23 “In that day you will ask nothing of me. Truly, truly, I say to you, whatever you ask of the Father in my name, He will give it to you. 24 Until now you have asked nothing in my name. Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full. 25 I have said these things to you in figures of speech. The hour is coming when I will no longer speak to you in figures of speech but will tell you plainly about the Father. 26 In that day you will ask in my name, and I do not say to you that I will ask the Father on your behalf; 27 for the Father Himself loves you, because you have loved me and have believed that I came from God.”
During Jesus’ lengthy teaching known as His Farewell Discourse, He has spoken twice already about prayer to His disciples. In 14:13-14 He said, “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,” and in 15:16, “You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, He may give it to you.”
And now, in our text we’re looking at this morning, Jesus again refers to the gift of prayer, as He invites them to come to the Father through Him. In a matter of hours He would be crucified. On the third day He would rise from the dead, but in just over a month He would return to the Father, so the disciples needed to be reassured that through prayer, they had access to God Himself.
Prayer is one of the cornerstones of the Christian faith. Our faith is not based only on historical facts and doctrinal truths (as important as those things are), but also on the reality that through the mediation of Jesus, we have direct access to the God of creation through the gift of prayer.
The basis of our acceptance in this relationship that we are invited into with God, is the atoning sacrifice of His Son, and one of the primary means we have of maintaining that relationship, is prayer. This is something Jesus first taught in the very early days of His public ministry in Matthew 6, where we find what has become known as the Sermon on the Mount.
I wonder how many thousands or tens of thousands of times the average Christian will pray the Lord’s Prayer in their lifetime? We know it so well, but do we ever stop and think about just how radical this prayer must have been for those who first heard it? Just the first two words of this remarkable prayer broke all the moulds of how prayer was understood in Jesus’ time. “Our Father.” This is the eternal God who has no beginning and no end, who merely spoke all of creation into being, who holds all of eternity in His hands, and we are invited to call Him our Father.
And now, some three years later, as Jesus’ earthly ministry draws to a close, He again tells His disciples to “ask of the Father in my name.” (John 16:23)
The apostle Paul, speaking of Jesus in Ephesians 2:18, wrote, “For through Him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father.” In this short but profound statement, we see how prayer gives us access to the Triune God. The Trinity is clearly taught in this verse. It’s been said that Christian prayer is to the Father, through the Son, and in the Spirit. In other words, our prayers are offered to the Father, as we pray through the mediating ministry of Jesus (this is an important point which we’ll come back to later), and our prayers are spiritually empowered by the Holy Spirit. Paul explained in Romans 8:26, “The Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words.” I won’t ask for a show of hands, but have you ever felt inadequate or at a loss for words as you pray? Romans 8:26 provides the answer for us. God knows our needs, and He answers our prayers, often in ways that we cannot see or understand, but He does answer them.
Jesus came into this world and offered His own life as an atoning sacrifice, so that lost sinners could be forgiven, justified, and restored to God the Father. He brings us into a relationship with Himself so that we can know and love the Father. Jesus is our Mediator with the Father. He is the one who makes it possible for us to have a relationship with a perfectly holy God. His death and resurrection are the keys that provide a way for our restoration to God. Our relationship with the Father was destroyed by sin, so He sent Jesus, His only Son, to save us from the condemnation we deserve, while at the same time making it possible for us to live in a loving relationship once more, just as it was before sin entered the world.
Jesus came for the specific purpose of reconciling a holy God to sinners, and the cross of Calvary is what makes it possible, and He says something very interesting in verse 26. “I do not say to you that I will ask the Father on your behalf; for the Father Himself loves you.” What this means that it was not what Jesus did that makes God love us, but He loved us first. It was because of God’s love for us that God sent His Son. Another important point to make here is that we are not saved by the love of God. Although Jesus said in John 3:16 that God loves the world (and He does), that in itself does not save us. It is believing in the atoning death of Christ on the cross that saves. If the love of God was sufficient for our salvation, everyone would be saved, and the cross would not have been necessary.
But it was necessary, because it is the blood of Christ that saves, and those who deny Christ as the only Saviour are not saved.
Also, Jesus makes it clear that we don’t earn or deserve the love of God. He said to His disciples in verse 27, “The Father Himself loves you, because you have loved me and have believed that I came from God.” This doesn’t mean that we earn God’s love by loving Jesus, as the Bible repeatedly teaches the opposite. John wrote in 1 John 4: 10 and 19, “In this is love, not that we have loved God but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. We love because He first loved us.”
So what did Jesus mean by saying, “The Father Himself loves you, because you have loved me?” The answer is that we are assured of God’s love for us through our love for and faith in Jesus. Vernon McGee explains it like this in his commentary, as He paraphrases Jesus: “If you think that I have to ask the Father to be good to you and to be generous to you, you are wrong. The Father Himself loves you. I don’t have to ask Him to love you. He loves you already. The Father isn’t hard to get along with. He loves you and that is the reason He will answer your prayer that you pray in my name.”
Just what is prayer, though? I think we all know that it is much more than a list of things that we want God to do or provide.
