4.24 - The Eternal Life, And The Sin Unto Death
Chapter 24 The Eternal Life, And The Sin Unto Death (1 John 5:13-17)
Postscript to the Letter—Purpose of Gospel and Epistle—Faith and Assurance of Faith—The Certainty of Life Eternal—Practical Use of Christian Assurance—“Asking according to His Will”—The Possibilities of Intercessory Prayer—A Limit to Prayer—What is the “Sin unto Death”?—Mortal and Venial Sins—The Case of Jeremiah and his People —The Mystery of Inhibited Prayer.
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These things I have written unto you, that you may know that you
have eternal life,
Unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God.
And this is the confidence which we have toward Him,
That if we ask anything according to His will, He heareth us;
And if we know that He heareth us in whatever we ask,
We know that we have the requests which we have asked
from Him.
If anyone see his brother sinning a sin not unto death,
He shall ask, and He will give him life, in the case of those who sin
not unto death:
There is sin unto death; not for that sin do I say that he should ask.
All unrighteousness is sin;
And there is sin not unto death.
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ST JOHN is now closing the Epistle. In 1 John 5:13 he appears to be dictating his last words. He glances over the course of the letter, and states its purpose in the past tense at the end, as he stated it in the present tense at the beginning (1 John 1:4): then it was, “These things we write to you, that our joy may be made full,” —to satisfy our own hearts; now, “These things I have written to you, that you may know that you have eternal life,”—to fortify your faith. The retrospective “I have written “ has thrice occurred before—in 1 John 2:13-14, 1 John 2:21, 1 John 2:26, where the Apostle was reflecting on the preceding context (see pp. 178-180); now his survey covers the whole writing. He set out to deliver once more the message of “the eternal life that was manifested” in Jesus Christ. He has unfolded the nature of that life, as it brings those receiving it into fellowship with God, as it, moulds the spirit and character of men, and meets the reaction against it of the world’s sin within the heart and within the Church. In all this St John knows that he is speaking to the experience of his children, that they recognize in what they read the things they have heard from the beginning; he is telling no new story, inculcating no new principles, but making clearer to them what they already hold, and arming them to repel the errors that perplex their understanding and tend to pervert their conscience and cloud the serenity of their faith. The letter has been written therefore, that those “who believe on the name of the Son of God may know that eternal life” is theirs, —that their faith by its full apprehension of the truth concerning Christ may bring them a perfect assurance, a settled consciousness of their glorious possession in Him. The object of the First Epistle concurs with that of the Gospel of John, expressed at the end of the 20th chapter, where it concluded in the original draft: “These things are written, that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that, believing, you may have life in His name.”115 The aim of the Gospel is more comprehensive, for this was designed both to convince unbelievers and to confirm and enrich the faith of believers. The Epistle is directed strictly to the latter purpose (compare pp. 72-73).
1. St John recognizes the difference, which every pastor knows who is exercised in the care of Christian souls, between faith and the assurance of faith. He has had it in mind all along. We met with the distinction in 1 John 3:19-24; that paragraph turned on the same practical point. “Herein,” the Apostle wrote, “we shall know that we are of the truth, and shall assure our hearts before God,”—viz. in the consciousness of sincere love to our brethren; again, “Herein we know that God abideth in us,—from the Spirit which He gave us.” On such grounds of heart assurance (see Chapter 18) he encouraged his little children to build. The whole letter is written to deepen the sense of security in the hearts of faithful Christian men, to promote the inward peace and firm confidence toward God which are essential to vigorous growth and sustained activity in the spiritual life. Such assurance belongs of right to all those “who believe on the name of the Son of God.” But they do not all possess it. Writing to the intent his readers “may know116 that they have eternal life,” he supposed that some of them, though they have eternal life in virtue of their faith, do not certainly know this: they are not sure of their salvation; they fail to realize their possessions in Christ, and entertain some needless misgiving or unworthy fear; they have a true faith, but not “the full assurance of faith.” Theirs is a restless, disquieted faith, shadowed with doubt and disturbed by alarms, sensitive to the atmosphere of the unbelieving world around them. The case of doubting Thomas amongst the Apostles, in whom St John shows a peculiar interest in his Gospel, illustrates the turn of mind. The condition the Apostle indicates is one familiar now as then; there is no better tonic for it than St John administers in the Epistle. Sanguine and buoyant natures mistake this hesitant disposition; they are always sure of themselves (whether right or wrong), and know exactly what they believe and intend. But St John has felt the flagging pulse of believers whose faith once beat high and strong; he has marked the downcast face and troubled look of men daunted by persecution or browbeaten by loud argument; he knows that some of his readers, in spite of themselves, are bewildered in the mazes of theosophy and the flashing sword-play of dialectic. We should be mistaken to suppose that the souls of the martyrs never quaked, that the confessors of Jesus in the first ages were always clear in their convictions and courageous in their testimony, and their reasonings at all times as simple and sure as those that in some classic instance have been transmitted to us. “Out of weakness they were made strong,” and they “waxed valiant in the fight” on which they entered oftentimes with fearful hearts. Those who prove the bravest might confess to moods of despondency and moments when panic seized them; their worst battle had been with their own cowardice. The firmest believers may have been on occasion forgetful of things they well knew, and tempted to abandon positions of which, in their right minds, they were perfectly assured. Such dangers were incessant amidst the turmoil and stress of the Church’s warfare in the Apostolic times. How needful that it should hear, sounding on from one generation to another, the mighty cry of Jesus out of the midst of the struggle, “Be of good cheer; I have overcome the world!”
