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)

In 1 John 5:16, John speaks of “a sin that does not lead to death,” but also of a sin that does lead to death. So what’s the difference?

John makes the difference rather clear in 1 John 3:14, when writing that “Anyone who does not love remains in death,” compared to the first part of the verse that “we’ve passed from death to life, because we love our brothers.” And to make that difference even more clear in verse 15: “Anyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life in him.”

To hate a brother, therefore, is a sin that leads to death – “death” to John meaning “no eternal life.” To John we’re either on the road that leads to eternal life or the road leading to no eternal life, one obvious difference between the two being how we view and treat our brothers. 

This became a serious issue for John too, because he was up against people who “claimed to be in the light but hated their brothers” (2:9). These were people who put on a good show of love – “loving with words,” as John put it in 1 John 3:18 – but, verse 17, “How can the love of God be in them if, on seeing a brother in need and they’ve got the material possessions to help him, they show no pity on him?”

In other words, they’d rather watch a brother starve than help him, which could lead to that brother literally dying. Love – the very essence of eternal life that God sent Jesus to create in us – is totally absent in them. No wonder John calls such an attitude “a sin that leads to death,” because not only could it lead to the physical death of a brother, it’s also the death in an individual of what God got started in him through his Son in 1 John 4:19, that “We love because he first loved us.”

It’s because God had pity on us that started us on the road to eternal life, of being able to love as he loves. So a person who says, “I love God, yet hates his brother, is a liar” (19). He’s not on the road to eternal life at all. Instead, according to John in 1 John 2:22, “Such a man is antichrist,” because he’s not living the life of love that Christ came to make possible in us. As such, John says back in 1 John 4:16, there’s not much point in praying for him, because it looks like he was never with it in the first place (2:18-19).

But what about the “Sin that doesn’t lead to death”?….(next blog)

In 1 John 5:15, John writes, that because “we know God hears us – whatever we ask we know we have what we asked of him.” 

It’s like being king Solomon in 1 Kings 3:5, when God says to him in a dream, “Ask for whatever you want me to give you” – and what Solomon asks for pleases God so much he replies in verse 12, “I will do what you have asked.” 

God hasn’t changed since then too, because in 1 John 3:21-22, John writes, “Dear friends, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before God and receive from him anything we ask, because we obey his commands and do what pleases him.” 

The only obstruction preventing that from happening is our own hearts condemning us (20). Which is understandable, because we’re constantly faced with our weaknesses, wrong desires, and the endless feeling that we’re not quite with it when it comes to what God wants of us. But John dealt with that in verse 20, because he writes, “whenever our hearts condemn us, God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything.” 

And the “everything” God knows is that he sent his Son to “set our hearts at rest in his presence” (19). He wants us feeling as free as Solomon, to ask for whatever we want. So what would please God so much that it’s a pleasure for him to answer us?

John gives us a clue in 1 John 5:16, that “If anyone sees his brother commit a sin that does not lead to death, he should pray and God will give him life.” Well, that pleases God all right, because just as “Jesus laid down his life for us,” we’re now “laying down our lives for our brothers” (3:16). And loving our brothers (3:23) ties in perfectly with asking “according to God’s will” as well (5:14). 

It’s in what we’re asking for that pleases God too, because here we are praying for a brother that “God will give him life,” which is exactly what God sent his Son for, “that we might live through him” (4:9). So we’re asking God to get a brother back on the road to eternal life, when we can see (but he can’t) that he’s stumbling into enemy territory. 

Stumbling we can pray for and God will answer, but not for “a sin that leads to death” (4:16). So what’s the difference between “Sins that do/don’t lead to death”?….(next blog)

According to 1 John 5:15, it’s possible for us to “know God hears us” – with three reasons from John as to how we know too.  

The first being 1 John 3:22, that God hears us “because we obey his commands and do what pleases him.” In which case, of course God hears us, because thanks to Jesus’ atoning sacrifice for our sins (2:2), all our imperfect obedience to God’s commands and not always doing what pleases him, are totally forgiven and “purified” – decontaminated of all imperfection (1:9). In his Son, therefore, the Father reassures us that the air waves are totally clear of all obstructions between us and him. He hears us all right, loud and clear. 

