confidence in God: Doctrine of Prayer

What is Saving Faith?; 1 John 5:11–13

1 John 5:14 ^NASB "This is the confidence which we have before Him, that, if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. [15] And if we know that He hears us {in} whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests which we have asked from Him."

These two verses combine to form one of the greatest prayer promises that we have in the New Testament: that we can have confidence that God hears us and answers us. That is the point of these two verses. In v. 14, "if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us," the point that is being emphasised in a conditional clause is what is called the apodosis, and that is the second clause, the "then" clause (although the word "then" is not present here). In conditional clauses there is an "if" clause called the protasis, and that is followed by a then" clause or a result clause, the apodosis, which is the fulfilment of the condition. In a conditional sentence the main clause that is emphasised as the mainline statement is the apodosis. That is the point that John is making here. This is the confidence that we have in Him that He hears us. There is a condition that must be fulfilled before He hears us but if that is fulfilled the point that John is making is that we can have confidence, a certainty that He hears us.

Confidence as it relates to 1 John

1.  Confidence is the Greek word parresia [parrhsia] and it is used in the Gospels and in all but on instance it is used of Jesus. In the Gospels it is primarily used of making a public statement or publicly affirming something. That has more to do with its meaning in classical Greek. In Greek literature the meaning of parresia had more to do with political freedom, specifically the freedom of speech. It had to do with the right to make one's thoughts known, to say whatever you wanted, and it was the privilege of the citizen of the Greek city state to have the freedom to say what he believed. It emphasised political liberty, and therefore because you had freedom of speech you were confident, you could say whatever it was you wanted to say without fear of reprisal. It emphasised the right of the citizen to express his opinions freely. So it came to mean candour and straightforwardness. By the time it came to the Koine period the word had changed its meaning to emphasise the concept of boldness or confidence. For example, 2 Corinthians 3:12 ^NASB "Therefore having such a hope [confident expectation], we use great boldness in {our} speech…" Because we have this confident expectation we can today be confident. [13] "and {are} not like Moses, {who} used to put a veil over his face so that the sons of Israel would not look intently at the end of what was fading away." There the contrast is between the modus operandi of the church age believer and that of the Old Testament believer who did not have direct face-to-face access with God. Because of that we have boldness to come into the presence of God. From this we conclude the principle that confidence is based on positional truth, and secondly, on our experiential abiding. Confidence begins with positional truth. We have to know that we are in Christ because in Christ we are made both priests and ambassadors. We can have confidence in prayer because of our position in Christ. So confidence is based first on our positional relationship with Jesus Christ and, secondly, on our experiential abiding.

2.  Our confidence can't be based on anything that we do, it must be based on that supernatural walk that is unique for the believer in the church age. This is what John is emphasising, and we saw this in 1 John 2:28 ^NASB "Now, little children, abide in Him, so that when He appears, we may have confidence and not shrink away from Him in shame at His coming." There are a couple of things to note about confidence in that verse. Confidence is antithetical to shame, and confidence is based on a relationship with Him defined as abiding in Christ; so that when we have a life in time abiding in Christ that means in future at the judgment seat of Christ we have confidence. So confidence is a consequence of abiding in Him.

3.  1 John 3:21 gives us another look at John's use of the word parresia. There he states: "Beloved, if our heart [thinking; conscience in the soul] does not condemn us, we have confidence before God." If we are not condemned by our conscience, indicating that we are out of fellowship, that we have sinned and our fellowship with God has been broken, i.e. we recognise that we are still in fellowship with Him, still walking by means of the Spirit, abiding in Christ, we have confidence before God. So once again we see that confidence is related to abiding in Him.

4.  Again we find the word in 1 John 4:17 ^NASB "By this, love is perfected [brought to completion] with us, so that we may have confidence in the day of judgment; because as He is, so also are we in this world." In the context, in the previous verse, we see that the word "abide" is used twice. So there is an emphasis in this abiding relationship. Love is matured or brought to completion and the result of that matured love, reaching spiritual maturity, is that we can have confidence in the future, in the day of judgment. If we can have confidence in the future in the day of judgment because we have hit spiritual maturity then the conclusion from that is that we can also have confidence today. The sign of that as John explains in 4:17-21 is our personal love for God the Father as the motivator in life, and secondly, our impersonal and unconditional love for other believers, fulfilling the mandate to love our brother. So when we take these three verses together where confidence has been mentioned by John then we recognise that to have this kind of confidence that he is talking about in 5:14 it is the consequence of spiritual growth and spiritual maturity. The baby believer cannot have this kind of confidence. He may have it for a moment or two but it is not the same as the kind of confidence that a mature believer has.

In 1 John 5:14 a second phrase that leaps off the page is "in Him." This is not a phrase that is the same as Paul's phrase "in Christ." Paul uses that phrase to speak of our positional union with Him, i.e. a forensic union that occurs at the instant of salvation because of the baptism of God the Holy Spirit where we are identified with Christ in His death, burial and resurrection (Romans 6:3-5). John uses the phrase "in Him" to speak of that abiding relationship with Christ. It is almost always used of that relationship of fellowship, that relationship of ongoing rapport that takes place between the believer and the Lord Jesus Christ. So we could paraphrase this and say: "This is the confidence we have because we abide in Him." We could insert that; He doesn't say that; and this is only being added because the context of John and all of his writings indicates that that is the idea. Confidence comes from a long-term relationship with Jesus Christ and abiding in Him.