Through the force of untoward circumstances, and for want of strong teaching like St John’s, multitudes of Christian souls “go mourning all their days”; they dare not taste the freedom and joy of God’s salvation, though they show by fruits of repentance, by a self-denial and strictness of conscience such as might put to shame many happier Christians, that Christ is formed in them. For these tender, self-distrustful spirits the Lord has a more abundant life and delight in store: “Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted.” But if we have eternal life, it is certainly well that we should know it; that is the normal and fitting experience of those who are in Christ. The zest and energy of the Christian life, and its power to influence others, depend on the certainty with which personal salvation is realized, on the confidence with which His servants follow the heavenly Master, as men walking in the sunshine of God’s favour and having the joy of their Lord fulfilled in them. Such “light is sown for the righteous, and gladness for the upright in heart.” The purpose of St John’s Epistle—a chief purpose of all teaching addressed to Christian believers—is the perfecting in them of the assurance of life eternal.
Here then the Epistle fairly ends, for the writer’s thought has come round in full circle to its starting-point; that the Church should be in conscious and satisfied possession through its faith of the eternal life revealed in Jesus Christ, has been the aim of the Apostle’s labours and prayers through a protracted ministry. The two remaining paragraphs are a supplement, like John 21:1-25 added to John’s Gospel, and come in by way of afterthought. 1 John 5:14-17 we entitled, in the analysis made of the Epistle in Chapter 6, the postscript. Though an addendum to the letter and not a continuation of its main line of thought, these sentences are no superfluity; they arise out of the conclusion of the Epistle in 1 John 5:13. The “confidence toward God” which they describe is a consequence and a needful expression of the faith “on the name of the Son of God” of which the Apostle has just spoken, the faith that makes a Christian man. The confidence which inspires prevailing prayer (1 John 5:14-16), springs from the assurance of faith that St John has laboured all along to infuse into his readers; it presupposes the consciousness of eternal life in the soul (1 John 5:13). He who prays so as to win “life” for an erring brother, must have life in himself; he must possess such a knowledge of God and certainty of His good-will to men in Christ as will warrant the boldest intercession on behalf of sinners (1 John 5:16); this knowledge of the Father is eternal life (see John 17:3). The postscript is closely attached to the letter, and needs no interval of time to account for its addition.
2. 1 John 5:14-15 convey the second lesson of the paragraph, viz., that Christian assurance takes effect in a life of prevailing prayer: “the confidence” “of the steadfast and instructed Christian is “that, if we be asking anything according to His will, God heareth us; and if we know that He heareth us, we know that we have the requests we have asked of Him” (1 John 5:14).
