1 John 5:16

-The prayer of faith" is all-prevailing when it is in accordance with God's will. This is the sole limit as regards prayer on our own behalf. Is there any other limit in the case of prayer on behalf of another? Yes, there is that other's own will: this will prove a further limitation. Man's will has been endowed by God with such royal freedom, that not even His will coerces it. Still less, therefore, can a brother's prayer coerce it. If a human will has deliberately and obstinately resisted God, and persists in doing so, we are debarred from our usual certitude. Against a rebel will even the prayer of faith in accordance with God's will (for of course God desires the submission of the rebel) may be offered in vain. For exhortations to intercession elsewhere in N. T. see 1 Thessalonians 5:25; Hebrews 13:18-19; James 5:14-20; comp. Philippians 1:4.

If any man see his brother Here it is obvious that -brother" must mean -fellow- Christian", not any one whether Christian or not.

sin a sin More accurately, as R.V., sinning a sin: the supposed case is one in which the sinner is seen in the very act. The phrase -to sin a sin" occurs nowhere else in N.T. Comp. Leviticus 5:6; Leviticus 5:10; Leviticus 5:13; Ezekiel 18:24.

he shall ask Future for imperative; or, he will ask, i.e. a Christian in such a case is sure to pray for his erring brother. The latter seems preferable.

and he shall give him life The Greek is ambiguous. -He" may mean either God or the intercessor, and -him" may mean either the intercessor or the sinner for whom he intercedes. If the latter alternatives be taken, we may compare -he shall save a soul from death" (James 5:20). Commentators are much divided. On the one hand it is urged that throughout Scripture asking is man's part and giving God's: but, on the other hand, when two verbs are connected so closely as these, -will ask and will give" (αἰτήσει καὶ δώσει), it seems rather violent to give them different nominatives; -he will ask and God will give". It seems better to translate; he will ask and will give him life, them that sin not unto death. -Them" is in apposition to -him", the clause being an explanation rather awkwardly added, similar to that at the end of 1 John 5:13. If -God" be inserted, -them" is the dativus commodi; -God will grant the intercessor life forthose who sin". The change to the plural makes the statement more general: -sinning not unto death" is not likely to be an isolated case. The Vulgate is here exceedingly free; petat, et dabitur ei vita peccanti non ad mortem. Tertullian also ignores the change of number; postulabit, et dabit ei vitam dominus qui non ad mortem delinquit.

There is a sin unto death Or, There is sin unto death; we have no τις or μία in the Greek, a fact which is against the supposition that any actof sin is intended. In that case would not S. John have named it, that the faithful might avoid it, and also know when it had been committed? The following explanations of -sin unto death" may be safely rejected. 1. Sin punished by the law with death. 2. Sin punished by Divine visitation with death or sickness. 3. Sin punished by the Church with excommunication. As a help to a right explanation we may get rid of the idea which some commentators assume, that -sin unto death" is a sin which can be recognisedby those among whom the one who commits it lives. S. John's very guarded language points the other way. He implies that somesins may be known to be - notunto death": he neither says nor implies that all -sin unto death" can be known as such. As a further help we may remember that no sin, if repented of, can be too great for God's mercy. Hence S. John does not speak even of this sin as -fatal" or -mortal", but as - untodeath" (πρὸς θάνατον). Death is its natural, but not its absolutely inevitable consequence. It is possible to close the heart against the influences of God's Spirit so obstinately and persistently that repentance becomes a moral impossibility. Just as the body may starve itself to such an extent as to make the digestion, or even the reception, of food impossible; so the soul may go on refusing offers of grace until the very power to receive grace perishes. Such a condition is necessarily sin, and -sin unto death". No passing over out of death into life (1 John 3:14) is any longer (without a miracle of grace) possible. -Sin unto death", therefore, is not any actof sin, however heinous, but a stateor habitof sin wilfully chosen and persisted in: it is constant and consummate opposition to God. In the phraseology of this Epistle we might say that it is the deliberate preference of darkness to light, of falsehood to truth, of sin to righteousness, of the world to the Father, of spiritual death to eternal life.

I do not say that he shall pray for it More accurately, not concerning that do I say that he should make request. This reproduces the telling order of the Greek; it avoids the ambiguity which lurks in -pray for it"; it preserves the emphatic -that"; and marks better the difference between the verb (αἰτεῖν) previously rendered -ask" (1 John 5:14) and the one (ἐρωτᾷν) here rendered -pray". Of the two verbs the latter is the lesssuppliant (see on John 14:16), whereas -pray" is moresuppliant than -ask". Two explanations of the change of verb are suggested. 1. The Apostle does not advise request, much less does he advise urgent supplication in such a case. 2. He uses the less humble word to express a request which seems to savour of presumption. See on 2 John 1:5.

(1) Note carefully that S. John, even in this extreme case, does not forbid intercession: all he says is that he does not command it. For one who sins an ordinary sin we may intercede in faith with certainty that a prayer so fully in harmony with God's will is heard. The sinner will receive grace to repent. But where the sinner has made repentance morally impossible S. John does not encourage us to intercede. Comp. Jeremiah 7:16; Jeremiah 14:11.

(2) Note also that, while distinguishing between deadly and not deadly sin, he gives us no criterion by which we may distinguish the one from the other. He thus condemns rather than sanctions those attempts which casuists have made to tabulate sins under the heads of -mortal" and -venial". Sins differ indefinitely in their intensity and effect on the soul, ending at one end of the scale in -sin unto death"; and the gradations depend not merely or chiefly on the sinful act, but on the motivewhich prompted it, and the feeling(whether of sorrow or delight) which the recollection of it evokes. Further than this it is not safe to define or dogmatize. This seems to be intimated by what is told us in the next verse. Two facts are to be borne in mind, and beyond them we need not pry.