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23 In that day you will no longer ask me anything. Very truly I tell you, my Father will give you whatever you ask in my name. 24 Until now you have not asked for anything in my name. Ask and you will receive, and your joy will be complete. 25 “Though I have been speaking figuratively, a time is coming when I will no longer use this kind of language but will tell you plainly about my Father. 26 In that day you will ask in my name. I am not saying that I will ask the Father on your behalf. 27 No, the Father himself loves you because you have loved me and have believed that I came from God. 28 I came from the Father and entered the world; now I am leaving the world and going back to the Father.” ~ John 16:23-28
In context, the Lord Jesus is preparing the disciples to continue in the faith despite His impending absence. The process which leads to joy is through prayer. And, despite our hardships and pain, prayer is evidence that we have received the DNA of God, the Holy Spirit.
The key in today's text is in the phrase, "in my name" which means, asking in accordance with the Lord Jesus' will, in His merit and in His authority. To ask in anyone's name means to ask as though we were that person. This means we are to ask for what Jesus would want, what He is after, and not for our own desires. It was Mother Teresa who said, "Prayer is not asking. Prayer is putting oneself in the hands of God, at His disposition, and listening to His voice in the depth of our hearts."
Prayer is not a means by which we get God to do what we want. Prayer is a means by which God does through us what He wants, and it is a very necessary part of the process that we pray. Most believe prayer is the means of getting God to do what we want, but prayer is a way of aligning our wills with the will of God. Soren Kierkegaard once said, "Prayer does not change God, but it changes him who prays." It would be quite arrogant of us to raise our will above God's.
Prayer enables believers to converse with God and thus make sense of our pain. In our text, the Lord Jesus describes our relationship with God through prayer. He uses two different Greek words translated “ask.” The first one has to do with asking questions. The second has to do with making requests.
In v.23, the Lord Jesus says, "In that day you will no longer ask me anything." Then He says, "Very truly I tell you, my Father will give you whatever you ask in my name." The Lord Jesus is describing two kinds of asking.
In v.23, He says, "In that day (in the day when the Spirit comes) you will no longer ask me anything. Due to the work accomplished on the cross of the Lord Jesus, we can go straight to the Father. Our curiosity and our lack of understanding is settled by coming to the Father, because we now have access to Him and can converse with Him.
He goes on to say in v.24, "Until now you have not asked for anything in my name. Ask and you will receive, and your joy will be complete." The disciples had not asked the Father in the Lord Jesus' name, that is in His merit and in His authority. The Lord Jesus earned this privilege for the believer by paying the penalty of our sin on the cross. As a result, our joy would be made full. There's that theme again ... fullness. But this time it is His joy made full in those once empty. The thing that once gave the disciples sorrow will be turned into joy.
The world's way of dealing with its pain is to change the circumstance, but to no avail. But God has a process by which when we bring our struggles to Him, He uses our struggles to deliver His joy in our lives.
In v.25-27, we read, "25 “Though I have been speaking figuratively, a time is coming when I will no longer use this kind of language but will tell you plainly about my Father. 26 In that day you will ask in my name. I am not saying that I will ask the Father on your behalf. 27 No, the Father himself loves you because you have loved me and have believed that I came from God.”
To this point, the disciples were not aware of the unique relationship the Lord Jesus had with the Father. He had a dependence upon the Father, a trust of the Father, and a fellowship and communion with the Father which they knew nothing about. They had relied upon Jesus to obtain for them privilege and favor with the Father. But now, they can access the Father themselves, directly, because He bridged the gap that separated them from the Father through His cross.
The believer in the Lord Jesus has been granted the perfect position before the Father and has access to Him not because we behaved well enough, but because we believe that the sacrifice of the Lord Jesus on the cross purchased that perfect standing before Him.
Many believe that if they live a good enough life, God will give them a wink and overlook that which separates them from Him. They forget Romans 6:23 which reads, "the wages of sin is death but the free gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord."
Then, when life doesn't turn out the way they think it should, they say, "Why should this happen to me? "It's not fair, Lord! Here I've been doing good for you, and this is the way you treat me! It's not fair!"
This is the worst kind of theology. Quid pro quo with God. But nowhere in the Scriptures do we read that His acceptance of us is based on our goodness. No, we can not be good enough to pay for our own sinfulness. God does not love us on the basis of how we behave, He loves us because we believe that His Son earned our standing before Him. As a result, as the Lord Jesus reminds us in v.26-27, we have a direct relationship with the Father, because He sees us through the perfect lens of His perfect Son.
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