Prayer consists of more than a list of requests to God. A helpful guide is the old acronym ACTS: adoration, confession, thanksgiving, and supplication.
When we approach God in prayer, we first praise Him, confess our sins, and thank Him for His many blessings, then ask Him to provide for our needs and the needs of others. Now of course, this does not mean that every prayer to God needs to be structured like this, because there is the danger of slipping into legalism, but this does help.
If you read Jesus’ teaching in John 16, He appears to be using the relationship His disciples had had with Him for the last three years as an example of how they were to talk to the Father in prayer. Throughout the Gospel accounts we see them asking Jesus all kinds of questions and making all kinds of requests, and after Jesus’ death and resurrection, they could speak directly to the Father in much the same way.
Prayer, in its simplest form, is talking to God. James Montgomery Boice wrote, “Prayer must be lifted out of some mysterious realm of religious rite or practice, where only special people can go, and instead be brought down to the common experience of normal men and women. It means that prayer is essentially a conversation in which we talk to God.”
The sad reality is that for the vast majority of Christians, the privilege of prayer is the one part of our relationship with God that we don’t use anywhere nearly as much as we could or should, and the irony is, is that it is in that best known prayer that Jesus taught us, that we have a wonderful model for prayer, which uses the four aspects of adoration, confession, thanksgiving and supplication.
In the opening statement of the Lord’s Prayer, we give glory to God. “Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name.” This is asking for God’s name to receive the glory it deserves. Next is a request for God’s work and will to be revealed and done in the world. “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” What is God’s will for us? 2 Peter 3:9 has the answer: that all would come to repentance. God’s will for the world is that through the witness of the Church, the Gospel message would be heard by the lost, so that they can be saved.
And then after praying for God’s glory and that the Gospel would be faithfully presented to the world, Jesus invites us to pray for our own needs. “Give us this day our daily bread.” Of course, this is not about our wants, but our needs. By all means, we should be praying for our need of money for food, shelter, and clothing, of friendship, of work, and of the Spirit’s help in understanding the Bible and leading Godly lives.
Interestingly enough, in the next part of the prayer, Jesus continues to teach that we should pray for our needs, but He specifically mentions forgiveness of our sins, which is our greatest need of all. “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.” Added to this is a plea that God would protect us from temptation and sin. “And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.”
Some translations such as the NKJV and NASB include the conclusion to the Lord’s Prayer that we are all familiar with: “For Thine is the Kingdom, the power and the glory, forever and ever, amen.” It is good to both begin and end a prayer by acknowledging the greatness and glory of God.
The Lord’s Prayer is a wonderful prayer, and it is very helpful when it comes to understanding just what we are called to take to God in prayer, but more importantly, Jesus stresses that it is only through His atoning death that we have direct access to the Father in the first place.
There is a true story from the American Civil War which will help us to understand how Jesus gives us access to the Father. A soldier was given the news that both his father and brother were killed in the same battle, so he was desperate to get home. He went to the White House and asked to see President Lincoln. Of course, he was told in no uncertain terms that such a request was impossible and that he should report back to his unit before they realised he was missing. As he walked away in tears, a little boy noticed him, and asked what was wrong. The soldier told him, after which the boy took his hand and led him back into the White House grounds, past the security guards, into the building, and past the president’s staff. No one stopped him, and he walked into the oval office without even knocking. Lincoln looked up from his desk and said, “yes my boy, what can I do for you?” “Daddy, this soldier needs to speak to you,” came the reply.
Will we ever understand the privilege we have of full and unlimited access to God? Paul writes in Romans 8:15, “You have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’”
Yet, this is precisely what Jesus has done for us, and continues to do for us today as our mediator and intercessor.
Jesus continues in John 16 to give two promises to His disciples with regard to prayer. The first promise deals with their lack of understanding up to that point.
As we’ve seen throughout John’s Gospel, and during this night in the Upper Room in particular, they struggled to completely understand what Jesus was teaching them. They knew the cross was coming, and even though Jesus had told them many times what was about to happen, they were still confused. It would take the indwelling of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost for them to finally join all the dots and make sense of the teachings of Jesus, many of which were just beyond their ability to fully grasp. This is what Jesus meant when He said to them in verse 23, “In that day you will ask nothing of me.” The day He was referring to here was Pentecost.
After the Spirit came, they would no longer ask questions out of their ignorance because they would understand not only the need of the cross, but how through it, they would be saved. It must be said though, that this doesn’t mean that they or we will no longer have any further questions, as we all do, but all that we need to be assured of our salvation, will become crystal clear.
The true nature of God and His attributes remain a mystery to us. There are many things we simply cannot know or understand, but as the Holy Spirit guides us into all truth, God makes it possible for us to understand just what happened on the cross. The atoning death, resurrection, and ascension into heaven of Jesus Christ, and how all of these things seal our salvation and redemption, we can understand. God grants us the spiritual maturity we need in order to hold onto the promises of eternity, and to know that we are saved.
