In 1 John 5:16, “If anyone sees his brother committing sin that does not lead to death, he should pray and God will give him life.” Which ties in nicely with verse 14, “that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us,” and verse 15, “we have what we asked of him.”
So it’s totally within God’s will for us to pray for a brother caught up in some “wrongdoing” (17), and totally in God’s will to answer our prayer too – so long as the brother’s sin is not one that leads to death. So what would “a sin not leading to death” be?
John provides a clue in 1 John 1:9, that “If we (or ‘he’ – the brother) confesses his sins,” those sins do not lead to death, but rather lead to Jesus “forgiving the sins and giving the brother a totally fresh start” (9).
To John, then, the willingness to admit the sin (or “wrongdoing”) is the key, because once a sin is done, it’s done, and there’s no getting out of it, getting away with it, or being released from the guilt or discomfort of it by “claiming to be without sin” (8). Nor is there any point in trying to hide it, ignore it, excuse it, justify it, or dismiss it as “not being that serious really” – or blaming someone or something else for causing it, or being resentful of the person who exposed the sin in the first place – because the person who says, “I know Jesus,” but “does not do what he commands is a liar, and the truth is not in him” (2:4).
That may be hard to admit, but totally worth admitting, because when there’s a contrite, penitent heart that fully accepts “I really blew it by how I behaved,” God is “faithful and just” in his promise to forgive (9). And a prayer for a brother to grasp that so God can get him fully back on the road to eternal life again, is a prayer guaranteed an answer.
That prayer is also hugely important because, as Paul pointed out in 2 Corinthians 2:7, when it suddenly dawns on a sinning brother how weak, stupid or ignorant he’s been – along with the grief he’s caused other people too – he could then become so devastated and discouraged and “overwhelmed with excessive sorrow” (7) that nothing we say or do can console him. It’s God’s will that we try – by “reaffirming our love for him” (8) – but what seems to break through the gloom best of all is simply saying to him, “I’ll pray for you,” just as Jesus did for his disciples to prevent Satan getting at them too, which, of course, God answered (Luke 22:31-32). Which God loves to do, because he doesn’t want us “Stumbling around in the dark”….(next blog)
Buck To Basics 