There is something deeply characteristic in the transition from 1 John 5:13 to the sequel, and of the greatest practical importance. It is so natural and easy to rest in the quiet assurance of salvation, to luxuriate in the comfort of a settled faith and a clear sense of the Divine grace in Christ. But the Apostle will not allow this. The Christian believer’s confidence must be put to use and yoked to service; the strength of his faith must be applied to the tasks of intercession. If indeed he be a restored son of God, standing in the light of His countenance, the duty of supplication for those outside the gate falls at once upon him; he must take part with the Advocate, “Jesus Christ the righteous,” who has turned all His knowledge and authority and the Father’s favour toward Him to account in pleading for sinners (1 John 2:2; see pp. 117-118). In 1 John 3:17 the Apostle rebuked the heartlessness of Christians who see the physical need of their brethren and have means at command, but make no sacrifice for its relief. They deserve no less reproach, who profess the enjoyment of God’s favour and claim access to the throne of grace, and yet fail to exert themselves in prayer for the spiritual needs of others. Men are struggling and suffering all around them; they are battling with fierce temptation, enduring agonies of doubt; they are caught in the storms of passion, or lost in the mists of error: you see the light and know the will of God, you have access to the Father by the Spirit of His love and truth, then surely you will speak to Him on their behalf and your whole strength of faith will be put forth in sympathetic intercession; if you have indeed the mind of Christ and are “joined to the Lord in one Spirit,” this work of the Mediator has become your occupation. Knowledge of God is power with God; and power with God is prevalency in prayer. Christian assurance, after all, is not an end in itself; it is just so much strength and liberty granted for believing prayer. The knowledge of eternal life translates itself into that confidence towards God which asks and receives for the and for a sin-stricken world, the great gifts of redeeming grace.
St John is virtually repeating here the assurances once given by Jesus to His Church. He remembers the great promise, the charter of Christian prayer, “Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.” He recalls more distinctly the specific pledges given by the Lord to His disciples at parting from them: “Whatsoever you ask in my name, that will I do”; and again, “If you abide in me and my words abide in you, you shall ask whatsoever you will, and it shall be done for you” (John 14:13-14; John 15:7). Abiding fellowship with Jesus Christ, as of “the branches” with “the Vine,” was to bring His people into such a knowledge of God and accordance with His will, into such access to the springs of power in the being of the Godhead, that strength for Christ’s service would never fail them; all they ask will be given, since they will ask nothing but what their Master’s work requires, nothing but what is needed for His purposes and to carry out the commission He has laid upon them. Now such requests concern the objects dearest to God the Father, the end to which His great and precious promises look forward,—the establishment of the kingdom of His Son. Praying thus, those who know God “know that they are asking according to His will”; their prayers move in the line of God’s own working and accord entirely with “the will of Him that sent” His Son upon the errand of redemption,117 with the sovereign counsel of Grace that is behind the mission of Jesus Christ. “We know,” if we know anything of God through Christ, that He is an interested listener to every petition offered in the interest of men’s salvation through Christ, that such petitions are in tune with the Father’s will and touch the matters He has most at heart. To know all this, in making prayer to God, is surely to “know that we have the petitions we have asked from Him.” For in so entreating, we are suing for the things which God designs to give, and is on the way to give. Prevailing prayers meet the purposes of God upon their march. They are inspired by the Holy Spirit, the Divine prompter of intercession118 who “searches all things, even the depths of God (1 Corinthians 2:10). The supplications of men who “pray in the Holy Ghost” are virtual prophecies; those who utter them know that they are heard, as Jesus habitually did;119 and the tone of their utterance not unfrequently brings this certainty to other minds. Petitioners enabled thus to ask, can leave their desires with God, satisfied “that they have the petitions they have asked of Him”—the claim of their faith is admitted, and the boon is already marked as theirs. To “ask according to” the Father’s “will” signifies the submission of the suitor’s wish and judgement to the Giver’s,—such submission as the Lord Jesus made when He said, in the anguish of Gethsemane, “Not my will, but thine be done.” This is the beginning and the end of all prayer offered in filial confidence; boldness toward God untempered by humility, and without the sense of the ignorance and unworthiness cleaving to the petitions of sinful men addressed to the All-wise and All-holy, is a shocking presumption, sometimes a blasphemous dictation. This is the fourth time that the Apostle has spoken in his letter of “confidence” under the word παρρησία,—the “free speech” of him who expresses his mind or presents himself to another without misgiving and embarrassment.120 In 1 John 2:28 and 1 John 4:17 he was thinking of the expectancy with which faithful men await the coming of Christ in judgement; in 1 John 3:21, as in this place, of the expectancy with which they themselves come to God in intercession. In the last-named passage (1 John 3:21-22) he sets forth the subjective warrant of confidence in prayer, found in the consciousness of obedience to God’s “commands”—the loyal man is sure of a hearing from the King; here its objective ground is seen, viz. the knowledge of the Divine will—the enlightened man is sure of God’s assent to what he asks. His request falls in with the plans and ways of the Father, as these were revealed in Christ. It is the same “confidence” of the sincere believer in Christ and the acknowledged child of God, which meets these different emergencies—which supports the soul in coming now to the throne of grace, and will support it hereafter in coming to the throne of judgement (1 John 2:28). Christian assurance, with the peace and strength of heart it brings, is built on faith in the Son of God as Saviour from sin; it rests on the knowledge of God the Father, and is a filial trust. The confidence of hope in the Redeemer’s coming has an earnest and test in the confidence of accepted prayer before the Father’s footstool. Our daily prayers breathe the essence of our religion; their spirit is the spirit that shapes our character and determines the trend of our lives. As we pray now, so we are likely to appear at last in the day of the manifestation of the sons of God.
