EVENING SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 4/4/2025 7:38 PM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-4 “Answered Prayer”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference:
1 John 5:14-17
Message of the verses: “14 This is the confidence
which we have before Him, that, if we ask anything according to His will, He
hears us. 15 And if we know that He hears us in whatever we ask, we know
that we have the requests which we have asked from Him. 16 If anyone sees his
brother committing a sin not leading to death, he shall ask and God
will for him give life to those who commit sin not leading to death.
There is a sin leading to death; I do not say that he should make
request for this. 17All unrighteousness is sin, and there is a sin not leading
to death.”
This
is how I ended my last SD on these verses:
“Ok I am going to stop here because in the
next SD I will quote what John MacArthur’s views are on what the sin leading to
death was, or is.”
“Evidently
John and his readers knew what the sin leading to death was, since no
explanation is given, but its exact meaning is difficult for us to
determine. Two possibilities present
themselves.
“First,
the sin in question may be that of a non-Christian leading to eternal
death. In that case it would be a final
rejection of Jesus Christ, such as that committed by those who attributed His
miracles to the power of Satan (Matt. 12:31-32). Such ultimate apostasy is unforgivable, as
Jesus declared:
31 “Therefore I say to you, any sin and
blasphemy shall be forgiven people, but blasphemy against the Spirit shall not
be forgiven. 32 "Whoever speaks a word against the Son of Man, it shall be
forgiven him; but whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit, it shall not be
forgiven him, either in this age or in the age to come.
“Praying for the
restoration of such people to the fellowship from which they have departed (1
John 2:19) is futile, because ‘it is impossible to renew them again to
repentance, since they again crucify to themselves the Son of God and put Him
to open shame’ (Heb. 6:6). John did not
forbid prayer for such people, sin it is impossible to know who they are. The apostle merely stated that prayer for
them will not be answered; God has already made the final decision about their
future. Supporting the view that John is
referring to unbelievers is the present tense of the participle hamartanonta (‘sinning’; the Greek text
literally reads ‘If anyone sees his brother sinning a sin…’); John elsewhere in
this epistle uses the present tense to describe the habitual sins that
characterize unbelievers (e. g., 3:4, 6, 8; 5:18).
“Another possibility is that John is not referring to an
unbeliever but to a believer. According
to this view, the sin leading to death refers to a Christian’s sin that is so
serious that God takes the life of the one committing it. He put to death Ananias and Sapphira when
they lied to the Holy Spirit in front of the church (Acts 5:1-11). Paul wrote to the Corinthians concerning
those who were abusing the Lord’s Table, ‘For this reason many among you are
weak and sick, and a number sleep [have died]’ (1 Cor. 11:30). The sin is not one particular sin, but any
sin that the Lord determines is serious enough to warrant such severe
chastisement.”
When one studies the Bible and kind of gets stumped over
a passage like this one it is best to look at other Scriptures, which is what
MacArthur did in explaining his views on this particular verse. I am not sure which view is correct of if
either one is correct, but both of them make since to me, so perhaps both are
true, one for the unbeliever, and one for the believer.
MacArthur has two more shorter paragraphs in this section
and so I will quote them in order to finish this section.
“Both of the above views reflect biblical truth, and it
is hard to be dogmatic as to which one John had in mind. In either case, John’s point is that prayer
for those committing a sin leading to death will not result in the outcome that
might otherwise be expected.
“Although God mercifully does not immediately punish
every sin with death, every sin is nonetheless a serious matter to Him. All unrighteousness is sin, John reminded his
readers, even sin not leading to death. Every
sin is a violation of His law and an affront to God, and is to be confessed
(1:9; Ps. 32:5), forsaken (Prov. 28:13, and mortified (Rom. 8:13; Col. 3:5).”
Lord willing we will look at “Victory Over Sin” in our
next SD, and this comes from 1 John 5:18.
4/4/2025 8:03 PM
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