The Ministry of Intercession

December 7, 2025|The Ministry of Intercession|1 John 5:16-17

JD Cutler

Click here for sermon audio

Last week, we began looking at John’s conclusion in the letter of 1st John.

We left off with the idea of expectation of faith when we pray that God will answer us. “15 And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests that we have asked of him.”

I think oftentimes we naturally tend to think of prayer and especially answered prayer we think of it in the context of our own lives and our own needs.

Certainly John was including those kinds of prayers and answers in his statement, but one place our mind might not immediately go is exactly where John goes next. While John’s flow of thought is sometimes hard to follow as he skips around, in our text from last Sunday and our one today, we see a continuity of subject. The confidence that we have in prayer is that God hears us and the fact that he hears us gives us confidence that when we ask according to his will he will give us what we ask. In our verses last week prayer is clearly central, especially to verses 14 and 15 where John talks about us asking, God hearing, and us receiving from him the things that we have asked. With that as our backdrop, we might be surprised that John doesn’t address a prayer asked on behalf of ourselves, but rather he talks about intercessory prayer.

Don’t miss that, in the context of asking and receiving in prayer, John’s only example he provides his readers is that of intercessory prayer. Bringing someone else before the throne of God and petitioning God on their behalf.

I know many of you are praying people, but I wonder how many of you if we were to examine your prayer life over the last year, we would find who spends as much time praying for others as you do for yourself.

I know if we could play back the last year of my prayers this morning over the speakers, I would certainly be ashamed to see how often prayer was a selfish endeavor and not a exercise of service for others.

This is true, even though the Bible repeatedly commands us to intercessory prayer.

James 5:16 “16 Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed.

1 Timothy 2:1 “1 First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people,”

Ephesians 6:18 “18 praying at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication. To that end, keep alert with all perseverance, making supplication for all the saints,” Even though Paul thought it was so important in his letters, he told them he was praying for them and often included the subject and nature of his prayers for them.

Colossians 1:9 “9 And so, from the day we heard, we have not ceased to pray for you

Philippians 1:9–12 “9 And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment,Even though Paul asked the church at Thessalonica in both of his letters to pray for him and the other disciples with him1

Thessalonians 5:25 “25 Brothers, pray for us.”

Think about this Jesus’ longest recorded prayer in the New Testament is often called his high priestly prayer because it is intercessory in nature.

We find it in John chapter 17. He asks that God keep his disciples in His name, that he keep them from the evil one, that he sanctify them in the truth, and that God would make all those who believe in Him one.

Even though when his disciples asked him to teach them to pray, he taught them, what is at its heart an intercessory prayer. Give us our daily bread, forgive us our debts, lead us not into temptation, deliver us from evil. 

Even with all of this overwhelming evidence of the importance of intercessory prayer, we can neglect it in our own lives, or most if we don’t, we often limit our intercessions to physical needs and situations. We pray for one another’s illnesses, financial situations, and we should, but how often do we bring one another before the Lord in great concern for their spiritual wellbeing? 

This morning as we examine what John says about intercessory prayer in the context of our confidence in prayer, I am praying that each of us will see the urgency in praying for one another as well as be encouraged and equipped in our ministry of intercession. 

If you haven’t already, please take your Bibles and open to 1st John chapter 5. This morning we are going to look at two verses, verse 16 and verse 17.

1 John 5:16–17 ESV

16 If anyone sees his brother committing a sin not leading to death, he shall ask, and God will give him life—to those who commit sins that do not lead to death. There is sin that leads to death; I do not say that one should pray for that. 17 All wrongdoing is sin, but there is sin that does not lead to death.

From these verse we are going to look at how we should intercede for one another with compassion, confidence, and compliance. Let us turn our attention to the first, we should be people who…

I. PRAY WITH COMPASSION.

The first thing I want us to see is the situation John uses as his illustration of praying according to God’s will.

1 John 5:16a “16 If anyone sees his brother committing a sin not leading to death, he shall ask…

The picture is pretty simple isn’t it?

If we see someone whom we love, right, because John has already established that if we belong to Christ we will love the brothers.

