If you would please turn within your Bibles to John chapter 14, beginning at verse 12, Jesus tells his disciples, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do, and greater works than these will he do, because I am going to the Father. Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do that the Father may be glorified in the Son. And if you ask me anything in my name, I will do it.
If you love me, you will keep my commandments, and I will ask the Father, and he will give you another helper to be with you forever. Even the Spirit of truth whom the world cannot receive because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you. I will not leave you as orphans. I will come to you. Yet a little while and the world will see me no more, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live. In that day you will know that I am in my Father and you in me and I in you.
Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me, and he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him.’ And Judas, not Iscariot, said to him, ‘Lord, how is it that you will manifest yourself to us and not to the rest of the world?’ Jesus answered him, ‘If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. Whoever does not love me does not keep my words. And the word that you hear is not mine, but the Father’s who sent me.
These things I have spoken to you while I am still with you. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Let us pray. Heavenly Father, we acknowledge already our privilege of being able to pray and to know that we are heard. We thank you as well for the privilege of being able to hear your word, knowing that this is divine communication. You speaking to us and us responding with prayer and us praying and hearing you speak as we read and as we hear. Help us to continue in our dialogue with you and of our dialogue of faith, knowing that this is a large part of how we build and maintain our relationship with you. We pray these things in Jesus’ name. Amen.
So Jesus’s declaration of whatever you ask in my name, this I will do that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask me anything in my name, I will do it. This is a very important promise from Jesus to us regarding our prayers. But it is also a frequently misunderstood and misapplied verse. Some folks use it to justify the false name it and claim it or health and wealth prosperity gospel, while others use it to even deny the power and effectiveness of prayer of faith in Jesus Christ or even belief in God.
The one side claims that by simply having enough faith and by just praying, by asking God in Jesus’s name, that God will give us whatever we want from him or that God will do whatever we are wanting him to do. They transform Jesus’s name into something akin to a magic word. This attitude helps popularize the lampooning of Christians by causing some to claim that we worship a grandfather-like skydaddy who caters to our every whim and desire, whatever those desires may be, like a kind of super Santa Claus.
This flippant and selfish attitude is actually dishonorable towards who we know the Lord truly is as God. It is a very false and wrong characterization of what Christians actually believe. I mean, that view denigrates the earnest faith of Christian believers who pray and ask God for things and still believe even when they receive no answer. This view encourages people to doubt the quality of their faith because they’re being told that their quantity of faith is severely lacking. They’re told that they need to believe more strongly and to trust Christ more fervently. They’re told that God said no because their faith was not enough.
Believers who are told this may begin to doubt the truth of our faith. They may begin to doubt the truth of Jesus Christ and God’s promises, and they may begin to doubt whether or not they even believe in Jesus and God at all. Meanwhile, the other side argues by using the supposed evidence of the innumerable unanswered prayers, failing to understand that no is a valid answer. They will say that Jesus said if you ask me anything in my name, I will do it. And so if he does not do what you ask him, then Jesus is a liar and his promises are false.
They claim that if we do not get what we want, then God did not answer our prayer. At least he didn’t answer it the way we want him to. They claim that if God does not answer our prayers with yes all the time and every time, then God, if he exists, must be an uncaring lot or he’s either unwilling or incapable of giving us what we want. They claim that if God’s a liar, if God is uncaring, if God is unwilling or unable to do what we want like he’s promised, then he is not a very good God. You know what? They’re right. Because if God is a liar and if God is powerless or unable to do what he promises, then yes, he’s not sovereign.
That he’s not righteous and just, that he’s not omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent, that he cannot be holy or perfect, nor can he even be good. Because if God cannot do it, then he can’t be God. But there’s a third way. There’s another way to understand and apply this verse, the right way, the way that Jesus meant it. The way that John records it here, and the qualifier and key to understanding it is Jesus’s expression of in my name.
