13 I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God that you may know that you have eternal life. 14 And this is the confidence that we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us. 15 And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests that we have asked of him. 16 If anyone sees his brother committing a sin not leading to death, he shall ask, and God will give him life—to those who commit sins that do not lead to death. There is sin that leads to death; I do not say that one should pray for that. 17 All wrongdoing is sin, but there is sin that does not lead to death. (ESV)
Again John reminds us why he is writing this epistle – that we may know we have eternal life. He has been doing this by contrasting the believers experience and behaviour to that of the unbeliever, and here he now focuses on prayer. He starts in v13-15 by encouraging us to pray, and that we can have confidence when we pray according to God’s will, that he will hear us and answer us.
Most of the commentators point out that the v16-17 is a difficult piece of scripture to understand clearly, but what I think John is saying to us here is that we need to pray for the sinner whilst discouraging the praying for people to be rescued from the just rewards of their sin. The sin that leads to death is the only sin that cannot be forgiven, the sin of rejecting Christs work on the cross, and the work of the Holy spirit in our lives.
He encourages us to pray for our brother, ‘our brother’ does not necessarily refer to a brother who already believes but by implication of the phrase ‘a sin not leading to death’ and the fact that all sin of the unredeemed leads to death, we can infer that John is speaking of the elect whether they have already come to know salvation or not. Similarly when John refers to the ‘sin that leads to death’ we can infer that he is referring to the kind of unrepentant sinfulness a nonbeliever is habitually committing. In other words we should be careful to pray for the life of those we see in sin but not necessarily just ask for relief from the consequences of their sin and that we understand that the non-elect will suffer the eternal punishment. That is not to say we shouldn't pray for physical healing, and relief from difficulties, we should, but we should pray more that these things be used to bring repentance and sanctification.
It is noteworthy that when we see a brother sinning, our response should be to pray for them, how often do we not do this but instead, despise, reject, gossip about the persons sin, instead of asking God to save the person or to work in that persons heart that they repent of their sin. Yes we do need to confront the sinner and rebuke their sin following Christs gudelines in Matt 18, but let us first turn to prayer and seek God’s direction through his word praying for their soul.
We can deduce, from what John is saying, that those who have been chosen by God to be saved will not continue in their sin but those who have been chosen by God for damnation will continue in their sinfulness. We can know we are saved if we are fighting against our sin which ‘does not lead to death’.
Let us take comfort that whilst we fall, the fact that we battle against our sin is a sign that have eternal life.
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