<p>5:16 <i>If anyone sees his brother sinning a sin not unto death, he shall ask and God will give him life for them that sin not to death-</i> The 'asking' here must be understood in the context of teaching about 'asking' and definitely receiving in :15; it is through possessing the Spirit, the Comforter, that we have the Lord 'doing' things in response to what we ask (Jn. 14:13,14; 15:7,16; 16:23-26- all a major emphasis). For those who sin not unto death, it seems that our prayers definitely can 'work' in recovering them; for this is the Lord's will, and all we ask according to that will shall be granted. This is a phenomenal challenge to our prayerfulness, rather than observing others slipping away and shrugging our shoulders, or politely lamenting it to others. In response to such prayers, God will &quot;give life&quot; to the person prayed for; the life in view is the life lived by and in the Lord Jesus, His life, His Spirit. It is of course true that in some ways, we are ultimately responsible for our own salvation; our brethren can&rsquo;t really help us, if we wilfully chose to rebel against our calling. And yet there is reason to think that up to a certain point, our prayers and pastoral concern for our brethren can save them, whereas without our effort they would not be saved. James 5:15,20 say the same: &ldquo;...the prayer of faith (uttered by faithful friends) shall save the sick (struck down with sickness as a result of his sin, which seems to have happened in the first century, cp. 1 Cor. 11:30; Acts 5:5) ... and if he have committed sins, they shall be forgiven him. Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that you may be healed... he who converts the sinner from the error of his way shall save a soul from death, and shall hide a multitude of sins&rdquo;. Behold the power of freewill effort for others: For the sake of our prayers, in some cases sins of others can be forgiven when otherwise they wouldn&rsquo;t be. For the sake of our conversion of our erring brethren, they can be saved from eternal death and have their sins covered. The Lord&rsquo;s prayer says as much- we ask God to forgive us <i>our </i>sins; not &lsquo;me my sins&rsquo;. Likewise only once Israel had passed a certain level of sinfulness was Jeremiah told to cease prayer for them (Jer. 7:16 cp. 11:14). Until that point, God seems to have been willing to read Jeremiah&rsquo;s prayer for them as their prayer (his &ldquo;cry&rdquo; was seen as theirs). And Ez. 14:14,18 imply the same- Noah, Daniel and Job could have delivered Israel up to a certain point, but they were <i>so</i> hardened in sin at Ezekiel&rsquo;s time that even those men wouldn&rsquo;t have saved a nation which otherwise, for a lower level of sin as it were, they could otherwise have saved. If we have any grain of love in us, we will likewise dedicate ourselves to fervent prayer for our brethren, seeing it does have effect and validity within certain boundaries.</p><p><i>There is a sin unto death. Not concerning this do I say that he should make requests</i>- The allusion is to blasphemy of the Holy Spirit (Mk. 3:29). In the context, John is up against the problem of Judaist infiltrators who falsely claimed to have the Holy Spirit, but who did not openly confess the Lord as Messiah and Son of God, and who were consciously trying to destroy the Christian movement (cp. Gal. 2:4). Paul was up against these same blasphemers of the Spirit in Corinth and Ephesus (as per 1 Timothy). These men were not to be prayed for in the same sense as weak but genuine believers were to be prayed for.</p>