But that does not mean that the name of Jesus as a word itself is the key. I mean simply saying Jesus when we pray is not a case of saying the magic word. We all know that’s still please. Nor does this expression suggest that we are telling God. But Jesus said we could. The divine persons of the Trinity don’t play the game of go ask your mother and what did your father say? Rather, this expression of in my name concerns the matter of representation. It concerns our understanding of the image of likeness and the image of God and how we apply it.
We know from various sources that in the ancient world, and especially the ancient Near East, a king’s messenger, their ambassador, was recognized as the king’s image. So however he was received and treated was considered to be their treatment of the king. Welcoming a king’s ambassador was a welcome of the king himself. Presenting gifts to the ambassador and his receipt of them was as the king’s receipt. Whereas if the ambassador was insulted, rejected, attacked, or even assassinated, it was the same as attacking the king himself.
Similarly, when the king’s ambassador spoke, his words were considered the king’s words because he spoke in the name of the king. Ambassadors were empowered to negotiate and sign treaties on the king’s behalf because whatever they agreed to, their king was bound to uphold, whether it was a surrender or a covenant of vassal. So as being the king’s image, the ambassador spoke for the king as the king would speak, and the ambassador said what the king would say if the king was there himself.
Such ambassadorial images needed to know the king they represented exceptionally well. They needed to know them intimately and personally. They needed to share much of the same knowledge and understanding. Most importantly, they had to know their king so well that they would understand what the king’s will would be so that they could respond correctly, ensuring that their king’s will would be done right as he truly would will.
Likewise, whenever we pray in Jesus’s name, being united to Christ as his image, we are expected to pray in accord with his will, a will that we may only rightly know or understand through knowing and understanding sacred scripture, which is God’s revelation of himself and it is his revealed will. When we pray in Jesus’s name, we are not simply praying to the Lord similarly to how Jesus prayed, but rather we are praying as Jesus and we’re praying along with.
So when we pray, right, we should only pray for what Jesus would pray for, for things that are in accord with his holy will, because that is what brings God, our heavenly Father, the most glory, honor, and praise. And so if our prayers are truly in accord with his holy and perfect will, then God’s answer will always be yes and amen. But if our prayers are not in perfect accord with his word, then God’s answer will be somewhere on a spectrum between yes and no. You know, oftentimes, it feels like it’s along the lines of not now or maybe not that way.
But even if our prayers are not in perfect accord, we hope and pray and expect that the Holy Spirit who’s dwelling within us is correcting, improving, and perfecting these prayers so that they still will at least be received and be made acceptable in God’s sight. But if our prayers are contrary to God’s will, if they are sinful, selfish, or wicked prayers, then God’s answer will be an emphatic no. Such prayers will never be accepted.
See, that is actually the core of what the third commandment prohibits, which was, ‘You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain.’ The commandment’s not about using swear words. It’s about abusing our privilege of prayer. As images of Christ, as images of God, we are prohibited from vainly invoking the Lord’s name. We are prohibited from purposefully praying against his revealed will as Balaam did, or at least he tried to.
This is why it’s blasphemous to call upon the Lord to witness an oath that you intend on breaking, whether you’re swearing an oath in court or taking marriage vows. And this is why it is especially blasphemous for a Christian to ask God to bless a relationship or an activity that he has plainly declared to be an abomination like homosexuality or abortion. This is why Christians are commanded to pray because prayer changes us and brings us into closer conformity with God.
It’s our prayers that do not change God. That’s why Christian prayer is so very different from the prayers of pagans. Because pagans, they try to bargain with or influence their God, hoping to gain whatever it is that they desire. But Christians, when we pray in Jesus’s name, when we are praying in accord with his will, purpose, and plan, then we have the confident expectation that he is going to answer us with yes and amen. Because Jesus has promised us, if you ask me anything in my name, I will do it.
So again, as I said back in the beginning, this verse is important and it’s even critical for our understanding of prayer. It’s all the key to understand the things that Jesus next tells his disciples. Jesus goes on to tell them, ‘If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another helper to be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you.’