So we see someone we love who is committing a sin, literally the greek is ‘sinning a sin’.John doesn’t specify the sin, although he does add a modifier that has caused much discussion among theologians and Christians ever since, a sin not leading to death. 

I promise we will deal with that, but do not let that portion distract you from everything else John says. We can get so distracted by the parts we don’t understand immediately that we miss the clearer parts in scripture. We will deal with it before our time is done this morning, for now, I want us to focus on the implication, not about the sin of our brother, but the implications for us in this passage. 

One, it implies an intimate knowledge of one another. To see a brother committing a sin is something that means I am spending enough time with my brother or sister that I get to see the real version of them, not the sanitized version we see at church. This is a drum I beat all the time, but if the extent that you interact with your brothers and sisters in Christ is for an hour or two on a Sunday morning in the semi-controlled environment of the gathering, that superficial relationship is not what the New Testament had in mind in regards to the ‘one anothers’ in our lives. You have very little chance of seeing a brother or sister committing a sin in the way John is talking about. Why?

...if the extent that you interact with your brothers and sisters in Christ is for an hour or two on a Sunday morning in the semi-controlled environment of the gathering, that superficial relationship is not what the New Testament had in mind in regards to the ‘one anothers’ in our lives.

As adults we all know how to behave in church.

We can yell at our kids, argue with our spouse, get mad at somebody that cuts us off in traffic, treat the worker in the donut shop drive through like an inconvenience, and then come into the church all smiles and good mornings like everything is perfect.

I was reading an article about staffing the church one time, and they suggested spending enough time with a potential staff member that you had an opportunity to see how they acted when they got tired, when they got frustrated, when their order was wrong, etc…The idea is to spend enough time with them until they were no longer able to hold onto the curated image they wanted you to see. Yes, we may see a brother or sister sinning at church, but we are far more likely to see it when our lives are so intertwined that we get to see the uncurated, unguarded, unfiltered version of our brothers and sisters.

Which, consequently is the biggest reason I see why we don’t live this way. If we are close enough to see our brother or sister sin, they are close enough to see us sin. If we are close enough to see them unfiltered, they are close enough to us to see us unfiltered.

If we are close enough to see them unfiltered, they are close enough to us to see us unfiltered.

Here John assumes, because of the nature of the 1st century church that these believers are living in such a way that they would, in fact, see a brother or sister sinning. But he also assumes that they will care.

That their brother or sister being in sin will so break their heart that they will want to do something. This implies that we, one, take sin seriously, and two, care deeply about purity in our life and in others. That although we understand that we will all sin, that we do not minimize it in our life or in the lives of those whom we love. This passage will never make sense if we do not understand the devastating power of sin in the life of a believer. So you see a brother or sister, whom you love, sinning.

That’s the situation. Now, how are we to respond?

He shall ask- notice that the first response is not to go tell someone else. ‘You won’t believe what I saw John doing.’ ‘Can you believe that Sue would do that?’

It is not to turn it into a prayer request shaped piece of gossip. No, our first response ought to be to go to our shared Father, the one who loves his children infinitely more than we do and cares about their holiness infinitely more than we do, and is infinitely more powerful to bring change into their life.

Do we ask others to join us in praying? Possibly. If we have labored in prayer and feel that we need support from other brothers and sisters then yes, I don’t think it is wrong to bring others in. After we have prayed and with genuine motives.

So we go to God in prayer for our brother or sister, interceding on their behalf. Is that all?

While John’s focus here is prayer, it would be irresponsible to ignore the rest of the teaching of the New Testament. We also bear a responsibility to lovingly confront, exhort, and encourage one another to repent and forsake sin. But, I would say that to do that before we pray would be unwise, and to do it apart from prayer as dangerous. For us and for them.

You see, prayer has a way of forming us and shaping us.

It is hard to approach someone in pride or judgment when we have lovingly lifted them up in prayer, and in the process been made acutely aware of our own shortcomings and sin. I have never prayed for a sinning brother or sister when the Lord has not used that time to awaken my own conscience to sin in my own life.

Jesus says, remove the log from your own eye before trying to help the brother with the splinter in his. But listen, Jesus doesn’t say, remove your own log and leave your brother alone! He says, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother's eye.