3. There is one special matter of prayer that weighs on the Apostle’s mind; in it probably the motive of the postscript lies. The case of erring brethren calls for the intervention of Christian prayer: “If anyone should see his brother sinning a sin not unto death, he shall ask ...” (1 John 5:16). “If anyone sin,” St John said at the beginning, “we have an Advocate with the Father” (1 John 2:1; see Chapter 9); the powers and merit of the great Advocate are to be enlisted on his behalf. But Christ is not the only Advocate. He shares this office with His redeemed brethren; He has “loosed us from our sins, and made us priests to God, even His Father” (Revelation 1:6). We are reminded of St Paul’s direction in Galatians 6:1: “If a man be overtaken in any trespass, you that are spiritual restore such an one.” The restoration is in many cases effected rather by the pleading of intercession with God than by the pleading of expostulation with the offender. But the prayer must be definite and personal, prompted by what one has seen and actually feels about the given case, or it is not likely to carry weight. This is to be the Christian man’s resort, when he is disturbed by fault and wrong-doing that meet his eyes in the Church. “If any man see his brother sin” —what should he do? Is he to go round whispering about it and tale-bearing? or to rush with the story into print, and gird at the Churches in the newspapers or on the platform? These are not our instructions; but two plain directions are given us: first, by the Master, “Go, and tell him his fault between thee and him alone” (Matthew 18:15); then, by the beloved disciple, “Lay the trouble before God in prayer.” This is the proper way to take up the case. By so acting the man concerned will not only win blessing for the offender, but he will come to see the offence in a different light, and will be saved from the heat and aggravation engendered by other modes of proceeding. Intercessory prayer is the antidote for scandal in the Church. St James, like St John, has a postscript to his Epistle on this painful topic; his observation supplements our Apostle’s advice: “He that turneth a sinner from the error of his way, shall save a soul from death, and shall hide a multitude of sins”
(James 5:20).
“He shall ask, and He (or he) will give him life, for those who sin not unto death.” Grammatically, it is easier to understand the same subject with the two verbs “ask” and “give”: so read, the sentence means that the praying man, by successful intercession, virtually “gives life” to the restored backslider (who, on that construction, is the “him” of the second clause). There is, to be sure, a truth expressed by this rendering, which has been adopted in the margin of the Revised Version and by many interpreters. But the other construction is surely that which St John intended: God is the great Life-giver,—He who “gave us eternal life in His Son.”121 “Ask, and it shall be given you,” is the promise of Jesus made in the Father’s name, which this text recalls to every one’s mind, and in the last verse the writer described the offerer of prayer as one who “knows that he has the petitions he has asked of Him.” God “gives” at the supplication of the distressed and interceding brother—that is to say, “gives to him” (to his request: on this view, the “him” of the second clause is the accepted intercessor)—“life for those who sin.” Spiritual death is averted, miracles of resurrection are wrought, through the virtue of intercessory prayer. What our Lord accomplished, upon the dead body of His friend Lazarus, when “He lifted up His eyes to heaven, and said, Father, I thank thee that thou heardest me” (John 11:41), is realized again and again in answer to the entreaty of Christian men, who are God’s priests, for souls dead in trespasses and sins. “When Jesus saw their faith,” the faith of those who brought to Him, with desperate earnestness of effort, the paralytic of the story of Mark 2:3-12, “He saith to the sick of the palsy, Child, thy sins are forgiven thee.” In a thousand ways faith works vicariously for blessing; none of us can tell how much of the life that is his in Christ has come through the channel of his own faith, and how much he owes to the intercession of others. There is a profound solidarity in the co-operation of believing prayer; this communion is of the inmost life and mystery of the Body of Christ.