Jesus told them that he was going to ask the Father to give them, to give us another helper to be with us forever. There’s a tiny and very important detail in this promise that is often missed or glossed over—the fact that this helper is another helper. Another implies that this helper is not the first or only helper. Another implies that this helper will be somehow defined through comparison with the earlier one. So before we can understand anything about this another helper, we first must know who the original helper is.
The Greek term translated here in the ESV is helper or comforter in the King James is paraclete, which is a compound term uniting para, which means alongside with the verb kaleo, meaning to call together. This means broadly to describe a person who is a kind of side speaker, an expression that we interpret commonly as helper, comforter, counselor, defender, intercessor, or encourager. Someone who is speaking to us or speaking for us. And each of those expressions, they also describe Jesus.
If Jesus is going to ask the Father to give us another helper, and if the Father’s already given and sent the Son, his Son Jesus to us, then logically, Jesus must be the original paraclete. And if the Father’s God and if the Son Jesus, our paraclete, is God, and they are, and if God is going to ask God to give us another paraclete, then it’s reasonable for us to expect that unless it’s clearly stated otherwise, the third person, the another helper, is also God.
Then Jesus gives us a name for this second paraclete. He says, ‘And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another helper to be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth whom the world cannot receive because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him for he dwells with you and will be in you.’ Jesus names him the Spirit of truth. Jesus called this second paraclete the Spirit of truth immediately after declaring himself the way, the truth, and the life, thereby sharing the same quality, title, and name with him.
And so we may understand that the Spirit of truth is also the Spirit of Christ that Paul talks about in Philippians, making this a claim about the Spirit’s divinity, his union to, and equality with Jesus Christ, God the Son, who we know is also united to and equal with God the Father. Jesus describes the Spirit as someone whom the world cannot receive because it neither sees him nor knows him; a description that Jesus has used in reference to himself repeatedly.
Then he explains that the disciples already know him, for he dwells with them and will be in them because even at that moment, the Holy Spirit was already dwelling with them in the person of Jesus, although he had not yet begun to dwell within them since the Holy Spirit had not descended upon them on Pentecost. And then Jesus comforts them by saying that I will not leave you as orphans. I will come to you, reminding them that although he would soon be going to his Father’s house to prepare a place for them, he would also return himself.
Again, Jesus distinguishes himself from the person of the Holy Spirit so that we may look beyond that moment of Pentecost with hope, looking forward to the Parousia, to Christ’s return at the end of all things, his return in glory. Because this other paraclete is not Jesus, but he is someone, a person as like unto Jesus as Jesus is like the Father. But their distinctiveness is not defined by their role, their function, or appearance, because that’s modalism. Instead, they are defined as individual persons who are united in purpose, will, and mind. Three persons bound together in the unity of their nature and in the relational bonds of a covenant community.
This is a divine mystery because each person is the same one God, but they’re also distinctly a separate person. So here and now, we begin to observe the Trinity being plainly described in scripture, although it’s not expressly defined or named, but it’s being described through the virtue of their respective relationships, describing these three persons who are in relationship as a community who are one God possessing one and the same divine substance or essence as a unique Trinitarian God.
Evangelist John is just describing what the church confesses in the Nicene Creed. We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty. Deuteronomy 6:4 says, ‘The Lord our God, the Lord is one.’ And God told Abram, ‘I am God Almighty. Walk before me and be blameless.’
We confess we believe in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father. John 3:16, for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son. We confess that we believe in one Holy Spirit who proceeds from the Father and the Son. John tells us, ‘And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another helper to be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth.’
So clearly, the Father is not the Son or the Holy Spirit. The Son is not God the Father and God the Holy Spirit. And the Spirit is not the Father or the Son. The Father he begets but is unbegotten. The Son is begotten. And the Holy Spirit proceeds from both the Father and the Son. And yet still, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are all together one God.
It’s a mystery. It is. We can’t explain really well how it works, but we can see it. We can believe it. It is a strong mystery of faith. But it’s so very after this, Jesus explains what Christians, what we should be longing for in this, what we are hoping for, telling them, ‘Yet a little while the world will see me no more but you will see me because I live because Jesus lives, you also will live.’
