He then proceeds to remind them of one especial
blessing, the fruit of this relation to God into which they have entered through faith. "And this is the confidence that we have in him, that if we ask anything according to his will, he heareth us. And if we know that he hear us, whatsoever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we desired of him."

Thus John regards it as the fruit of faith, that God is no longer to them a God afar off. The chasm is now closed which separated man from his Creator, -- from Him who is over all worlds, God in his infinitude, in his incomprehensibility, in his holiness. They now hold a filial relation to him, enjoy continual intercourse with him, in all their necessities can turn to him with filial confidence as to a father and friend. In him they have ever at hand one in whom help, counsel, and comfort are to be found. It is this living relation to God as our Father, -- continually mediated through faith in Christ as the Son of God, through conscious fellowship with him, -- which constitutes true Christianity as a matter of the life. To this childlike confidence, leading us to prayer and enjoyed in prayer, the Apostle attaches a high import. Prayer he makes the soul of the whole christian life. Having previously said, that prayer in the name of Christ is ever heard by the Father; he now adds the condition, that we pray according to his will. The one is involved in the other, as we have already shown. He who prays in the name of Christ, is moved and guided by the Spirit of Christ in prayer. He can ask for nothing, but that which is in accordance with the will of God; can with assurance ask only that, which the Spirit of Christ makes known to him in prayer, as corresponding to the Father's will. When this certainty is wanting, his prayer will always be accompanied with the condition, that the desire arising in his soul and taking the form of prayer, may have for its object something which the Father approves.

From this we are not to conclude, however, that prayer in itself can have no definite effect, since whatever is grounded in the will of God must happen in any case. Nor are we to suppose that prayer, by bringing man into this living relation to his Source of being and his Father, therein alone accomplishes its whole work upon the inner life; that its whole influence is seen in the holy temper of mind which it produces, and which naturally flows from the elevation of the soul above itself and the world to God, entering into living intercourse with him, and losing itself in him. It is true indeed, that herein consists one of the chief blessings of prayer; but this is not all which prayer effects. And even this effect would not be fully realized, if prayer were not something more than the mere objective contemplation of the Divine. For it presupposes the assured consciousness, that the relation to God into which we enter by prayer is a living personal relation, as of one individual person with another, in which both are mutually acted on; that he perceives that, which our spirit in directing to him its feelings and thoughts would have him perceive. In this it is necessarily implied, that our prayer for a definite object will not be in vain. This the Apostle indicates, when he speaks of a hearing of prayer. Prayer is the soul's necessity, breathed forth to God with filial confidence and submission, in the consciousness of that living relation to him as father; it must therefore, in rising to God, find satisfaction in reference to that which is the object of want. True indeed, prayer cannot in the proper sense constrain the will of God, -- a thought which is excluded by the very nature of this filial relation to him. But the actualization of the divine will excludes not intermediate causes; and among the chief of these is prayer. Passing beyond the outward and finite of the earthly world, as presented in space and time; beyond the natural connection of phenomena; as an invisible spiritual force, it penetrates with its agency to the very heart of the invisible world. Itself the breath of love, its workings are in unison with the laws of the invisible kingdom of love. It belongs not to that which can be mechanically estimated, -- like all that is highest, and deepest, and innermost. Prayer is the highest act of the God-related spirit, entering into that living relation to God for which it was created. Prayer, grounded in fellowship with Christ as here represented by John, presupposes that power derived from God, whereby the soul is winged for this its loftiest flight, whence it receives this its highest energy of burning aspiration. This power tends back to the Primal Source from which it flows. It is a special gift, bestowed on man as a member of the invisible world, whereby he may lay hold on the invisible. It is one of his homeborn rights; enjoyed already here, as pertaining to that heaven -where he belongs, and which shall one day be his home. So certainly will prayer be heard, that christians, while they pray, should be inspired with the assurance that what they ask is virtually received already.