4. A limitation is, however, set by the Apostle to the possibilities of intercessory prayer: “There is sin unto death; I do not say that he should pray for that.” St John cannot encourage his readers to “ask life” in such case. This awful exception has been discussed, with extreme solicitude and care, from the earliest times, but with little approach to unanimity. Amongst the Fathers who have treated of the passage, some found the fatal sin in wickedness of a gross and extreme nature, such as blasphemy, murder, adultery—in one or more of those that came to be called in later times “the seven deadly sins”; others identified it with hatred and bitter antipathy to the Church, with sin directed against Christ in His “body.” Some, again, defined it as obstinate, impenitent sin, by reading the phrase “sin unto death” as meaning sin persisted in till death; while others saw in it not so much a moral offence, as unbelief in its darkest form of wilful and total rejection of Christ, amounting to the “blasphemy against the Holy Spirit,” which he who commits “hath never forgiveness,” being “guilty of an eternal sin” (Mark 3:29). The deadly offence against which the writer to the Hebrews gave warning, in Hebrews 6:4-6—where he speaks of apostates who “crucify for themselves the Son of God afresh and put Him to open shame”—appears to be kindred to this last. It is possible that in some instances the heretical denial of the Lord which St John encountered, went to the like degree of malignity. Cold-heartedness toward their brethren, and disbelief in the Divine-human person of Jesus Christ, are the two associated forms of evil (see pp. 63-64) stigmatized by St John in the Anti-christs who infested the Churches of his province. These men he has condemned with unsparing severity:122 there were those amongst them whom he regarded as withered branches, quite severed from “the true Vine.”
If a definite reply must be given to the question, What is the “sin unto death” of this passage? the answer should be sought in the above direction. Jesus warned His impugners, “For judgement I came into this world,” and again, “If you believe not that I am (of God), you will die in your sins “ (John 8:24; John 9:39); it is probably St John’s paraphrase of such sayings of our Lord that we find in John 3:18-19 of his Gospel: “He that believeth not hath been judged already, because he bath not believed in the name of the Only-begotten Son of God. And this is the judgement, that the light bath come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the light; for their works were evil.” Upon certain of his opponents and the deniers of Christian truth, men of bitter spirit and evil life, the holy Apostle was compelled to pronounce in the way of unqualified and hopeless condemnation. The whole New Testament implies that full and deliberate unbelief in Jesus Christ, due to moral antipathy, is fatal to the soul. Such unbelief Christ Himself has called “sin,”—where the sin of our nature concentrates itself into this antagonism and comes to a head in its resistance of Him: “The Holy Spirit,” He promised, shall “convict the world of sin, because they believe not on me “ (John 16:8-9).
Intrinsically, and as regards its nature and tendency, all sin is “unto death;” it looks and makes that way, being a disease of the soul and a deviation from the true end of man’s life; any and every sin, so far as it goes and so long as it lasts, severs the committer from fellowship with God in whom our life is hid. According to the saying of James 1:15, Sin is the daughter of Lust and the mother of Death. “Sin and death” are bound in one as cause and effect, as bud and fruit, by universal and immutable law.123 The Apostle is not setting up the perilous distinction between “mortal” and “venial sins,”124 when he writes of a “sin unto death” and a “sin not unto death.” The “sin not unto death” is that for which, in answer to the supplication of a Christian brother, God “will give life”; and the “sin unto death” is that for which He will not do so; for which, therefore, St John cannot bid anyone to pray. The difference is defined by the result; the malady proves remediable in the one case, fatal in the other. So far as the indications of the passage go, there is no material for diagnosis other than in the issue; the grounds of discrimination lie in the deep of God’s judgements. When the Apostle says, “All unrighteousness is sin” (1 John 5:17), he guards his readers against narrowing the idea of “sin” to what may be called religious offences, to transgressions overtly committed against God. The strain of his letter, which bears so sternly against dishonour done to Christ and condemns the ejection of His mission as defiance to the Almighty Father who sent Him (1 John 5:9-10), might appear to identify sin with mere unbelief and the wrong done thereby to God, with transgressions only of the first of the two great Commandments of Jesus. Hence it is observed by the way, and to guard against misconception, that “every unrighteousness”—every social injustice and unkindness, every failure to deal with another as one would wish to be dealt with, every moral offence, “is sin”; one cannot injure a fellow man or withhold a social due without that resistance to the will of God and transgression of the rule of man’s being which constitutes “sin.”125 In 1 John 3:4 “sin” was branded as “lawlessness”; now, further, “all unrighteousness” is brought under the conception of “sin.” The two propositions are complementary; and each of them is reversible. They affirm that unity of the spiritual and ethical, of godliness