We long for his return, and we long to see him in the heavenly realm, and we hope for eternal life for a resurrection like his because Jesus. He also encourages us here with the promise of our union with him, promising us that we will know that we really and truly are united, saying, ‘In that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you.’
But when is that day? For the disciples, that day was the day that they saw, knew, and believed Jesus had risen from the grave. For us, that day is the day when we believe in and trust in Jesus. When we believe that he is alive and that Jesus has promised us eternal life within. When we are born again, regenerated by the Holy Spirit, and we gladly accept the free gift of his grace and mercy. That is when we know and believe that Christ is in us, and we are in Christ as Jesus is in the Father, and the Father is in him.
Next, Jesus says something that is challenging for many present-day English speakers and hearers to properly understand. It’s something that, if it’s misinterpreted, will lead someone into the semi-Pelagian and Arian heresies or even into a reaffirmation of works-based righteousness or a person’s justification, even if the only work that they might be assuming is a work of faith.
The reason why this next statement is so challenging is because most of us quickly forget the finer points of English grammar. If we even ever truly learn it, consider the coordinating conjunction. Anybody remember what those are? Well, I’ll give us a definition. A coordinating conjunction is a conjunction that is placed between words, phrases, clauses, or sentences of equal rank. Conjunctions like and, but, they’re often used to help us establish lists rather than causal sequences of X and Y, not X and then. This is the kind of conjunction that Jesus is about to use.
And this function of making a list like this is important for us to remember because forgetting it leads us to misread our translation as something that’s sequential and misinterpreted. So Jesus says, ‘Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me, and he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself.’
See, Jesus explains that whoever has and keeps Jesus’s commandments, God’s law, they demonstrate themselves as being someone who loves Jesus. Remember, faithful obedience is the sign of our love for Christ. Then whoever loves Jesus, whoever proves themselves to love Jesus will be loved by God the Father. But they’re not loved because of their obedience, but because they love him. And someone who truly loves Jesus will also be loved by Jesus.
As evidence for Jesus’s love for them, for us, Jesus will manifest himself to those who love him. What is meant by manifest? It’s a strange word for us to use today. The Greek term means it to be to make known or more specifically to reveal something. Jesus promised to reveal himself to them, to reveal himself as who he is, as God the Son, the Logos, who is theos.
Then Judas, not Iscariot, says to him, ‘Lord, how is it that you will manifest yourself to us and not to the world?’ Jesus answered, ‘If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. Whoever does not love me does not keep my word. And the word that you hear is not mine, but the Father who sent me.’
To answer him, Jesus repeats himself, saying again, ‘If someone loves Jesus, then they’ll keep his word and obey his commandments. And if someone loves Jesus, God the Father and Jesus will also love them.’ Then he expands what he means by manifest, telling them that if someone loves Jesus, then God the Father and God the Son, and reasonably also the other paraclete, God the Spirit of truth will come and make their home with them.
See, God would come to live with people because of their mutual covenantal bond of love. Then Jesus also shared the bad news, describing and defining those who do not love him, those people who do not agape Christ, saying if someone does not love him, then they will not keep his word. They will not keep his commandments, and they will not obey the law of God. So if someone does not love Jesus, then the Father will not love them. The Son will not love them, and Jesus will not manifest himself. He will not reveal himself to them, and their understanding as being God.
God will not come, and they, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, will not dwell with or within those who do not love them. What does this have to do with our life of prayer and our ability to ask God for things in Jesus’s name? Throughout all this, Jesus has been describing relationships that are characterized by love, by agape, by our love for God and God’s love for us. Loving relationships that first must be predicated on the loving relationship among the three persons of the Trinity.
The union between the persons of God and our union with Christ is what establishes and determines what we should be praying for and how we should pray for. Since God the Father loves God the Son and the Son loves the Father, since the Son is in union with the Father, equal in will, knowledge, and power, when the Son asks the Father to do something, the Father will do it because of his love for the Son and because the Son will only ask him to do something. It’s already within his will.