If abiding in Him produces love for God and if love for God is manifested by keeping His commandments, then keeping His commandments means we know His commandments and know the Word. So it takes us back to the same principle that is emphasised all through this epistle that we can't love God unless we know God. We have to make the knowledge of God's Word and the study of God's Word a priority in our life; this isn't something that just happens over night. It doesn't happen through showing up at church once a week or even twice a week; this is a priority in our life to learn the Word of God. This means we have to go through a process of inculcation where we are exchanging human viewpoint in our souls to divine viewpoint.

So John begins by reminding us that if we want to have confidence in our prayer life then that begins with a long-term process of spiritual growth and abiding in Christ and walking by means of the Spirit. That is the thrust of the first clause, "that, if we ask anything according to His will." Here we have the particle ean [e)an] plus the aorist active subjunctive of aiteo [a)itew], which means to ask or to make a request. Then we have "according to His will," kata [kata] plus the accusative, indicating according to a standard; so we are right back to knowing God's will. How do we know God's will? Only by knowing His Word. We don't know God's will in the church age through some kind of subjective impression or feeling, it is because of our knowledge of His Word. And because we know His Word we know His will and therefore the requests that we make are going to be requests that are consistent with the Word of God. So this is clearly talking about the kind of prayer life that is experienced only by a mature believer. We can't take this promise home and then treat it like Aladdin's magic lamp, and we rub the lamp of 1 John 5:14 and ask God for a new job, a wife or a husband, etc., that that is going to happen. That is not what this is talking about. This is not a wish list for a Santa-like God to answer every hope that we have. This is informing us that if we want to have a real, genuine, biblically-based prayer life where God answers our prayers that we had better get serious about our spiritual growth and spiritual advance to maturity; because when we get there we will understand how to pray, what we should pray for, and we will be asking for the kinds of things that God will answer.

1 John 5:15 ^NASB "And if [3^rd class condition] we know that He hears us…" The reason we know that this is a 3^rd class condition is that it is building upon the previous scenario. If that doesn't take place then this won't take place either. "…whatever we ask, we know…" We know with certainty, and here we have the present middle subjunctive of the Greek verb oida [o)ida] which has to do with a knowledge from a base of doctrine in the soul. It is because there is a solid foundation of doctrine in the soul that we can know "…that we have the requests which we have asked from Him."

The doctrine of prayer

1. Prayer is that grace provision of the royal priesthood whereby the church age believer has access and privilege to communicate directly with God. The purpose of this communication is to acknowledge our sins, express adoration and praise to God, give thanks, intercede for others, and to convey our personal needs, our petitions, and to conduct intimate conversations with God.
2. Prayer can be private or public. There are different kinds of prayer and different approaches to prayer. Public prayers can be divided into prayer meetings, and prayer meetings are important.
3. Today we must not confuse prayer with any mystical notions that are popular today. Mysticism is the greatest danger to biblical Christianity today, it is the warp and woof of our culture, and in mysticism spirituality is defined totally by subjective terms and emotion. Mysticism entices many undiscerning people with empty promises of a deeper, more meaningful spirituality. Mystics, under the delusion of achieving a closer union or personal encounter with God, often claim that God speaks directly to them or that God, angels or divine beings have appeared to them. This is a false spirituality that is completely divorced from the objective communication which we have in the Word of God. One of the greatest problems in mysticism is expressed through the charismatic or Pentecostal movement today. Often Pentecostals will be heard to say, Well, it is a prayer language, a special language in order to understand prayer requests a little more clearly. This is addressed in Matthew 6:7 ^NASB "And when you are praying, do not use meaningless repetition as the Gentiles do, for they suppose that they will be heard for their many words." The Greek word used which is translated "meaningless repetition" is battologia [battologia] which means to utter senseless sounds or to speak indistinctly and incoherently, or to babble incoherently. It isn't talking about saying the same phrase over and over again. That is exactly what glossolalia is in the church age.
4. We do not pray to be spiritual but because we are spiritual. Prayer life is a consequence of spiritual growth, it does not produce spiritual growth. Prayer is a privilege of our priesthood. We get all of our priesthood privileges at the instant of salvation but we must develop and grow spiritually for our prayer life to be efficacious. Our prayer life is no stronger than our spiritual life. Our royal priesthood operates in the realm of Bible study and prayer. We have direct access to God. We are also royal ambassadors. Priesthood relates to God; ambassadorship relates to other people. Our ability and effectiveness in these areas is going to grown as we grown spiritually but they are part of something given to us at the instant of salvation.
5. Prayer demands concentration and thought, not emotion. While emotion might be present it is not the focus or the issue. Prayer always relies on doctrine and biblical fact, not on emotion and subjectivity.
6. As believers our prayers fail because we fail in our spiritual lives; it succeeds because we succeed in our spiritual lives. If we don't understand the will and the plan of God we will not have a successful prayer life.
7. Prayer should be the highest priority of our spiritual life, next to learning Bible doctrine. 1 Thessalonians 5:17 tells us that we are to pray continuously, habitually. Cf. John 15:17. What keeps us from having a good prayer life is sin, Psalm 66:18; Proverbs 15:29. Therefore prayer includes four major elements: a) Confession; b) Adoration; c) Thanksgiving; d) Petition, which has two categories: intercession for others and prayer for one's self.