1 John 5:14-15
“This is the boldness which we have toward him, that, if we ask anything according to his will, he listens to us. And if we know that he listens to us, whatever we ask, we know that we have the petitions which we have asked of him.”
Where this sits
Near the close of the letter, in a passage about what believers can know. John uses the word 'know' repeatedly through these final verses.
Reflection
The qualifier according to his will is where most readers stop, and it is usually read as a limitation — as if it narrowed the offer to a small set of approved requests.
Read in John's letter it functions differently. He has spent five chapters establishing that his readers can know things: know they have passed from death to life, know they abide in him, know they are children of God. This clause continues that project. It is not restricting what you may ask; it is telling you where the certainty comes from.
And the logic in the second verse is worth following carefully, because it is a chain rather than a promise. If he listens to us, then we have what we asked. Note the middle term. John does not say we get what we ask because God is generous. He says we have it because he listens — being heard is treated as the decisive event, and possession follows from audience.
That is a strange way to describe prayer unless you take seriously who is doing the listening. A request heard by someone with no power changes nothing. The same request heard by someone who can act is already, in effect, answered.
Boldness is the same word used in Hebrews for approaching the throne — a citizen's right to speak, not a mood.
- Theme:
- Prayer
- Book:
- 1 John