Matthew 21:21-22 Jesus answered and said unto them,
Verily I say unto you, If ye have faith, and doubt not, ye shall not only do
this which is done to the fig tree, but also if ye shall say unto this
mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; it shall be done. And
all things, whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive.
Matthew 18:19 Again I say unto you, That if two of
you shall agree on earth as touching any thing that they shall ask, it shall be
done for them of my Father which is in heaven.
1 John 5:14-15 And this is the confidence that we
have in him, that, if we ask any thing 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.
Verses like these have engendered two opposite
reactions. The first is from Skeptics, who say things like, "Honest
Christians know that these verses are false. It does no good to claim that many
prayers are unanswered because they are not 'according to his will.' Even
prayers that are clearly in line with the expressed 'will of God' are rarely
successful." On the other hand, some within Christendom use these verses
for the purpose of trying to get rich.
One is constrained to ask, of course, where it is
any Skeptic has recorded the "expressed will of God". But it is
needful to closely examine these verses and dispel arguments and misuses from
both sides of the fence.
Matthew 18:19 -- First, as always, context is important, and let's
see in what context this verse is offered:
Matthew 18:15-20 Moreover if thy brother shall
trespass against thee, go and tell him his fault between thee and him alone: if
he shall hear thee, thou hast gained thy brother. But if he will not hear thee,
then take with thee one or two more, that in the mouth of two or three
witnesses every word may be established. And if he shall neglect to hear them,
tell it unto the church: but if he neglect to hear the church, let him be unto
thee as a heathen man and a publican. Verily I say unto you, Whatsoever ye shall
bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever ye shall loose on earth
shall be loosed in heaven. Again I say unto you, That if two of you shall agree
on earth as touching any thing that they shall ask, it shall be done for them
of my Father which is in heaven. For where two or three are gathered together
in my name, there am I in the midst of them.
Some critics illicitly isolate Matthew 18:19 from
its context to make it look like a general instruction on how to pray for
whatever you want in any context. This is erroneous.
This passage follows instructions for pursuing
"sheep" (members of the believing community) who go astray. Verses
15-18 are further instructions for community discipline. Verse 19 is an
amplification on verse 18, using the "Again, I say unto you" which
indicates an expansion of what has been noted previously. Thus, even so far we
see that whatever verse 19 means, it isrestricted to the context of
discipline within the believing community of Christ. It is not a license to
request anything.
So then, in this context, what is this prayer for?
Verse 18 refers to binding and loosing, a metaphor in this period to judicial
authority. The allusion is to the fact that in Jewish thought of the time,
"the halakic decisions of the community have the authority of heaven
itself." [Keener, 454] The word for "thing" (pragma) is
"a term frequently limited to judicial matters." (Blomberg commentary
on Matthew, 281; Harrington commentary on Matthew, 269).
The reference to two agreeing mirrors the situation
in a Jewish court representing the community in which two out of three
witnesses agree. "where the Shekinah abides with the court that judges
justly" (Hagner commentary on Matthew, 533) The action described (v. 17)
is the disfellowship of an unrepentant sinner from the
community of believers, something which in turn is recognized in Heaven. This
is the only context for this instruction. It does not even
have tangible, earthly results; it is an issue of status.
Whether this was an irreversible procedure --
whether the apostasy was permanent -- is a topic reserved for our discussion on
perseverance of the saints (link 1 below). However, Keener notes that
"Jewish excommunication even in its long-term form was normally reversible
if repentance took place".
Matthew 21:21-22 (also
Matthew 7:7-8, John 14:13-14) -- This one might seem be more difficult to
defend, as it mayu be charged that there's no context here to fall back on. But
in fact, there is. Here are some considerations.
How realistic is it to think that this is a license
to overturn topographical features? This is certainly an example of hyperbole,
indeed, of the same sort used in Luke 14:26 (link 2 below). The phrase
"moving mountains" was "a Jewish metaphor for accomplishing what
was difficult or virtually impossible" and "points to the hyperbole
of what is being said" (Hagner, 605) Later rabbis would ask for signs
validating their views consisting of objects being uprooted.
At this point is would be fruitless to argue that
this verse means that if you have faith, whatever you want will be
done, maybe not mountain-moving, but surely big stuff of some kind. Some of our
preachers may say, "If that thing you wanted didn't get done, you didn't
have enough faith."
We may explain this by noting that the person with
faith does not ask for that which God would not or does not will; prayer is a
two-way street, not a request hotline for all that we want. This is not just a
brush-off or a simplistic solution, but is grounded in the realities and
thought of the time of the Bible. In Jewish thought, God was sovereign. Nothing
happened that God did not permit or cause. "Early Jewish teaching did
celebrate God's kindness in answering prayer, but rarely promises such
universal answers to prayer to all of God's people as the language
suggests." [Keener, 245]
Only a small number of sages were considered pious
enough to ask for and receive whatever they wanted -- and that piety
was their key indicates that they weren't going around asking for just anything they
wanted (like Hanina ben Dosa, and Honi the Circle-Drawer), but only what they
supposed to be in the will of God. "Such a call to believing prayer
supposes a heart of piety submitted to God's will..."