This means that God’s will, his purpose, and plan will always come first and take logical priority. God’s will, purpose, and plan, and sovereign decree is always the first originating cause of it. Just from the example of this evening meal, we can already see that since Jesus has loved the disciples first, where he says, ‘A new commandment I give to you that you love one another just as I have loved you, you also to love one another.’
Then, God’s love for his elect must logically precede our love for him. Likewise, Jesus, he reminded Nicodemus, truly, truly I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. You must be born again, because he expected the Pharisee to already understand this. He asked him, ‘Are you the teacher of Israel and yet you do not understand these things?’
So then, God loving us first, he must change our hearts so that we will love him in turn. This means that we loving God second, we get to abide in God and receive the greater gift of fellowship and communion with him. We can expect to enjoy the presence of his Spirit of truth dwelling with us and dwelling within us.
This means that, being united into Christ, we get to love God the Father and be loved by him in the same way that Jesus is loved by the Father. So if Jesus would only ever ask God the Father to do something that’s in accord with his will, then when we pray and we ask for anything in Jesus’s name, expecting his answer to be yes, then we must, can, and should only ask him for things that we know or believe are in line with his will.
That means that we should, can, and must only pray for things that align with scripture. This means that we should, must, and can only pray for things that will bring God glory, honor, and praise. This means that we should, can, and must only pray for things that Jesus would pray for, and pray for them how Jesus would pray for them.
Now, scripture helps. It gives us a lot of many good, right, and proper examples of prayer. The most famous example is the Lord’s Prayer found in Matthew chapter 6 and Luke 11. It is an excellent example of how to pray in accord with God’s will because through it we pray, ‘Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.’ The priests, they would pray a benedictory prayer over the people, a prayer of blessing, praying, ‘The Lord bless you and keep you.’
Deacon Stephen, he prayed, ‘Lord, do not hold this sin against them,’ as he was being martyred. He was forgiving and praying for the forgiveness of those who considered him an enemy, praying for those who most assuredly were persecuting him. Jonah prayed and asked the Lord for deliverance, praying, ‘I called out to the Lord out of my distress, and he answered me. Out of the belly of Sheol, I cried, and you heard my voice. Salvation belongs to the Lord.’
Those of us who’ve been keeping up with the McShane Daily Bible reading will remember Ezra’s corporate prayer where he confessed the nation’s guilt of disobeying God’s law by the intermarriage and mixing with foreigners and unbelievers. Similarly, also Nehemiah and Daniel prayed for the people.
Then we have the entirety of the book of Psalms, the historical songbook and prayer book of God’s chosen people, the church. There we find prayers for individuals to pray to confess their sin and beg the Lord for forgiveness. ‘I confess my iniquity; I am sorry for my sin. Make haste to help me, O Lord, my salvation.’ There we find prayers offering the Lord praise and thanksgiving. ‘Give thanks to the Lord for he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever.’
There we also find imprecatory psalms—psalms that are prayed against others, psalms that pray for the Lord to see justice done and to engage his wrath. ‘Why do you boast of evil, O mighty man? You love all words that devour, O deceitful tongue. But God will break you down forever. He will snatch and tear you from your tent; he will uproot you from the land of the living.’
Sadly, we as Christians, especially in the 21st century, often forget because we live in an era that we consider to be more civilized and more enlightened that those prayer psalms, we forget that those psalms are also God’s word, that they were inspired by the Holy Spirit. We forget that they are prayers that Jesus prayed against the enemies of God.
So when we pray for anything in Jesus’s name, we must be very careful to not be taking his name in vain, to not be praying against his divine will. We must also be very careful to mean whatever we pray because when we pray to the Lord, although we may not always necessarily say ‘in Jesus’s name’ or say ‘thy will be done,’ if we are praying rightly with the right attitude, and if we’re praying in the love of Christ, then we will always be asking God in Jesus’s name, and we may be certain that he will do what we ask because we’re praying in accord with his will.
He will do as we ask because he loves us and because we asked him out of our love for him. We may be certain and sure of this because Jesus promised it.