13I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life. 14And this is the confidence that we have toward 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 that we have asked of him.
Confidence in knowing we have eternal life.
That you may know (eidēte) means, both in word and tense, not that they may gradually grow in assurance, but that they may possess here and now a present certainty of the life they have received in Christ.
This letter is to assure you that you have eternal life (another translation).
Putting together the purposes of Gospel and letter, John’s purpose is in four stages, namely that his readers may hear, hearing may believe, believing may live, and living may know.
Confidence of answered prayer.
Christian confidence belongs not just to the future (Second Coming and Judgment), but to the hear and now.
It describes both the manner of our approach to God, free and bold (3:21), and our expectation of its outcome, namely that … he hears us.
1 John 5:14–15 ESV
14And this is the confidence that we have toward 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 that we have asked of him.
The qualification, however, is if we ask anything according to his will. In 3:22 the condition of answered prayer is whether our behaviour accords with God’s commands; here whether our requests accord with his will.
Prayer is not a convenient device for imposing our will upon God, or for bending his will to ours, but the prescribed way of subordinating our will to his.
It is by prayer that we seek God’s will, embrace it and align ourselves with it.
Every true prayer is a variation on the theme ‘your will be done’.
