1 John 5:14 - Meaning and Application

Here we have a privilege that belongs to faith in Christ, namely, free access in prayer. “This is the confidence we have in him, that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us” (1 John 5:14). Christ gives us boldness to come to God in every situation, with all our requests and needs. Through him, our prayers are brought before God and received by him.

Our prayers must agree with God’s revealed will. It is not right to ask for what goes against his majesty and glory, or against our own good, since we belong to him and depend on him. When we pray in faith, we may be sure that heaven hears. The prayer of faith is never lost.

From this privilege comes a great benefit. “If we know that he hears us, whatever we ask, we know that we have what we asked of him” (1 John 5:15). The holy person needs many deliverances, mercies, and blessings. To know that our prayers are heard, or accepted, is as good as knowing they are answered. In that sense, we know we are, or will be, pitied, pardoned, guided, made holy, helped, and saved, as far as we are allowed to ask God for these things.

John then gives direction for prayer when we see another person sin. “If anyone sees his brother committing a sin not leading to death, he shall ask, and God will give him life” (1 John 5:16). We should pray for others as well as for ourselves. We should pray for our fellow human beings, that they may be enlightened, converted, and saved. We should also pray for our fellow Christians, that they may be sincere, that their sins may be forgiven, that they may be delivered from evil and from God’s chastening, and that they may be preserved in Christ Jesus.

There is also a serious difference in the guilt of sin. John speaks of “a sin leading to death” and “a sin not leading to death” (1 John 5:16-17). All sin, in the sense of its just penalty, leads to death, since “the wages of sin is death,” and “cursed is everyone who does not continue to do everything written in the Book of the Law” (Galatians 3:10). But John means a special kind of sin here, in contrast with sins that are not unto death.

Some sins are not unto death, because they may still be consistent with life. Under human law, some wrongs can be punished without taking the offender’s life. Under God’s law, some sins may still be consistent with bodily life, or even with spiritual and gospel life. There are also sins that, by human law, lead to death, such as capital crimes. Under God’s government, some sins may bring bodily death, as with gross hypocrites like Ananias and Sapphira, or perhaps even with true believers, as when Paul said of some in Corinth, “That is why many among you are weak and sick, and a number of you have fallen asleep” (1 Corinthians 11:30). Such sins may bring bodily death, though those people may not be condemned with the world.

Under the gospel, God does not always threaten immediate death for the outward sins of Christ’s people. Often he sends only fatherly discipline, because “the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and chastises every son he receives” (Hebrews 12:6). Yet God’s wisdom and goodness, and sometimes his severe warning to others, may still allow that discipline to go as far as death. There are also sins that are unto death in a spiritual and gospel sense. These are sins that are inconsistent with spiritual life in the soul, and with any gospel right to eternal life. Such sins include present total impenitence, that is, complete refusal to repent, and unbelief. Final impenitence and unbelief surely lead to eternal death. So does blaspheming the Spirit of God in the witness he has given to Christ and his gospel, and complete falling away from the clear light and convincing evidence of Christian truth. These sins carry the guilt of everlasting death.

This leads to the practical use of the rule for prayer. The prayer in view is a prayer for life: “He shall ask, and God shall give him life.” Life is something to ask from God, because he is the God of life. He gives life when and to whom he pleases, and he takes it away by his will and providence. If a brother’s sin is not of the kind already described as leading to death, we may pray for him in faith and hope, especially for the life of soul and body. But if the sin is of the kind leading to death, we are not given clear permission to pray in that way.

When John says, “I do not say that he should pray for that,” he may mean only this, “I give you no promise in that case, and no ground for the prayer of faith.” The laws of punishment must be carried out for the safety and good of human society, and even an offending brother in such a case must be left to public justice, which rests on God’s authority, and also to God’s mercy. The removal of gospel penalties, or the keeping away of a death that may come as a result of some special sin, can only be prayed for conditionally, if it agrees with God’s wisdom, will, and glory.

We cannot pray that the sins of the unrepentant and unbelieving be forgiven while they remain in that state, or that they receive any saving mercy that assumes forgiveness while they still continue in unbelief. But we may pray for their repentance, if they are in the ordinary condition of the unrepentant world. We may pray that they be given faith in Christ, and then all other saving mercies with it. If it should become clear that anyone has committed the unforgivable blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, and has fully turned away from the convincing light of Christian truth, it seems that such a person is not to be prayed for at all. For what remains except “a fearful expectation of judgment” that will consume such enemies? (Hebrews 10:27). These seem to be the sins the apostle mainly means by sins leading to death.

The apostle seems to reason that there is a kind of sin that does not lead to death. He has already said that all wrongdoing is sin (1 John 5:17), but if every kind of wrongdoing led to death, then all of us would be bound over to death at once. Since that is not the case, and Christian believers generally have a right to life, there must be some sin that is not unto death.

This does not mean there is such a thing as harmless sin in the ordinary sense. It means there is forgiven sin, sin that does not leave a person fully liable to eternal death. If that were not true, there could be no justification, that is, no being counted right with God, and no continuing in that right standing. The gospel covenant lessens, removes, or cancels the guilt of sin.