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?
A privilege never used before
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.
What "in my name" means
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.
The day it opens
"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.
Nothing shut out of "ask"
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.
Where the full joy comes from
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.
Summary
- 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.