John’s second reason for knowing God hears us is that Jesus is constantly “speaking to the Father in our defence” (2:1). It’s amazing that God set it up this way, but it gives us a picture in terms we can grasp – of a court where Jesus is our champion presenting our case to the Father, and the Father in all his splendour giving his Son his full attention, because this is his Son speaking.

So that’s two reasons for knowing God hears us, both supplied for us in his Son. That’s why his Son is the Father’s personal testimony or witness to us (5:11), because in what Jesus did for us in his sacrifice, and in what he’s doing for us right now, we have the Father stamping his absolute guarantee – on everything we come to him for – that he hears. 

So far so good, then – but – we’re still stuck with a conscience that has us flagellating and condemning ourselves for every wrong thought and action. And we may have grown up in a version of Christianity that had us worrying if we’re praying enough, or studying enough, or being good enough for God to hear us. So what has God done to deal with that?

According to John in 1 John 5:10, “Anyone who believes in the Son of God has this personal testimony of God to us in himself.” In other words, John’s third proof for us knowing God hears us, is that we simply found it in ourselves believing God hears us, and for nothing we did to make it happen. We didn’t even need to ask him for it – if we even thought of asking him – because it was God who set up all three of these proofs himself so we know he hears us.

So now we know that God hears us, we’re into the second part of 1 John 5:15, “Whatever we ask”….(next blog) 

In 1 John 5:13, John wants those “who believe in the name of the Son of God to know you have eternal life” – because what comes with knowing it “is the assurance we have in approaching God” (14). 

The Greek word for “assurance” is parresia (pa-REEZ-ee-ah), meaning confidence – with ‘an air of boldness’ attached to it too – because the same word is used in Ephesians 3:12, that “through faith (in what God has done for us in his Son, verse 11), we may approach him with boldness and freedom.” And again in Hebrews 4:16, we can “boldly approach the throne of grace for help in our time of need.”

In using that Greek word, therefore, all three writers are talking about this new relationship with God we’ve got, in which we can speak openly, plainly and boldly, and in total confidence and freedom that it’s fine with God too. Because that’s exactly what he sent his Son to create for us, taking into account that this is the essence of eternal life, our relationship and “fellowship with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ” (1 John 1:2-3). It’s living with a loving God forever. But since we have eternal life now we’re already in that relationship with him.

God also gave us a clue as to the kind of relationship he meant it to be, and again through his Son, because look at how free and bold people were in approaching Jesus when he was here. When they saw Jesus in action and how much he cared, they were all over him. And talk about bold too, in one case ripping the tiles off a roof to lower a paralyzed man right down in front of Jesus (Luke 5:18-19). And the blind man too, who wouldn’t stop shouting for Jesus to have mercy on him (Mark 10:46-49). And in both cases Jesus happily responded with healing.  

When people realized it was totally in Jesus’ power and will to heal, they followed him everywhere, to his home, to the quiet spot where he wanted to pray, to where they thought he was headed, or to simply touch his clothing. And Jesus listened and responded to them all. So when John writes in 1 John 5:14 that “if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us,” it’s no different to what happened when Jesus was here. 

There was one difference, though: they knew Jesus heard them, because he was with them in person, so they could ask him face to face, see him listening, and get an answer from him there and then. But we don’t have him with us like that today, so “How do we know God hears us?”….(next blog)

In 1 John 5:7-8, John writes that “there are three that testify: the Spirit, the water and the blood, and all three are in agreement” – as to what they testify to as well, that “God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son” (11), the goal being that “we know we have eternal life” (13).

So what part does “the water” play in that? There’s a clue in John the Baptist “baptizing people with water for repentance,” Matthew 3:11. Repentance is what happened too; people came pouring in from the countryside and towns to grab the chance John was offering to bury their sloppy attitude to God in the waters of the River Jordan and get serious about obeying God instead.

Which got them firmly on the road to eternal life, because in Matthew 19:17, Jesus said, “If you want to enter life (eternal life, verse 16), obey the commandments.” The “water,” therefore, tells us how God gets us started toward knowing we have eternal life: it’s in our obvious change of attitude to him, in very much wanting to obey him.

