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1 John 3:21–22
“Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence before God; and whatever we ask we receive from him, because we keep his commandments and do what pleases him.”
Many Christians experience the condemnation of their conscience when they consider their hearts in light of God’s law. To such individuals, John has offered a soothing balm (1 John 3:19–20). Yet there are other Christians whose consciences have already imbibed the truth that they do not stand condemned before God, and this conviction bears fruit in their lives.
In today’s passage, John sets out the implications of such confidence. “Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence before God” (v. 21). The Apostle is not saying that the Christian must reach a state of perfect inner self-approval before he may approach God boldly. What he describes is the absence of the heart’s settled accusation, the rest of conscience that comes when sin is not allowed to remain unrepented of and the believer walks in the light by the Spirit’s strength.
This kind of conscience is the fruit of the abiding life that John has been describing. The believer who confesses his sin, pursues righteousness, and loves the brethren finds his heart at peace in God’s presence. He is not perfect and he knows it, but he is not living in defiance of his Lord either. From this peace he comes before God as a child to a Father.
John connects this confidence directly to the believer’s prayer life: “And whatever we ask we receive from him, because we keep his commandments and do what pleases him” (v. 22). The promise is striking and has occasioned much misuse. It is not a blank check to be filled in by our untutored desires. John’s qualification is essential: We receive what we ask “because we keep his commandments and do what pleases him.” The believer whose life is genuinely oriented toward God’s will is the believer whose prayers have been brought into harmony with that will, and such prayers are answered by a Father who delights to provide what His children ask.
John presents a holy reciprocity at the heart of the Christian life. The believer who keeps God’s commandments comes to want what God wants. His prayers reflect the heart of his Father, and the Father grants them. This is no mechanical exchange but a relational union of will and desire that flows from abiding in Christ. The pattern set forth here is no different from what Jesus Himself taught when He urged His disciples to ask in His name, that the Father might be glorified in the Son (John 14:13).
Coram Deo Living before the face of God
The Christian who walks honestly with God enjoys a confidence in approaching Him that the casual or unrepentant cannot know. If our prayers feel weak today, let us first attend to whether we are abiding faithfully, and then come boldly to the Father, whose ear is bent toward those who please Him.
For further study
- Psalm 66:16–20
- John 15:7
- James 1:5–8
- James 4:2–3
The bible in a year
- Jeremiah 21–23
- 2 Timothy 4