13"That you may know that you have eternal life." The verse is the closest thing the letter has to a purpose statement, and it echoes the end of John's Gospel. The Gospel was written to bring people to faith. This letter is written to people who already believe, to give them assurance. John wants his readers to know. The Greek word, *oida*, describes settled knowledge, the kind a person holds as a fact. It appears six times in these verses, every time as a note of certainty, and the present tense matters too. Eternal life is held now.
Then John turns to prayer. 14"If we ask anything according to his will he hears us." The word for confidence, *parresia*, is the boldness John has used through the letter for speaking freely to God. The condition is stated plainly, according to his will. Prayer in John is an alignment with what God wants. A person who keeps his commandments has begun to want what God wants, and asking follows from that. 15"We know that we have the requests that we have asked of him." The hearing is the sure thing, and the answer is held in the hearing.
Then the letter includes one of its hardest passages. 16"If anyone sees his brother committing a sin not leading to death, he shall ask, and God will give him life." The instruction is to pray for a fellow believer who has stumbled, and the promise is that prayer gives life. Interpreters have struggled with the sin that leads to death, and several commentaries tie it to the crisis behind the whole letter, abandoning the confession of Christ to join teachers who denied him. The next verse gives a balance: 17"There is sin that does not lead to death." Almost everything we ordinarily call failure falls in that category, and the command is to pray for those who fall there.
Three statements follow, each beginning with we know. The first is about protection. 18"He who was born of God protects him." The verb for protects is the verb John used for keeping commandments in 2:3. We keep his commandments, and the Son keeps us. The second is about identity. We are from God, and 19"the whole world lies in the power of the evil one." The third is about the Son, who 20"has given us understanding." The last line of the thought is 20"He is the true God and eternal life."
That sentence closes a circle. The letter opened with the eternal life that was with the Father and was made manifest to the apostles, and it ends by saying who that life is. Everything between is an unpacking of it.
Then comes a short final line. 21"Keep yourselves from idols." An idol, in the Greek, is an *eidolon*, a phantom or image. The teachers who left had produced a phantom Christ, a spiritualized figure who never took a body or died a death. To keep from idols is to keep hold of the true God who came in the flesh. Any picture of God fashioned to suit us is a phantom of this kind. John says keep yourselves right after saying the Son keeps us, and God's keeping and our vigilance are partners.
Ask what image of God you have been carrying that belongs with the phantoms.
Prayer
Father, you have given us eternal life, and you have given it in your Son, who is the true God and eternal life. Let us know that we have it. Teach us to pray according to your will, and give us confidence that you hear us. Protect us from the evil one, and keep us from every idol and every false image of you. In Jesus' name, amen.