But what about “the blood”? God clues us in again through John the Baptist, by having him “preach a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins,” Mark 1:4. It resulted in people openly “confessing their sins” (Matthew 3:6), which also put them firmly on the road to eternal life, because “In Jesus,” Ephesians 1:7, “we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins.” The “blood,” therefore, tells us how God takes us to the next stage of knowing we have eternal life: it’s in finding ourselves seeking forgiveness – and totally knowing we’ve got it in Jesus’ sacrifice.

And “the Spirit”? Again, God clues us in through John, who spoke in Mark 1:7-8 of one who would come after him who would “baptize with the Holy Spirit.” The purpose of which John himself experienced, because in John 1:32, he “saw the Spirit come down from heaven as a dove and rest on Jesus.” And John’s reaction in verse 34 was: “I have seen and I testify that this is the Son of God.”

The part “the Spirit” plays, therefore, in helping us know we have eternal life, is in our recognition of who Jesus is too. That he’s God’s Son, sent by God to make what John the Baptist preached come to life in millions of us since. But come to life in what way? According to another John, it’s in “A new relationship with God”….(next blog)

God wants us to know we’re forgiven, that he doesn’t hold our past sloppy attitude toward him against us, because truly knowing we’re forgiven is God’s second evidence that we’re on the path to eternal life in our lifetimes now (1 John 5:13).

Which is why he had John the Baptist go “into all the country around the Jordan, preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins,” Luke 3:3. God wanted these people to know they were forgiven, which was remarkable, because they were Jews, the one group of people on the planet whom God had set apart to obey and trust him, and they’d totally blown it. But here was God offering them the chance to repent and start afresh, knowing their sins had been forgiven. 

It prepared the way beautifully for Jesus and his amazing healings, which he did “so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins,” Matthew 9:6. God had given Jesus the power to do these healings so people would know they were forgiven. In healing them he was giving them a fresh start, just like John had been baptizing people to wash away their past to give them a fresh start. The purpose of John’s baptisms and Jesus’ healings was exactly the same, therefore, to help people truly know they were forgiven. 

And the same thing happened when people were “cut to the heart” on realizing they’d been complicit in the killing of Jesus in Acts 2:36-37 – because Peter’s response in verse 38 was, “Repent and be baptized,” grab the chance to put that ghastly mess and all that guilt behind you, “so that your sins may be forgiven.” Because that was the whole point of Jesus dying, so they could start afresh, knowing to the bottom of their socks that their sins had been forgiven, forgotten, and washed away in his blood.

Paul wanted to get that same point across too, telling his fellow Jews in Acts 13:38, “Therefore, my brothers, I want you to know that through Jesus the forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you.” And why was that important for them to know? Because this was the path God had laid out to eternal life, and believing it would put them on it (48). 

God also provides one more piece of evidence to help us believe we’re on the road to eternal life, adding up to “three that testify” to it: “The Spirit, the water and the blood”….(next blog)

The first evidence God presents to help us know we have eternal life in his Son is the testimony of changed lives, which began with John the Baptist telling people, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near,” Matthew 3:1-2.

And people “from Jerusalem and all Judea and the whole nation of Jordan” found themselves doing just that – they repented – “confessing their sins” (5-6), burying their past in baptism, and wanting to gear their lives to “fulfilling all righteousness,” as Jesus put it in verse 15, meaning live totally from that point on as God would want them to. 

All of which God got started in people through John in preparation for the arrival of his Son (3), because this would be his first real, live evidence (or testimony) of what he’d sent his Son for, to get us humans on the path to eternal life in our lives now by this amazing new desire we find in ourselves to tune our lives to him. 

And it’s all God’s doing. It was he who got John the Baptist yelling out to people in Luke 3:9 that “every tree not producing good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.” Because that’s what got their attention in their terms back then to set them on the path to eternal life – just like millions of people ever since who give their testimonies of how God got their attention, and the response it created in them. 

And a response like those in John’s day too, who on hearing John found themselves humbly asking, “What should we do then?” Or like the people in Peter’s day, who on hearing from Peter in Acts 2:37 that they’d been complicit in killing Jesus (36), “were cut to the heart,” and they too asked, “What shall we do?”