After serious heartbroken intercessory prayer for your brother or sister, by all means, lovingly confront or point out the sin you have seen. But as John highlights, the most important part of that is prayer. 

The last time you either saw or became aware of a brother or sister committing sin, what was your first reaction?

Did you ignore it? Did you tell someone else? Did you confront them? Did you distance yourself from them?

What a difference it would make if our reaction was to lift them up before our Father in Heaven, to labor in intercessory prayer on their behalf.

Prayer that is born out of compassion for our brother, prayer that is from a heart broken for the consequences of sin, prayer that is from a heart fully aware of it’s own weakness.True intercessory prayer begins with praying with compassion. But John doesn’t stop there, he encourages us to…

II. PRAY WITH CONFIDENCE.

Let’s revisit John’s sentence in full. 1 John 5:16 “16 If anyone sees his brother committing a sin not leading to death, he shall ask, and God will give him life—to those who commit sins that do not lead to death…

So we have the situation- if anyone sees his brother committing a sin not leading to death

We have our response- he shall ask

What is the result? God will give him life

This not only informs how we should pray for one another but gives us confidence when we pray for one another. John, as he often does has presented us a contrast, death and life. The question is ‘how do we understand the terms death and life here?’

If we were to look at this purely in the context of our verses, we might be tempted to think John is talking about sin leading to a physical death and God granting physical life, but when we take into account the way John uses these terms throughout his letter, we could think that John has spiritual life in view here, which means that the contrasting death must be spiritual in nature as well. How are we to understand these verses so that we may pray with the confidence that John wants believers to have?

Great question!

John gives two types of sin here. Sin that does not lead to death and sin that leads to death. How we understand this distinction helps us understand the rest of this passage.

There are two verses that talking about sin and death that are important for us to remember.

Romans 6:23 “23 For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

James 1:15 “15 Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death.”

From these verses and others we understand that all sin brings spiritual death and that if one physically dies while spiritually dead, they will experience the second death, or eternal separation from God.

We also understand from places like 1 John 5:12 “12 Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life.”

That is, when we are in Christ we have spiritual life and although we will experience physical death, we will be raised to eternal life physically.

Physically alive, spiritually dead, physical death, eternal separation from God. Physically alive, spiritually alive, physical death, eternal life with God.

It’s hard to unentangle the spiritual side and the physical side of death and life, so interwoven are they in scripture. 

John MacArthur, in a sermon on this portion of John says that there are two ways we can understand this. One, the one who is sinning leading to death is an unbeliever who has absolutely rejected Christ. The sin they are committing is unbelief, no matter what they profess. This is the sin leading to death in the sense of eternal damnation and separation from God. Two, John is talking about a brother whose sin is so egregious that God will take their life.(Physical death)

Think about what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 11, where he says some brothers and sisters have made such a mockery of the Lord’s table, Paul says that, some of you have died. Or Ananias and Sapphira in Acts chapter 5, where because of their lying to the whole church, God took their lives.

MacArthur argues that both are true, and we cannot clearly determine which one John has in mind or if he has both in mind. 

While those are two ways we can understand this passage, I think there is also a third sense in which we can understand John’s statement, that deals with the quality of life rather than the presence of it.

Follow me for a moment. John says if we have Christ, we have life. John says there is sin that does not lead to death and sin that leads to death. He says if you see a brother, committing a sin that does not lead to death. He shall ask.

Ask what?

He doesn’t say explicitly, but if we look at what he says God will do in response, it is implicit.

The answer to the prayer for the brother who is sinning not leading to death is that God will give him life.

He or she is not sinning in a way that leads to death and yet the answer to our prayers is that God will give them life.

How are we to understand that?

When I think about what Jesus said in John 10:10, when he says, I came that they may have life and have it abundantly, I can’t help but wonder if its not the key to understanding what John is saying here.

If we have Jesus, we have life, John has made that much clear, but what if he is saying that when we are in sin we are not experiencing the fullness of life that Christ intended for those that belong to him?

What if when a brother or sister is committing sin they are not experiencing life in the way God intended?

