Please Help Us Keep These Thousands of Blog Posts Growing and Free for All

$5.00

1 John 5:14-15 Updated American Standard Version (UASV)
¹⁴And this is the confidence that we have before him, that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. ¹⁵And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests which we have asked from him.

A TEST OF WILLS 5:14–15

John describes for us the confidence we have in approaching God (5:14). His often repeated theme of assurance and confidence is about to be taken to a new level. He speaks not merely about the final judgment in terms of where and when God will finalize all decisions about personal destinies; instead, he speaks about the courage to face God, here and now. John says that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And then he goes on to make a very interesting statement: And if we know that he hears us—whatever we ask—we know that we have what we asked of him (5:15). What a declaration!

This could be interpreted as John saying that God is our heavenly servant, which could lead some to abuse both God and prayer. There are two key phrases that help us understand the meaning of this verse. The first phrase is he hears us. John says that we can have confidence that we will receive whatever we ask, if we are sure that God hears us. The confidence that He hears us is in the phrase according to his will. This provides a bright light of understanding about the prayer that God answers.

GREAT THEMES

Christian Assurance

The teaching of 1 John

Pillar One: Faith—“I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life” (1 John 5:13).

A. Specific Faith (1 John 4:9–10; John 3:16)

B. Spoken Faith (1 John 4:15)

C. Sustained Faith (1 John 5:1, 10–13).

Pillar Two: Love—“And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him. In this way, love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment, because in this world we are like him” (1 John 4:16–17).

A. Sacrificial Love (1 John 3:16)

B. Compassionate Love (1 John 3:17)

C. Love in Action (1 John 3:18)

Pillar Three: Obedience—“We know that we have come to know him if we obey his commands” (1 John 2:3).

A. The Command (1 John 3:23)

B. The Faith in Christ (1 John 3:23)

C. Love One Another (1 John 3:24)

Pillar Four: Witness (of the spirits)—“… And it is the Spirit who testifies, because the Spirit is the truth” (1 John 5:6).

A. The Human Spirit (1 John 3:21)

B. The Holy Spirit (1 John 3:24; Rom. 8:16)

Sometimes, our relationship with the Lord becomes a test of the wills: His and ours. One of the greatest decisions we can ever make is a deep-level, once-and-for-all commitment to agree to whatever we sense is God’s will for us. Some refer to this as the “lordship” commitment. Some refer to this as the consecration of one who seeks holiness. It is as if God gives us a blank sheet of paper and asks us to sign our name to it, agreeing in advance to whatever He wants to fill in.

What God wants is what we want. We have now settled the question. The test of wills has been resolved. When we pray, what we pray for is God’s will to be done “on earth as it is in heaven” (Matt. 6:10).

By David A. Case and David W. Holdren