And all beautifully crafted by God to get them started on the road to eternal life in their present lifetimes, and in such a way that looking back they’ll realize it was he who did it, because it was so perfectly tuned to their situation, just as it was in John’s day to get through to people then. 

For some it’s sudden and dramatic, for others quiet and gradual, but God’s purpose is the same, to get us on the road to eternal life and to help us know we’re on it (1 John 5:13), by first of all bringing us to the point of repentance and wanting to change our lives, but also in “Knowing we’re forgiven”….(next blog)

In 1 John 5:9 John writes about “the testimony of God” – a testimony being an ‘authoritative declaration of truth’ – which in God’s case is based on one simple point, verse 11, that he’s “given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son.”  

Which seems like an impossible thing for us humans to grasp, so if God was hauled up in court and asked point blank, “Come on, how on earth can we possibly know in our busy, limited, physical lives in this world that we have eternal life” – what would his answer be?

According to John, God’s answer would be along the lines of: “Well, of course you can know you have eternal life; I gave it to you in my Son. So look no further than him for the evidence you need that it’s true.”

Which is exactly what John does. In verse 5, he zeroes right in on “Jesus being the Son of God,” describing him in verse 6 as “the one who came by water and blood – Jesus Christ.” So if God was speaking, he’d say, “Look, I gave you evidence in physical terms you can understand – water and blood,” both of which featured strongly in Jesus’ life, and clearly for a jolly good reason that relates perfectly to us knowing for certain that we have eternal life. 

Jesus’ arrival on the scene, for instance, “came by water.” In Matthew 3:13, “Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan to be baptized by John.” And John knew who Jesus was, openly claiming in John 1:34 that “I have seen and testify that this is the Son of God.” 

So here we have the Son of God coming to John to be baptized in water. Which shocked John because he was baptizing people “with water for repentance,” Matthew 3:11, and what did Jesus need to repent of? But Jesus said, “Go ahead and baptize me to fulfill all righteousness,” because that’s where the path to eternal life begins, in us humans fulfilling all righteousness, or obeying all God’s requirements. 

Which was exactly why people were coming to John to be baptized, to “confess their sins” (6), and “produce fruit in keeping with repentance,” Luke 3:8, and start new lives obeying God (10-14). In Jesus being baptized along with them, therefore, he was confirming this as the right place to start, because it’s in “The testimony of changed lives” that God presents his first evidence of eternal life being in his Son….(next blog)

In 1 John 5:5, John asks, “Who is he that overcomes the world?” And his answer is: “he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God.” But why the need to “overcome the world,” first of all?

Because as John made clear in the story of Cain, there’s an “evil one” whose sole intent is to create a world of death on this planet, by getting us to hate each other. It started with Cain hating his brother so much he killed him, and it has continued ever since, resulting in billions more people dying – and the wrecking of marriages, family relationships and friendships – because of the same hate, jealousy and explosive anger Cain had. 

But fortunately, 1 John 3:8, “The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil’s work,” enabling us, therefore, verse 14, to “pass (or move away from) that world of death to life,” where instead of hate “we love our brothers.” And in so doing we “overcome the world” of hate and death that the evil one infects our world with. 

But why do we need to “believe that Jesus is the Son of God” for this to happen? Because, John writes in 1 John 4:15, “If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in him and he in God.” 

For us to love and not hate we need “God to live in us and us to live in him,” enabling us to live in his world of love, not the world of Cain. But how did God make that possible? Verse 14, “the Father sent his Son to be the Saviour of the world.” It was in his Son that he set in motion the switch from hate to love (1:9).

It is the Father’s “command” in 1 John 3:23, therefore, that we “believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as he commanded,” because what Jesus did in love for us, and the love he taught us to live by, is what the Father set in motion to combat what the evil one set in motion in Cain. 

In his Son, therefore, the Father has provided us with “victory over the world” (5:4). And we experience that personally in what the Father also set in motion in his Son, which is the giving of his Spirit (3:24), because the Spirit “in us is so much greater than the (evil) one who is in the world” (4:4). In his Son, therefore, the Father is telling, showing, and living in us what he created us for. Or as John puts it, “Jesus is God’s testimony”….(next blog)