Jesus said in verse 25, “I have said these things to you in figures of speech. The hour is coming when I will no longer speak to you in figures of speech but will tell you plainly about the Father.” The majority of His teachings were metaphorical and in parables. He had just used the analogy of a mother’s birth pains to describe the change from suffering into joy, which we looked at last Sunday, but now He tells them that He would no longer use this means of teaching them.
We see this in the writings of the apostles in the remainder of the New Testament. Some of the things Paul, Peter and the rest teach may be difficult to accept, but they are not difficult to understand.
And when we do struggle to grasp the teachings of Scripture, we need to realise that the problem is not with the Bible, but with us. Our perception of God’s truth will always be tainted by our sinful nature, so we should be praying that God would give us the spiritual maturity we need to understand His Word. He will answer that prayer.
The second promise Jesus makes is in verse 24. “Until now you have asked nothing in my name. Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full.” This is not just about being joyful because God answers our prayers, but rather that through prayer itself we will receive joy. We all know that life can be extremely hard at times, but as we commune with God the Father in prayer, He draws near to us, and gives us the joy of knowing His peace and comfort. He may not choose to remove the cause of our pain, but He comforts us in our pain, as David writes in Psalm 23. “Your rod and your staff, they comfort me.”
And then we come to a point we touched on earlier - praying in Jesus’ name. Three times in the passage we’re looking at today Jesus stresses the importance of prayers to the Father in His name, and in the two examples we looked at in chapters 14 and 15, He says the same thing.
The focus of Jesus’ teaching at the end of the Farewell Discourse is that the disciples would soon have direct access to the Father, but just as importantly, we should understand the means of that access: “In my name.”
There are at least three important ways for us to understand prayer “in Christ’s name.”
Firstly, it means that we pray to the Father as people who believe in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. By believing in Jesus as Lord, we affirm His deity, and His true identity as the second person of the Holy Trinity. Jesus is God.
This is why the early Christians, some at the cost of their own lives, refused to praise the Roman emperors with the standard saying, “Caesar is Lord.” Jesus is Lord, and there is no other. The name Christ is Jesus’ title, meaning Messiah, or Anointed One, and it is only He who has the power to save.
To say that we pray to the Father in Christ’s name is the same as saying that only true Christians have access to the Father in prayer. James Boice writes, “It is a family privilege. God does not promise to hear the prayer of anyone who comes to Him in any way but through faith in the person and work of His unique and beloved Son.”
Secondly, to pray in Christ’s name is to approach God, relying on Christ’s merit and atoning blood and not on any merit of our own. We have no right to the favour and blessing of God, but we are invited to appeal to God in the name of Jesus, who has every right to all the treasures of heaven. So when we pray “in the name of Jesus,” it’s not a ritualistic phrase which means the prayer is about to end. Far from it. It means that we come to God the Father on the basis of the saving work on the cross of God the Son.
Back in the days when we still used cheques, if I’d given you one of my cheques for a million rand with my signature on it, all you’d have would be a piece of paper with some writing on it, and nothing else. But a personal cheque for a million rand signed by a billionaire is a completely different matter.
It is the name of Jesus which validates prayer, because any prayer to God not prayed in the name of Christ, is worthless.
You may have noticed a trend in recent years where Christians are still asked to pray in public, but in order to not upset people, the name of Jesus Christ is deliberately left out. The idea is that these all-inclusive “prayers” recognise the different worldly perspectives on just who or what God is. Those are not prayers. They are a collection of words which mean nothing.
The commentator Gordon Keddie wrote of this shameful practice, “Not to pray in Jesus’ name - explicitly and unambiguously - is to deny the necessity of His atoning death and faith in Him as the sole ground of approach to God. It is to suggest by silence that there are other ways to God and that God will accept that prayer of those who do not know Christ as their Saviour. Christless prayer is godless prayer, however pious it may sound. No one can come to the Father except through the Son.”
Again, it is the name of Jesus, and no other, that validates prayer.
And thirdly, when we pray in His name, we are praying that our requests would be in line with His will for us. As we grow in our faith, our prayers begin to reflect Jesus’ character, and in so doing, are in His name. The best way to do this is to be grounded in Scripture. We should allow the Bible to shape our prayer lives.
Finally, the most important point of Jesus’ teaching on prayer in His Farewell Discourse is the absolute necessity for us to believe in Jesus Christ and trust Him for our salvation.
The first and greatest of all prayer requests, is the one that we can know for certain will be answered by God. It is the prayer for God to forgive us our sins and accept us as His children in the name of Jesus Christ. Jesus came to reconcile sinners through His atoning blood, granting us forgiveness, justification, and adoption into God’s family. But only those who confess their sin and embrace Jesus in true faith will receive these blessings. Have you asked God for salvation through faith in His Son? Have you confessed your sin, and turned to Jesus Christ in repentance and faith?
Jesus said in verse 27, “The Father Himself loves you, because you have loved me and have believed that I came from God.” The implication here is that if you refuse Jesus as Lord and Saviour, rejecting His claim to be God’s unique Son, then you remain under God’s wrath and condemnation.
The wonderful news of the Gospel is that you can be cleansed, justified, and renewed with peace and joy. You can stand in the glorious presence of God as one of His own, but only if you come to Him in Jesus’ name.