Of Religious Worship, and the Sabbath Day, XXI:4

Prayer is to be made for things lawful; and for all sorts of men living, or that shall live hereafter: but not for the dead, nor for those of whom it may be known that they have sinned the sin unto death.

Here the Confession expands on its treatment of prayer with four additional statements.

1. We may legitimately pray for lawful things, that is, for things of which God approves or which God commands. We acknowledge him as the source of all good things, our salvation as well as certain material needs. We recognize him as the reigning sovereign, that he has all things in his hand. Implied here is a prohibition against praying for unlawful things. For instance, we may certainly not pray that God would assist us to commit a crime or that we would escape the just penalty for our misdeeds.

2. Prayers may be made on behalf of all sorts of living men. Any one of our contemporaries is a fit subject for prayer. We may also pray for posterity. The church has a future; it is certainly right to pray for that.

3. However, prayers should not be made on behalf of the dead, for their eternal fate is already sealed. We can do nothing to enhance the current blissful state of the dead in Christ and nothing to improve the lot of those paying the penalty for their own sins apart from Christ.

4. Also, we are not to pray for anyone who is known to have committed "the sin unto death." The reference here is to 1 John 5:6-7, which is a difficult verse to interpret. What may be in mind here is the man who has consciously and finally rejected the gospel, which is one common way of looking at the so-called blasphemy against the Spirit. But in this life it is very hard to tell when any one person is so hardened that he or she will never come to Christ--history is full of persons beyond all human help whom God has graciously rescued. Since none of us can read the heart of another with complete confidence and accuracy the charitable thing may be to persevere in prayer for him. I believe I would rather face God having prayed "too much" than too little.

Tomorrow: The other elements of biblical worship