and manliness, which is a distinctive mark of the teaching of Scripture. The rights of man, with the constitution of society and the laws of nature on which they are based, spring from the rights of God, from the fundamental relations in which He has placed mankind to Himself. Duty to our neighbour is part of our duty to God; duty to God is fulfilled in service to humanity. Religion is one with sound morals (1 John 3:4); morals are one with true religion (1 John 5:17). God is “all things, and in all”; conscience is His throne, and in the domain of right and wrong He is law-giver, administrator, and judge. But we come back to the “sin unto death.” The expression comes from the Old Testament. In Numbers 18:22 it seems to denote a capital offence,—in that instance, an act of sacrilege. Similar transgressions are described as being committed “with a high hand,”—wanton and outrageous acts of wickedness, for which the legal sacrifices and purifications were unvailing; such was the sin of Eli’s sons, referred to in 1 Samuel 2:25; 1 Samuel 3:14, and such the guilt of Judah in Jeremiah’s time, on account of which Jehovah said to His prophet, “Pray not thou for this people, neither lift up cry nor prayer for them, neither make intercession unto me; for I will not hear thee” (Jeremiah 7:16; Jeremiah 14:10-12). The time came when Jesus turned His back on the Jewish rulers and temple, with the words, “Behold, your house is left unto you desolate!” when He wept over Jerusalem, “O that thou hadst known in this thy day the things that belong unto thy peace; but now they are hid from thine eyes!” Judaism had sinned unto death. The case of Jeremiah and apostate Judah supplies a distinct analogy to the situation before us; not improbably it was in the Apostle’s mind in attaching the qualification that he does to the promise made in verse 16, that God “ will give life “ at the loving intercession of brother for brother. If so, there is no definite category, no specific description of transgression intended by the phrase “sin unto death”; but the general possibility of such sin being committed is affirmed. St John does not say, “There is a sin (ἁμαρτίατις) unto death”—a kind of sin, or degree of sin, with this inevitable issue, a sort of sin that lies beyond redemption, from which even the blood of Christ cannot cleanse the soul—did he not write, “The blood of Jesus, God’s Son, cleanseth us from all sin”? (1 John 1:7). But he says, There is sin (ἔστινἁμαρτία) unto death”—such a thing exists; sin has, in point of fact, this fatal outcome in certain cases. There may come, and sometimes does come, in the present life a crisis at which the soul’s doom is practically fixed and after which it proves “impossible to renew” the sinner “again unto repentance” (Hebrews 6:6). When that point is reached, when the sin has been committed which closes the heart against the visitings of compunction and plunges the guilty man beyond saving help, or what shape the decisive sin may take, God alone can judge. We might have thought, for example, David’s notorious sin more mortal than Saul’s disobedience. The import of any particular act of wrong-doing depends on the whole constitution and history of the man who commits it. Where any degree of self-reproach and of wish for a better state is found in a sinner, there is evidence that he is not forsaken by the Spirit of God. The man who dreads that he has committed the unpardonable sin, by his very distress shows himself to be within the reach of mercy.
St John does not forbid his readers to pray for any sinner; in that case, they would have to know exactly what the unpardonable sin is, and where to draw the line between this and other sins. He says, “I do not tell you to pray for such a case”—one cannot urge prayer for what one deems to be impossible and against the will of God. But the bar is subjective, and personal to the given case; it is not an obstacle that lies in any general principle, or is capable of definition. God may reveal to saints in close fellowship with Him that this or that prayer is out of harmony with His will. He may arrest the petitioner, as He did Jeremiah, with the veto, “Pray not for this people for their good”; there may have been some amongst the apostates from St John’s Churches concerning whom the holy Apostle had the like impression. One has heard of men living near to God, who have felt themselves for some objects and some persons sorely hindered, or even silenced, when they strove to pray, while in speaking for others they were allowed the largest liberty; and these permissions or prohibitions they could not account for, nor reduce to any rule. If one should for any reason, rightly or wrongly, believe that the sin in question is unto death, one cannot pray for it, any more than for the physical life of a man with a bullet through his brain. And if the great Hearer and Prompter of prayer should convey to the mind of the intercessor who stands in His counsel, the conviction that such is the case, his faith in that particular is paralysed. “If we ask anything according to His will, He heareth us”; it is possible, in some instances rare and infinitely sad, that God may not hear the petition for an erring brother’s restoration. The Apostle has made here the exception to the gracious rule “Ask, and it shall be given you,” which truth requires,—an exception which probably his own deep experience of life of prayer had compelled him to admit. But he gives us no criterion of the sin that is beyond forgiveness; he leaves it wrapped in the mysteries which surround the throne of eternal judgement.