Anything We Ask
1 John 3v22
31st March 2023
Last time, we considered:
1 John 3v21
Dear friends, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before God...
That sentence continues:
1 John 3v22
... and receive from him anything we ask, because we obey his commands and do what
pleases him.
We must be honest as we read this scripture. We must acknowledge that we haven't received from God everything we've asked for. God has answered many of our prayers, sometimes in wonderful and miraculous ways. But sometimes we've prayed and prayed, beseeching God to save our friends and loved ones from their sins, or to heal them, or to reconcile them to each other, for them to find peace in God and live happy, contented, fruitful lives in God's service. And many of those prayers have so far gone unanswered, or at least not answered the way we long for.
It's not just that I still haven't got an Aston Martin. It's that many of us are sick, many are in great pain, many of our loved ones still haven't come to Jesus, despite our praying, sometimes for years, and so on. It's heartbreaking, and I don't want some glib sermonising from me to make it more heartbreaking. But we mustn't ignore this passage just because it's difficult. As we've had to remind ourselves several times while studying this amazing letter, the difficult passages must be true, because God put them there.
The first thing to say here, I think, is that we believe a Gospel of grace, not of law. God is not a vending machine. It's not like we have to do enough good things, or repent of enough bad things, to earn enough credits, to get a blessing from God. It's not a transaction. We're not buying His favour with our holiness. We really, really, can't do that. We're never pure enough to impress God, and we don't have to. We're always reliant on the blood of Christ.
What I think is happening here is this: If we obey God's commands, if we consistently do what pleases Him, we grow closer in relationship with Him. The work of sanctification changes not only how we act, or how we talk, but how we think and how we feel. It's like going up as spiral staircase, the more we obey, the more we change, and the more we change, the more we obey. And as we change, our prayers change. As our hearts are increasingly conformed to Christ's heart, so our prayers become the sort of prayers that Christ prays.
I don't just mean that Christ's prayers are more compassionate and less selfish than mine, although I'm sure that's true. I also mean that Christ knows the mind of God better than I do. Christ knows what's best. I don't. Christ knows how to pray in any particular situation, and often I don't.
It's not that I need to earn more brownie points from God before He'll answer me; it's that as I grow in obedience, in holiness, in Christlikeness, so I become able to pray more effectively.
James 5:16b
The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective.
That can be interpreted in two ways, and they're both true. Firstly, righteousness is imputed to every child of God, because we have saving faith in the redeeming blood of Jesus. God accepts us as righteous and hears our prayers. That's true. Secondly, though, a truly holy Christian who, in John's words, obeys God's commands and does what pleases him, has not only imputed righteousness but is actually living a more-or-less righteous life, with a more-or-less righteous heart, and God will hear his prayers even more. That's also true.
Such a person hasn't earnt special favour with God. He's living a life so in tune with God that he prays the right prayers, in the right way, at the right time, and God answers.
I know that my prayers now are very different from the prayers I made soon after I first believed. And I will seek to grow in holiness so that my prayers are more effective than they are now.