Finally, let us note that limitations are clearly
set by the context, in two ways. First: The Lord's Prayer instructs us to pray
for daily needs (Matt. 6:11) -- it does not say, "Give us this day a Rolls
Royce." Earthly children ask for bread or fish (7:9-10) which are
"basic staples in the Palestinian diet" that were provided to
children on a regular basis. We can ask for "good things" (7:11), a
term which sometimes referred to prosperity generally, but also "referred
to agricultural produce that the righteous would share with with others (Test.
Iss. 3:7-8)."
Second, we need to come to these texts on their own
semantic terms. When reading a passage like John 14 that we read (in modern
English) as promising the moon, we need to factor in both ancient
"dramatic orientation" (re: hyperbole, as above) as well as honor
issues. Take this passage from Mark 6:
And when the daughter of the said Herodias came in,
and danced, and pleased Herod and them that sat with him, the king said unto
the damsel, Ask of me whatsoever thou wilt, and I will give it thee. And he
sware unto her, Whatsoever thou shalt ask of me, I will give it thee, unto the
half of my kingdom.
Now with a promise like this, if it were actually
literal, one would have to assume that the girl's immediate answer would be
along the lines of, "Okay, I'll take the north half, please." After
all, with that kind of power, she could get her mother John the Baptist's head
anyway. The answer is as I noted in an article on the above:
[Objection:] How could Herod pledge half his
kingdom? That's obviously ridiculous, and it wasn't really his kingdom to give
away —it was Rome's....the "extravagant offer of an Oriental
potentate excited by wine" [Hoehner, 150] would not likely be meant to be
taken seriously anyway; certainly the girl didn't take it seriously...In fact,
both statements are likely reflective of a proverbial pledge: "to offer a
half of one's possessions was a favorite expression." (1 Kings 13:8, Luke
19:8) It simply meant that the person was exceedingly grateful and wished to
bestow a generous reward.
By the same token, it is a decontextualization to
take passages like these on prayer as literal promises that are to be taken
advantage of. Promises like Herod's were made with the full understanding that
they were dramatic hyperbole, not an ironclad, literal guarantee. That we may
not want this to be true does not make it untrue, of course,
and the desire for the comfort that a literal reading may provide is not a
reason to preserve that reading. If the girl had gone on and asked for half the
kingdom, it would have been considered shameful to have done so.
Consider as well this greeting I have noted
elsewhere as typical for a Middle Easterner: "You have extremely honored
me by coming into my abode. I am not worthy of it. This house is yours; you may
burn it if you wish. My children are also at your disposal; I would sacrifice
them all for your pleasure."
How literal do we think that is meant to be? The
answer: As literal as the "prayer promises" are. But you would hardly
say, if the man didn't actually want you to burn his house down, that he was
being unwelcoming; so there is no leave to say that unless God fulfills these
"prayer promises" literally, He must be unloving.
This leads to 1 John 5:14-15, which was
written to Gentile readers, and thus it is appropriate that John added the
qualifying phrase, "according to his will" -- such a qualifier would
have been unnecessary for Jesus' Jewish audience. It would go without saying
that that mountain (even a literal one) would go nowhere without God's approval
implied. Indeed, the rabbinic use of the same verbiage which we have noted
confirms this. Matthew does indicate this limitation when he notes that the
context is what is asked for in prayer -- thus limiting
requests to what is within the will of God.
Now let's look at other verses sometimes cited to
"prove" the inefficacy of prayer:
Luke 22:31-3 "Simon, Simon, Satan has asked to
sift you as wheat. But I have prayed for you, Simon, that your faith may not
fail. And when you have turned back, strengthen your brothers."
Since Peter's faith did "fail", the
critics say, prayer must be worthless. Our arguments above suggest that the
oibjection is misguided: If it was not in God's will to prop up Peter's faith,
so be it; and one can hardly argue that things didn't turn out for the better.
Peter's experience of failure undoubtedly was an experience that honed him into
the powerhouse that he became.
Even so, this prayer did not fail
-- the word "fail" (ekleipo), used only three times, twice in
Luke and in Hebrews once, refers to a quite permanent condition (Luke 16:9 And
I say unto you, Make to yourselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness;
that, when ye fail, they may receive you into everlasting
habitations.; Hebrews 1:12 And as a vesture shalt thou fold them up, and they
shall be changed: but thou art the same, and thy years shall not fail.)
Peter's courage left him, but he never actually stopped believing in Jesus --
indeed, the passage assumes he will have a failure of some kind, and then turn
around ("converted" -- the word is used to mean turning around).
So we are left with this: These passages are not
mantras to get anything we want, and should not be used as such.