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.
for the Father himself has affection for you, because ye have had affection for me, and have believed that I came out from God.
The Lord has just told His disciples to ask the Father in His name. Here He gives the reason: the Father's own love for them, awakened by their love for His Son. That raises two questions. Does this mean Christ no longer prays for us? And how can God's love have a "because" in it?
Just before this, the Lord says He will not ask the Father on their behalf. Some readers take that as the end of His praying for us. One commentator reads the sentence as unfinished; the words that follow complete it.
This is another of those sentences that not only men and scholars stumble over, but believers too. Many a believer is not enjoying the truth of it. Verse 26 does not deny Christ's intercession for us, any more than verse 23 forbids a servant to pray to his Lord about His work or His house. The sentence simply leaves something unsaid, and the words that follow supply it. 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.
Praying in Jesus' name does not put the Son between the believer and the Father.
Christ being then personally absent, they would ask in His name. He does not mean that He would act as the Mediator in their asking. He means they would have direct access to the Father in His name. For He encourages their confidence in the Father's love for them. He does not want them to feel that He Himself is more accessible than is the Father.
The word behind "loves" in this verse is not the usual word for God's love.
He did not use the ordinary word for the love of God, "agapao" (God is love and that love has to manifest itself). He used as an exception the word which speaks of the love of friendship. For example, when I saw something attractive in my wife I was drawn to her. This is the thought the Lord uses here. The Father Himself has been drawn to you. He loves you in that sense, because you have loved Me and have believed that I came out from God.
This love is not the same as the love that reached us when there was nothing good in us. Here the Father finds something in the believer.
God loved you when there was nothing lovable about you. He loved you because of what was in Himself. But the Father loves you because of what is in you. He has found something in you in which His heart has unbounded delight. What is it? Nothing but the little spark of love to His Son, which He has kindled there for Himself. His Son has suffered every insult that the corrupt heart of man could invent. Yet here you stand on His side, lifting up a feeble testimony in His favour. And the Father Himself loves you, because you have loved Him, and have believed that He came out from God.
The verse names two things about the disciples: they loved Jesus, and they believed. One writer shows why the two are never found apart.
Here we learn who the objects of the Father's love are. They are those who have loved Jesus, and have believed that He came out from God. Not those who say this and that, but those who have the two great essentials of living Christianity — faith and love. These two always go together where God has done a work in the soul, for faith works through love.
What the disciples believed was true, but it did not go far enough. In the next verse the Lord moves from "from God" to "from the Father."
But this was far short of the full truth He goes on to reveal: "I came from the Father and have come into the world, and now I am leaving the world and going to the Father." Here they fell altogether short. They realised as yet little or nothing of His full, divine, and eternal glory as the Son of the Father.
This love changes how a believer walks through a hostile world, and nothing can break it off.
What a wonderful privilege we have! We go through this cold-hearted world in the constant sunshine, the warmth and comfort, of the Father's love. How well it would equip us to meet the hostility of this world, and to answer cursing with blessing! And it is: "Because you have loved Me, and believed that I came out from God." In the Father's love we are joined to the Son, so there is no separation from it.
- Cause — The Father loves believers for something He put in them: a spark of love for His Son.
- Word — The verb here is not the usual "agapao" but the word for the love of friendship. The Father is drawn to those who love His Son.
- Access — The Lord's words that He need not ask the Father for us do not deny His intercession. They remove the idea that the Father needs persuading.
- Faith — Two marks identify those the Father loves: they love Jesus, and they believe He came from God. The two never appear apart.
- Result — Because the tie is to the Son, the love holds; the believer walks a cold world in constant sunshine.