1 John 5:14

The context

The first letter of John is written to a community unsettled by teachers who had left it. The secessionists denied that Jesus had come in the flesh and claimed to be without sin; the letter answers both, and its tests of assurance run through the whole of it.

Chapter 5 is the conclusion. Verses 13 to 21 gather the letter's assurances: that the readers may know they have eternal life, that they may approach God with confidence, and that they may pray for a brother in sin. Verse 14 states the ground of the confidence.

The words

The noun is parrēsia, "boldness" or "confidence." In classical Greek it named the right of a citizen to speak freely in the assembly; in the New Testament it becomes the confidence of access to God, the freedom to speak rather than the certainty of a result.

The verb is aiteō, "to ask," the ordinary word for a request made of a superior. The condition attached to it is kata to thelēma autou, "according to his will" — a standard of conformity, not a technique for obtaining.

The promised response is akouei hēmōn — "he hears," with the petitioners as the object. In this letter hearing is not merely receiving sound; verse 15 treats God's hearing as equivalent to the request being granted. The assurance is about being heard, and hearing there means being answered.

What this passage establishes

Prayer's warrant is the will of God, not the fervor of the petitioner. Where a request conforms to that will, God's attention is dependable, and the believer may approach him without servility. The verse grounds confidence rather than supplying a method.

What it does not establish

It does not promise that any particular request will be granted. The condition governs the whole sentence. Stripped of "according to his will," the verse becomes a blank check, which is precisely what it is not.

It does not tell the petitioner in advance what that will is. As a practical rule the condition is close to circular: ask according to his will, and you will receive. The verse offers no mechanism for discerning the content of the will in a given case, and the letter does not pretend otherwise.

It does not resolve the problem of unanswered prayer. The text defines the condition under which hearing is assured. It does not explain why earnest prayers that appear to meet the condition go unanswered, and the pastoral weight of that question is left where the letter leaves it.

How the church has read it

Augustine, in his letters on prayer, treats praying according to God's will as the rule that keeps petition from becoming presumption; Calvin's Institutes makes the same point in its treatment of the Lord's Prayer. The tradition also reads verse 16 alongside this one, distinguishing prayer for a brother sinning from the sin unto death. The verse is frequently cited in prosperity teaching, which its own conditional clause resists.

First pass, written October 2026. Corrections welcome.

Cited in these answers

• My Grandma was a sincerely nice person who happened to NOT be a Christian. Let me get this right...your "all-loving" God is going to punish her in hell for eternity because she didn't "accept" Jesus?
• So God hears every prayer? I asked for a new car and got nothing. Therefore God does not exist.
• I fell out of faith as a Christian because of Mark 11:23-24 when Jesus says that God will grant us whatever we ask as long as we have faith. I did, I prayed, no new girl, no new car, and thus, no more Bible studies.

Part of Scripture, Opened — the exegetical layer behind every citation on this site. Scripture quotations are from the ESV.