And in that day ye shall demand nothing of me verily, verily, I say to you, Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name, he will give you.
The Lord is close to His death, and He tells the disciples that their whole way of coming to God is about to change. Two questions sit inside it: what is "that day," and what does it mean to ask the Father in Jesus' name?
"That day" is not the far future. It is the day opened by His resurrection and His going above, and it has already come.
This, it seems to me, is what the Lord tells the disciples will follow His resurrection and departure — "in that day." It is a day that has already come: the day of grace, not of glory. We share in glory only so far as we enter in through Him, Who has gone above and sent the Spirit from there to be in us.
The verse uses two different Greek verbs, and the older English translation flattened them into one.
The passage that has suffered most from the loss of this distinction in the King James translation is John 16:23. It looks as if prayer to the Father in the name of Christ replaces prayer to Christ directly. But the 'ask' (erotao) in the first part of the verse points back to John 16:19: "Jesus knew that they wanted to ask (erotao) him." Here the word carries its ordinary classical sense of 'question.' It does not mean 'prayer' at all. The Lord is leading their hearts on from His death to the dawn of a new and endless day in His resurrection. Then they would have no more questions, and every difficulty would be solved... Now they would be able to 'ask' (aiteo) the Father in His name. They would come before the Father in the value of His name as they never had before, left here to represent Him where He had been rejected.
Commentators differ. Some limit the first "ask" to questioning. Kelly sees a wider change: where they take everything, not just their questions.
The Lord is signifying a great change. Until now they turned to Him as their Messiah on earth for every difficulty — not for questions only, but for all they might want day by day. Now He would bring them into access to the Father, as the accepted Man and glorified Saviour on high. Until we know redemption, and grace sets the soul in righteousness, even believers are afraid of God and hide, as it were, behind Christ.
Some read the first half of the verse as shutting the door on praying to Christ Himself. The words themselves answer that.
So when the Lord said, "In that day you will ask nothing of me," He was not forbidding prayer to Himself. He was telling them that in a day soon to come they would no longer be questioning Him. He would not be here for them to question. He would be at the Father's right hand, and the Holy Spirit would be here to guide them into all truth.
The phrase carries weight far beyond words tacked on at the end of a prayer.
Asking in the name of Christ is more than having a right through His name. It is to appear before God with all the value and authority of that name. Suppose I go to a bank and present a cheque. I ask for the value of the cheque in the name of the person who wrote it. So when I appear before God in the name of Christ, I bring my requests in all the value of that name.
The promise sounds unlimited. One phrase in it sets a limit.
There is what His name excludes, as well as what it includes. "Whatever" is the promise, but "in my name" defines and limits it. As another has said: "Whatever! On its own it would be boundless, and the Lord would then have opened the door to all the desires of unbroken will among His people. But He adds, in my name. This is His limit — the barrier He sets up."
What puts them on this new ground? Kelly points to redemption and the Spirit.
Now, He says to them, you are going onto new ground. No longer just coming to Me and asking Me, but asking the Father, and asking in Christ's name... The meaning is nothing less than this: redemption once accomplished, and the Holy Spirit uniting them to the Lord Jesus in heaven, would set them in the same position as Himself.
- The day — "That day" is the day of grace already begun: Christ glorified above, the Spirit given below.
- The gift — He replaces a Master they could question on earth with direct access to the Father.
- The name — To ask in His name is to come with the whole value and authority of that name. It is not a phrase tacked on at the end.
- The limit — "Whatever" would be boundless on its own; "in my name" is the barrier the Lord Himself sets up.
- The result — Nothing here forbids praying to Jesus. What it forbids is staying on the old ground, now that the new one puts us before the Father in the Son's own place.
Hitherto ye have asked nothing in my name ask, and ye shall receive, that your joy may be full.
The Lord is hours from the cross, and He tells His disciples about a way of praying they have never used. How could praying men be told they had asked nothing in His name, and what joy is it that only this asking can fill?
The disciples were praying men. The Lord Himself had given them a pattern prayer, and they had used it for years. So His words here come as a shock.
The Lord's Prayer always remains priceless. Yet He gave it to meet the personal needs of the disciples, and the fuller revelation of divine truth changed their condition... It seems to me a happy thought that it is our Lord Himself who tells us this. "Until now you have asked nothing in my name." What do I gather from this? That a person may use the Lord's Prayer every day, and never have asked anything in the name of Christ.
This new way of praying waited on the cross.
Here for the first time we read of prayer to be offered in His name... The prayer of Matthew 6 was prayer to the Father. It was the pouring out of the heart to God from someone who knew he was God's child. But prayer in His name was unknown until Christ's blood had made atonement. As soon as that was done, and those who believed on Him knew it, they were to offer prayer in His name. From then on His name would have a meaning for them as well as for God. It expresses all that He is in the eyes of God the Father.
The phrase means more than naming Christ as our reason for asking. We come with all that Christ is worth.
Asking in His name is not just for Christ's sake as a motive. It is asking in the value of Himself and of His acceptance. All His worth goes to the account of those who plead this way. And how precious and all-prevailing it is in the Father's eyes! How glorifying to both the Father and the Son! How humbling and no less strengthening to the saints themselves! It is the title of every Christian now; none ever enjoyed it before.
Such asking makes sense only because He is gone. It is the language of people who stand in for someone absent.
Someone has said it well: "Requests made in the name of another are understood to mean taking to yourself his claims, his merits, his rights to be heard." By His own words, the Lord gives this privilege to those who are in relationship with Himself by faith. Asking in the name of Christ was something new to the disciples. Like everything else in these talks, it comes out of the Lord's departure. Asking in His name assumes that Christ is absent.
"Until now" points to a turning point. One writer says that day is not still ahead of us.
"In that day you will ask in My name." This refers to the saints' day, when the Lord is with the Father and the Comforter is here. It assumes that redemption has put the saints here below in the place the Son of Man held when He was on earth. So the full value and power of His Name avails with the Father.
Some would narrow this promise. One writer tests that narrowing against the joy the Lord attaches to it.
Some say His name covers only part of the believer's prayers. They say it does not reach his personal needs or circumstances, and that believers may go to God about them, but not in Christ's name. The Lord's words fit badly with a claim like that. How would all this fit with the direction, "Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full"? Such a chilling claim would quench anything like fullness of joy. That narrow interpretation would bring regret instead of joy.
The joy is not measured by the size of the answer.
What makes their joy full is not the thing they receive. It is the proof they get through it that they have their Father's heart and ear. The Father, not the gift, does this for them, filling up their joy.
So the confidence to ask comes from the Name itself.
While He was with them, of course they had not asked in His name: now they are encouraged to find such delight in that name that they ask with firm, holy confidence for what will honour that name. In this their joy would be full.
- The cause. No one could pray in His name until Christ's blood made atonement. The cross opened it, not a formula.
- The gift. The Name carries all that Christ is worth before the Father, and every believer now holds that title.
- The place. Asking in His name assumes He is absent. We stand here in the place He held, with His claims as our own.
- The reach. The promise is wide. A reading that shuts our needs out of His name would kill the very joy He offers.
- The result. Full joy comes less from the gift than from the proof it brings — that we have the Father's ear.