Sermon Tone Analysis

Believers pray with confidence

Confident prayer is generated by knowing the acceptance of the Father

1 John 5:13

This acceptance comes at a person’s conversion

It was made possible by the Son

It made believers God’s sons and daughters

Galatians 4:

It’s necessary for believers to have assurance of this truth to be confident in their prayers

This acceptance changes

John 15:7

Understanding gives us boldness

This acceptance changes one’s approach to God now He is their Father

The word ‘confidence’ = parresia

Literal, freedom of speech

boldness

openness

Confidence = assuarance

frankness

It’s used in:

1 John 2:28

I John 3:

Hebrews 4:

Acceptance assures us of our relationship with the Father

Freedom of speech = parrhesia, “basically denotes that freedom of speech which enables us to express our thoughts and desires before God without hesitancy or fear of embarrassment,” —Edmond Hiebert

Confident prayer is governed by the will of God

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’.

We surrender our will and wants to His will

Luke 22:

We determine His will by His word

Confident prayer guarantees the attention of the Father and His response

We have our Father’s ear

The credentials is to receive His attention is faith

1 John

Confident prayer is governed by the will of God

1 John 3:

sin that leads to death:

A specific sin.

In the Mosaic law certain sins were listed as capital offences, punishable by death (e.g.

Lev.

20:1–27; Num.

18:22; cf.

Rom.

1:32).

Further, in the Old Testament generally a distinction was drawn between sins of ignorance, committed unwittingly, which could be cleansed through sacrifice, and wanton or ‘presumptuous’ sins (Ps.

19:13), committed ‘with a high hand’, for which there was no forgiveness.

The same distinction was ‘common among Rabbinic writers’ (Westcott), and certain early Christian fathers carried it over into the gospel age.

Clement of Alexandria and Origen both accepted that a line could be drawn between forgivable and unforgivable sins, but declined to classify them.

Tertullian went a stage further and listed the grosser sins (including murder, adultery, blasphemy and idolatry) as beyond pardon, while minor offences could be forgiven.

This developed into the familiar, casuistical differentiation between ‘mortal’ and ‘venial’ sins and the specification of the ‘seven deadly sins’.

But there is no New Testament warrant for such an arbitrary classification of sins, and certainly ‘it would be an anachronism to try to apply it here’ (Dodd).

Indeed, although the rendering is ‘a mortal sin’ in RSV and ‘a deadly sin’ in NEB, it is doubtful whether John is referring to specific ‘sins’ at all, as opposed to ‘sin’ (as in 1:8), that is, ‘a state or habit of sin wilfully chosen and persisted in’ (Plummer).

2. Apostasy.

The second suggestion, favoured among modern commentators by Brooke, Law and Dodd, is that the sin that leads to death is neither a specific sin, nor even a ‘backsliding’, but a total apostasy, the denial of Christ and the renunciation of the faith.

Those who hold this view usually link these verses with such passages as Hebrews 6:4–6; 10:26ff.

and 12:16–17, and apply them to the false teachers who had, in fact, so clearly repudiated the truth as to withdraw from the church (2:19).

But can a Christian, who has been born of God, apostatize?

Surely John has taught clearly in this letter that the true Christian cannot sin, that is, persist in sin (3:9), let alone fall away altogether.

He is about to repeat it: ‘we know that anyone born of God does not continue to sin; the one who was born of God keeps him safe, and the evil one cannot harm him’ (18).

Can he who ‘does not continue to sin’ (18) commit a sin that leads to death (16)?

Moreover, John has just written of having life (12) and knowing it (13).

Can someone who has received a life which is eternal lose it and ‘sin unto death’ (AV?)

It seems clear, unless John’s theology is divided against itself, that he who sins unto death is not a Christian.

If so, the sin cannot be apostasy.

We are left with the third alternative.

3. The blasphemy against the Holy Spirit.

This sin, committed by the Pharisees, was a deliberate, open-eyed rejection of known truth.

They ascribed the mighty works of Jesus, evidently done ‘by the Spirit of God’ (Matt.

12:28), to the agency of Beelzebub.

Such sin, Jesus said, would never be forgiven either in this age or in the age to come.

He who commits it ‘is guilty of an eternal sin’ (Mark 3:29; cf.

Matt.

12:22–32).

It leads him inexorably into a state of incorrigible moral and spiritual obtuseness, because he has wilfully sinned against his own conscience.

In John’s own language he has ‘loved darkness instead of light’ (John 3:18–21), and in consequence he will ‘die in his sins’ (John 8:24).

His sin in fact, leads to death.

That is, the outcome of his sin will be spiritual ruin, the final separation of the soul from God, which is ‘the second death’, reserved for those whose names are not ‘written in the book of life’ (Rev.

20:15; 21:8).

But, it may be objected, if the ‘sin leading to death’ is the blasphemy against the Holy Spirit committed by a hardened unbeliever, how can John call him a brother?

To be exact, he does not.

It is the one whose sin does not lead to death who is termed a brother; he whose sin lead to death is neither named nor described.

Nevertheless, supposing John thinks of each as a brother, we must still assert that neither can be regarded as a child of God.

The reasons for denying that he who sins ‘unto death’ is a Christian have already been given; what can be said about him whose sin does not lead to death?

An important point, to which commentators surprisingly give no attention, is that he is given life in answer to prayer.

This means that, although his sin does not lead to death, he is in fact dead, since he needs to be given life.

For how can you give life to one who is already alive?

This person is not a Christian, therefore, for Christians have received life, and do not fall into death when they fall into sin.

True, ‘life’ to John means communion with God, and the sinning Christian cannot enjoy fellowship with God (1:5–6), but John would certainly not have said that when the Christian sins he dies and needs to receive eternal life again.

The Christian has ‘passed from death to life’ (3:14; cf.

John 5:24).

Death and judgment are behind him; he ‘has life’ (12) as a present and abiding possession.

When he stumbles into sin, which he may (2:1), he has a heavenly Advocate (2:2).

He needs to be forgiven and cleansed (1:10), but John never says he needs to be ‘quickened’ ‘made alive’, or ‘given life’ all over again.

If this is so, then neither he whose sin leads to death nor he whose sin does not lead to death is a Christian, possessing eternal life.

Both are ‘dead in transgressions and sins’ (Eph.

2:1).

Each ‘remains in death’ (3:14).

The difference between them is that one may receive life through a Christian’s intercession, while the other will die the second death.

Spiritually dead already, he will die eternally.

Only such a serious state as this would lead John to say that he does not advise his readers to pray for such.

The question remains: How can someone who (if the above interpretation be correct) is not a Christian be termed a brother?

The only answer is that John must here be using the word in a broader sense either of a ‘neighbour’ or of a nominal Christian, a church member who professes to be a ‘brother’.

Certainly in 2:9, 11 the word ‘brother’ is not used strictly, for he who hates him is not a Christian at all but ‘in the darkness’.