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.
These things I have spoken to you in allegories; the hour is coming that I will no longer speak to you in allegories, but will declare to you openly concerning the Father.
Jesus had been teaching His disciples in figures they could not yet unwrap. Here He promises an hour of plain speech about the Father, which raises two questions: what was the veiled speech, and when did the plain speaking start?
One commentator traces this word back to a Hebrew term with a wide range of meanings.
I suppose it is because the Hebrew word mashal has such a large and varied meaning that Greek uses paroimia as well as parabolē in the same way. Both words are used like this in the Greek Old Testament and in the New Testament. Matthew, Mark and Luke always use parabolē, and John only uses paroimia, as in John 10 and here. Perhaps "allegory" would fit better, or even "a dark saying" in our chapter, where parable or allegory hardly applies.
The veiled form was not His preference. His hearers set the limit, and it cost Him something.
Notice with what obvious satisfaction the Lord looked forward to the freeing of their faith. It is clear, too, that He was hampered and held back, bound in spirit as it were. The reason was that they could not grasp that revelation of the Father which was nearest to His heart. And so He looked forward to one part of the joy set before Him: the coming time when He would show them plainly about the Father.
Their small grasp of the parables did not make the parables pointless.
No doubt their grasp of the meaning of His parables was very limited. But the parables were meant to stir them up inwardly, and that stirring would find its answer when the Spirit of God came. By the Spirit the Lord would then show them plainly about the Father, for only spiritual means can properly convey spiritual things (1 Cor. 2:13).
Commentators differ on when this "hour" began. Some point to the resurrection, and to the message the Lord sent from the empty tomb.
In the day about to dawn He would speak plainly about the Father. So it was at the resurrection. He sent a message to the disciples that said plainly, "I am ascending to My Father and your Father, to My God and your God."
Others date it from Pentecost, and find the same continuity in a single word in Acts.
Clearly this hour dawned at Pentecost. It is interesting to see how this agrees with Acts 1:1, "all that Jesus began to do and teach." In the one passage we have the clear hint that our Lord would instruct His servants at a coming hour. In the other, the striking word "began" implies that blessed fact. In short, it marks the continuity of what our Lord did on earth with what He did after His resurrection and ascension.
So where do we find that plain speech today?
He had been making known the Father by doing the Father's works. All the miracles, or "signs," recorded in this Gospel had set out the grace and power and glory of the Father, but in a parabolic or allegorical way. When we turn to the letters of the New Testament we read plain declarations about the Father, His purposes and glory and love, given by inspiration of the Holy Spirit.
The plain speech had a purpose: they were to know the Father's own heart toward them.
There was no possibility of coming to the Father except by Him, but He wanted them to know that through Him they had come to the Father. They were to keep asking in His name, but He wanted them to understand that the Father Himself loved them. He wanted to direct their gaze to the Father through Himself, so that they might know Him, and know also that they were the objects of His heart.
That future hour is no longer future, which turns the verse into a question we should put to ourselves.
The time the Lord spoke of as "that day" was then future. It is now present. This is the one unique day in which, to the delight of His own heart, He is at work as gladly for the Father in glorifying Him as He is for us in showing Him plainly to the eyes and hearts of our understanding and our faith. Is it not right to ask ourselves now and then how far we have really proved the Lord's word about the Father's ministry to our souls?
- Veiled. The word behind "figures of speech" covers parable, allegory, even a dark saying. The teaching was wrapped up, not laid open.
- Restrained. The Lord did not choose the wrapping. His hearers held Him back, because they could not yet carry the revelation nearest His heart.
- Unveiled. Then the hour came, and He spoke without a veil. Some date it from the resurrection message, others from Pentecost.
- Written. The plain declarations about the Father — His purposes, glory and love — now stand in the letters of the New Testament, given by the Holy Spirit.
- Yours. "That day" is now. The test is whether we know for ourselves that the Father Himself loves us.
In that day ye shall ask in my name; and I say not to you that I will demand of the Father for you,
The Lord has just promised His disciples that they will ask the Father in His name. Now He blocks a wrong idea that promise could create — as though He had to talk the Father round. The reason their prayers are welcome is the Father's own love for them.
"That day" is not a far-off age. It is the time after His departure, when the disciples would pray to the Father themselves. One writer sets the change against Martha, who assumed Jesus had to do the asking for her.
"In that day," says the Lord, "you will ask Me nothing." These words do not mean we are never to speak to the Lord. They mean we have direct access to the Father. Martha had no sense of speaking to the Father herself when she said, "I know that whatever You ask from God, God will give You" (John 11:22). We do not now have to appeal to the Lord to go to the Father for us. It is our privilege to ask the Father ourselves, in the name of Christ.
Taken alone, the words sound as if Christ were withdrawing His prayers for His people.
Verse 26 does not deny Christ's intercession for us, any more than verse 23 forbids the servant to pray to his Lord about His work or His house. It is not an absolute statement... Words are simply left out here, and the words that follow explain them: I do not say that I will ask the Father for you, as if He did not love you. For the Father Himself does love you dearly.
The contrast is with their old habit of sending every request through Him. It is not with His work as advocate when they fail.
Christ's interceding for them is unasked. We do not ask Christ to intercede. He is an advocate through His own grace when we have sinned, not when we ask. I return to the Father in confession because He has already prayed for me when I went astray. Peter wept because Christ had prayed for him — Christ did not pray for him because he wept.
The verse guards the heart against a picture of God that many carry: a reluctant Father held back by a pleading Son.
Is it meant to take from us the comfort of the intercession of Jesus for us? No; it is meant to remove from the heart the feeling that the Lord Jesus is the originating cause of the Father's love. He has only given liberty to that love — made the way for it to flow out. It is a badly mistaken and harmful idea that the Lord Jesus stands towards us as One turning aside the judgment of an angry God. It is true that the love of God could not flow out fully until the Son had finished His work. But the gift of the Son came out of the love of God.
The Lord names the reason in the next breath: they had loved Him and believed He came from God. That covered every one of the eleven disciples in front of Him — including the one about to deny Him.
Not one of the Eleven was left out. All of them loved the Lord, Peter with the rest, grievously though he would fall. Because they loved the Lord, the Father loved them all. It was a revelation to gladden their hearts, and the One who made it was competent to make it. The Son, who was in the bosom of the Father, here assured them that the Father loved them.
Because the tie runs through the Son, it holds.
It is with the Son that we are linked in the Father's love, and therefore there is no separation from it.
Occupation with the love of Christ can crowd out the love spoken of here — and the loss is real.
Believers as a rule may not be awake enough to two things: how great this favour from God the Father is in itself, and how far its consequences reach... Yet surely to forget the love of the Father is no necessary result of being occupied with that of the Son. Rather it is that we are one-sided, and nothing is rarer than perfect balance in our appreciation of truth.
- That day. After His departure the disciples would stop sending requests through Him. They would go straight to the Father in His name.
- Not persuasion. The verse does not deny Christ's intercession. It is a sentence with words left out: I need not say I will ask the Father, as if He did not love you.
- Not the cause. The Son did not create the Father's love; He opened the way for it to flow. Treating Him as One turning aside an angry God is a harmful mistake.
- The reason. The Father loves them because they loved the Son and believed He came from God — Peter included, faults and all. The tie runs through the Son, so nothing can break it.
- The gap. The loss is not in the love but in our slowness to take it in. Being full of the love of Christ need not crowd out the love of the Father.