What if then our pray for them is that they would repent and that God would restore to them the joy of their salvation?

What if we prayed that they would repent of the sin that is stealing their joy, killing their witness, and destroying relationship with the Lord?

If that is our prayer, then wouldn’t it then follow, that God granting them life would be the answer to that prayer?

Furthermore, would that not be in accordance with the will of the Father that we are told is key to our confidence in prayer?

I feel like this takes into account sin not leading to death in the life of a believer and still accounts for God’s answer being the giving of life. Sinning cannot cause us to lose our eternal life in Christ but it can cause us to lose our joy in it, it can cause us to lose sight of the precious gift that it is, and it can distract us from a life of purpose and pursuit of Christ. Here is the confidence we have when we intercede for a brother or sister, John says, God will give life.

Not might, not can, but will give them life. We can pray with confidence that God’s will is always for his children to reject sin and embrace life in Christ, that his will is always that his children seek Christ and his kingdom first.

We can ask in faith, trusting that our prayers are not in vain, for those who commit sins that do not lead to death. That’s the scope John gives us, we can have confidence when we pray or a brother or sister in Christ who is committing sin that God would grant them life. 

But what about those who don’t fall in that scope? What about those whom are committing sin that leads to death?We turn now to our last component of intercessory prayer. We pray with compassion, we pray with confidence, and we…

III. PRAY WITH COMPLIANCE.

Let’s revisit the end of verse 16 and on through 17 again. 

1 John 5:16c–17 (ESV) There is sin that leads to death; I do not say that one should pray for that. 17 All wrongdoing is sin, but there is sin that does not lead to death.

John addresses the next category of sin, sin that leads to death. Though all sin leads to death, repentance and faith in Jesus brings life. Jesus says there is only one sin that will not be forgiven, leading to it being often called the unpardonable sin. 

Matthew 12:31–32 “31 Therefore I tell you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven people, but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven. 32 And whoever speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come.”

Mark 3:28–30 “28 “Truly, I say to you, all sins will be forgiven the children of man, and whatever blasphemies they utter, 29 but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin”— 30 for they were saying, “He has an unclean spirit.””

Luke 12:8–10 “8 “And I tell you, everyone who acknowledges me before men, the Son of Man also will acknowledge before the angels of God, 9 but the one who denies me before men will be denied before the angels of God. 10 And everyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but the one who blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven.” 

While there are many opinions and thoughts about what the unpardonable sin is, from these verses at least it is clearly blasphemy against the Holy Spirit.This is understood by most evangelicals not just as speaking against the Holy Spirit, but as representative of a rejection of the Spirit and therefore a rejection of Christ, whom he testifies of, and a rejection of Christ as a rejection of the Father whom he reveals. It is persistent, willful, unbelief and rejection of God. 

So what if we see a brother or sister that seems to be apostatizing, abandoning the faith, rejecting the claims of Christianity?That is, committing a sin that leads to death.John says, I do not say that one should pray for that.

What in the world, right? It seems like that is the exact time we ought to be praying.

So is John saying that we shouldn’t pray for them?

I don’t think so.

Notice, first, he does not prohibit it, he doesn’t say, don’t pray for that, he essentially says, I am not talking about praying for sin that leads to death.

How are we to understand this statement?

Remember the context. John said, all those who believe in the name of Jesus have eternal life and with this life we have confidence that God hears our prayers when we pray according to his will, and if we know he hears our prayers, we know that we have what we request. He answers the prayers of his children that are asked according to his will. Simple enough. John’s application is that when we see a brother or sister who is committing sin that does not lead to death, we can pray for them, intercede for them, and we can have confidence that God will answer our prayers and grant them life. 

But what if we see a brother committing a sin that leads to death?

I think John is saying this is the exception to our confidence and expectation.

John doesn’t prohibit us from praying but he does say that we should not have confidence that God will grant us our petition. We cannot presume that God will give life to an apostate because we ask.

Here is why I said we pray with compliance, or surrender to God, because we do not know what is in another’s heart and whether God has given them over to their sin. We cannot know if they are stumbling in their faith or if they are showing that they never had faith at all. So what do we do?

