Sermon Text: 1 John 5:13–15
Date: October 19, 2025
Event: Proper 24, Year C
1 John 5:13–15 (EHV)
I have written these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life.
14This is the confidence that we have before him: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. 15And if we know that he hears us—whatever we ask—we also know that we receive the things we have asked from him.
Confidence Is a Gift from God
What is worse—the car that won’t start or the car you’re not sure if it’ll start or not? I might argue that the one that will not start is the preferable one. You at least know what you’re getting there. You’re not going to make plans to use that car, only to have them dashed by seemingly random failures. You know that you have to do some work on it, or get it towed, or just let it sit till you have the time or money to fix it. You have confidence in that car—in this case, confidence that it will not work—rather than a total lack of certainty. At least with a totally busted car, you won’t get stranded on the side of the freeway miles from home.
Having confidence in things is something that is so easy to take for granted. You all have confidence in the pews you’re sitting on right now that they’re not going to just break and fall out from underneath you (or, at least you did until I mentioned it). If you didn’t have that confidence, some (or all) of you would probably be standing—or opting for the live stream online for today’s worship. Confidence can remain rock-solid, but one rug pull can destroy it. You can love and trust that car for years, but the moment you turn the key or push the button to start it and it just sighs at you, that might be the time that your confidence is lost.
Confidence in physical objects is one thing, though. But confidence in our relationships between people is so much more important (and in many ways, so much more fragile). How sad it is when a child doesn’t trust their parent to provide for them or follow through on any promises or obligations! How sad it is when spouses lose confidence in each other’s faithfulness or care and concern! How frustrating it is when employees have no confidence that their employers care about them! How scary it is when someone doesn’t trust another in a position of power to do right by them, but instead can’t help but feel that they will use that power to cause harm.
Today, we cannot restore your confidence in your car or your personal relationships, but we can look to the most important place to have confidence—our relationship with God. What do God’s promises and track record mean for our confidence in him? What does it mean for our confidence for today and our confidence for eternity?
Our Second Reading this morning is taken from the end of the apostle John’s first letter in the New Testament. As he writes these words, John is at the end of his life, and much like Paul and Peter did in their final letters, John is spending time in this letter “passing the baton” to the next generation of Christians. Throughout the letter, he has encouraged and refocused his readers. He has encouraged them in their walk of faith, that they should live differently than those around them in the world. He has warned them about becoming enamored with the things of this world, because such a focus may abandon the faith in the love of God. He has warned this next generation of Christians about false teachers, both on small scales and far greater scales. To fend off those false teachers, he urged Christians to “test the spirits” (1 John 4:1), that is, to examine and compare any line of spiritual thinking and teaching with God’s Word to see if it agrees.
But even in this relatively brief letter, John continues to return to the foundational and motivational truth in all of this: God’s love for us. Early in the letter, he described God’s love for us this way: My children, I write these things to you so that you will not sin. If anyone does sin, we have an Advocate before the Father: Jesus Christ, the Righteous One. He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the whole world (1 John 2:1-2). In the next chapter, he states this love in one of my favorite passages in the entire Bible, and one that I often use to begin sermons, “See the kind of love the Father has given us that we should be called children of God, and that is what we are!” (1 John 3:1). Later in that same chapter, John uses words that sound very much like the closing of the letter we have before us: This is how we know that we are of the truth and how we will set our hearts at rest in his presence: If our hearts condemn us, God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything. Dear friends, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before God. We also receive from him whatever we ask, because we keep his commands and do what is pleasing in his sight. This then is his command: that we believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and that we love one another just as he commanded us (1 John 3:19-23).
In chapter 4, he describes God’s love for us and the resulting love that we have for each other in famous and beautiful ways: Dear friends, let us love one another, because love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. The one who does not love has not known God, because God is love. This is how God’s love for us was revealed: God has sent his only-begotten Son into the world so that we may live through him. This is love: not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, if God loved us so much, we also should love one another. … We love because he first loved us (1 John 4:7-11, 19).
This is a small sampling of what John means when he says in our reading for this morning from the end of the letter: I have written these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life. What things produce in people the knowledge and the confidence of eternal life? The repeated themes of God’s love for us as expressed in Jesus on every page of Scripture. To “believe in the name of the Son of God” is to trust Jesus as our Savior from sin, to know that in him we are forgiven. This faith is a gift from God.
Where do we look for such confidence? We have the words of Jesus himself—who does not lie—declaring the victory complete from the cross. And even if we weren’t going to take him at his word, we go with the women into the garden, where that tomb is cut into the rock and the stone is rolled away. We hear the angels’ earnest yet almost kind-heartedly teasing question, “Why are you looking for the living among the dead? He is not here, but has been raised!” (Luke 24:5-6). How do you know that you have eternal life, as John stresses for us? Because Jesus completed everything you needed when he died for your sins at the cross and proved that victory when he rose from the dead. “It is finished,” indeed.
Confidence in God’s love and forgiveness for us produces wonderful, cascading effects. It allows and empowers us to love each other, as John continually encourages in his letter. The love of God for us gives us the strength to love each other. We focused last weekend on gratitude for God’s eternal gifts, which is very powerful to this same end: we love to reflect God’s love and to thank God for that very same love.
An additional effect of God’s love for us is that we have no question where we stand with God. We don’t have to worry that maybe today he’s mad at us or tomorrow he won’t have time for us. Our relationship with God is not like our human relationships—even the very best human relationships—that are still flawed by sin. No, God’s love for us is perfect; along with the forgiveness of sins, he gives us confidence in him. In our Catechism class this year, we’re going through a survey of Bible history, and one of the themes we see over and over again is God’s faithfulness to his promises. In fact, by the middle of the year, the students have learned that if I ask the question, “And how faithful was God to that promise?” the answer is always “Perfectly faithful!” Over and over again, God shows himself to be trustworthy and reliable beyond what even the most rock-solid human being could ever be.
And that confidence that God gifts to us is not just focused on eternity (though that is, of course, where our greatest blessings are coming and where our highest confidence is). But in the light of our forgiveness, in the light of God be willing to sacrifice even his own Son, his own life, to save us from hell, should we have any reason to think that he will suddenly stop providing for us? No!
In the radically comforting words of Romans chapter 8, the apostle Paul encouraged his readers this way: What then will we say about these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? Indeed, he who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also graciously give us all things along with him? (Romans 8:31-32). Even in a human relationship, we can see how this would be true. If you go out to lunch with someone who cares about you very much and, in their love and generosity over that meal, they give you a check that pays off all your debts or secures for you that financial goal you’ve been clawing toward for years, what do you think happens when the check for the meal comes? You might want to pick up the check to thank him, but if he cared enough about you to give you thousands upon thousands of dollars, do you think he cares about you enough to pay the $40 for lunch?
That’s Paul’s argument in Romans about our relationship with God: if God loved you enough to save you from your sins and to give you eternal life, isn’t he also going to take care of you until you get there? We sang that in our psalm this morning in the beautiful words of Psalm 121, “I lift up my eyes to the mountains—where does my help come from? My help comes from the LORD, the maker of heaven and earth” (vv. 1-2, NIV2011). In times of trial or danger or fear, where can we look with absolute confidence for help and rescue? To our God who not only made the universe but also made us and is preparing an eternal place for us.
This, then, is John’s closing point in our brief Second Reading for this morning: This is the confidence that we have before him: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And if we know that he hears us—whatever we ask—we also know that we receive the things we have asked from him. In any time of difficulty, in need or want, when you pray to God, you are not bringing requests to an unjust judge as in Jesus’ parable. No, you are coming to the all-powerful creator and preserver of the universe, who also happens to love you so much that he lived and died for you to save you from hell. My dear Christian, does that not fill our hearts with confidence as we lay out our concerns before him?
John reminds us that we do well to ask things according to his will, that is, we’re not asking for sinful things. And likewise, we know that God will answer in a way that is eternally best for us, even if that means that the answer is “no,” or (more likely) something different and far better than we had initially requested from him.
Not a day, not a moment goes by in this life where you are not in the shelter and care of the God who created you, loves you, and rescued you. The confidence to trust him at all times is as much a gift of his grace as anything else. Bring your prayers to him—be bold and persistent!—confident that he will hear you, answer you, and love you now and forever! Amen.