John doesn’t prohibit us from praying but he does say that we should not have confidence that God will grant us our petition. We cannot presume that God will give life to an apostate because we ask.

We pray for all those you see in sin, even those who seem to be abandoning the faith, but at the same time, we entrust all of them to God, because only God knows truly what is in an individual’s heart. 

John has been warning against antichrist, false teachers, false professors, and the like.

Now, as he closes his letter, he reminds the believers that all unrighteousness is sin, but not all sin leads to death. Indeed, in the believer’s life, death is not their final destination and we believe that God will keep a genuine believer from apostasy, from the unbelief that leads to eternal death. But what about those who have clearly and loudly declared that they hate God and reject Christ?

John says, we can pray for them, but we should not have the same confidence that God will answer our petitions as we do when we pray for a brother or sister who is stumbling in sin. 

One commentator said it this way. John called on his readers to leave these offenses and offenders in God’s hands rather than agonizing in prayer about them. 

I get it, you might be saying, shouldn’t we pray for everyone?

Listen to what Jesus said in his High Priestly prayer. John 17:9 “9 I am praying for them. I am not praying for the world but for those whom you have given me, for they are yours.” Jesus’ prayer that he prayed in compassion for his disciples, Jesus’ prayer that he prayed with confidence that the Father heard him, that he prayed according to God’s will, that God would keep his disciples in Christ, that he would keep them from the evil one, that he would sanctify them in truth, that God would make them one, he prayed with specificity.

Here’s what I mean, he prayed for those whom had believed, those whose sin did not lead to death, he did not pray for those who are in the world and love the world. I mean, that’s kind of interesting isn’t it?

Here’s our problem, we do not know, as Jesus did, who the genuine believers are, who the false believers are, and who although they seem to be haters of Christ, like Saul, will one day be mighty warriors in the kingdom of God. 

So we cannot pray with the specificity of Christ, but we can pray with compliance, understanding that sometimes when we don’t see the answer to our prayers, when our brother or sister goes deeper into sin, when they wander from the faith rather than return back to Christ, when we don’t understand why, we understand that we must surrender our desire and entrust them to God knowing that his will will be done.

Whether we begin our prayer with "your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven", or we end our prayer with, "Nevertheless, not my will, but yours, be done.”

Whenever we pray, but especially in our intercessory prayers, we entrust those whom we pray for to the hands of the Father. 

As John illustrates our confidence in prayer as children of God, he turns to our ministry of intercessory prayer. From him we see that when it comes to our intercessory prayer for one another, we should pray with compassion, confidence, and compliance. 

Are we?

When you think about your prayer life, which one of these things or combination of things are lacking?

Do you know your brothers and sisters well enough to know when they are sinning?

If we did, are we sensitive enough to sin that it would break our hearts over their situation?

If we do so a brother or sister in sin and it pricks our conscience, do we report it to others or take it to God first?

Do we have faith that God will work in other’s lives because we pray for them?

Are we confident in our prayers for one another?

Do we ultimately trust that if God chooses not to answer that we can cry out thy will be done?

John’s letter is one long call to examine not only our own lives but the lives of those around us who claim to be brothers and sisters. This morning we have seen that when we see sin in their lives, we should pray for them, trusting that God will bring life to all those who are is, and trusting that God knows whose hearts are repentant and whose are not. Our job is to intercede with God and to encourage repentance from our brother or sister. This is the ministry of intercession, one that every genuine believer should be committed to. 

Let us pray.

Father, give us eyes to see the lives of our brothers and sisters, especially when they are in sin. Give us a desire to intercede for them and confidence that you will not allow your children to lose their lives. Give us understanding that your will for all those who are yours is not only eternal life but real, genuine life now. Help us have compassion on all, even those whom my prayers will prove ineffectual because you have already decreed their death. Remind us that we are not you and cannot know another’s heart, father, we struggle to even know my own heart. Give us an awareness of the seriousness of sin and of the overwhelming beauty of your grace that all sin does not lead to our death, both immediate and eternally. You have every right to demand the life of every sinner for every single sin, praise to your mercy and your grace that you do not.  Amen