The prayers of repentant sinners.

Far too often I hear Christians claim God doesn’t answer the prayers of sinners.

I’ve read loads of books on prayer, and I find this is a recurring theme in just about all of them. For some of the writers, it’s their favorite theme: “The reason people don’t get their prayers answered, no matter how much they pray, is they won’t stop sinning. You gotta stop sinning!”

For proof, they quote verses like this one:

Isaiah 59.1-2 CSB

1Indeed, the LORD’s arm is not too weak to save,

and his ear is not too deaf to hear.

2But your iniquities are separating you

from your God,

and your sins have hidden his face from you

so that he does not listen.

Or this one:

Proverbs 15.29 CSB

The LORD is far from the wicked,

but he hears the prayer of the righteous.

Or this one:

Micah 3.4 CSB

“Then they will cry out to the LORD,

but he will not answer them.

He will hide his face from them at that time

because of the crimes they have committed.

Or this one:

John 9.32 CSB

“We know that God doesn’t listen to sinners, but if anyone is God-fearing and does his will, he listens to him.”

There are loads more, and I can easily go on, but you get the gist. It’s not at all hard to find bible passages which straight-up say God refuses to heed the prayers of evildoers.

There is, however, a vital element to all these scriptures which authors and preachers routinely skip. Some of ’em do in fact point it out. More often they just don’t. It’s the fact that when the writers of the bible say God won’t listen to sinners, they always mean unrepentant sinners. People who sin, expect to sin again, and never intend to stop.

Not people who sometimes sin, but strive to sin no more. You know, repentant sinners. Like every saint in the bible. Like you—I hope!

Unrepentant sinners. Which I expect you’re not.

There are lots of reasons why Christians are unrepentant sinners, though I tend to lump them into these two categories:

1. They’re oblivious: They don’t realize they’re sinning. Even though it’s fairly obvious to everyone else—particularly those whom they’ve sinned against.
2. They figured out a loophole which allows them to quiet their consciences and commit certain sins.

The two biggest loopholes would be dispensationalism (the belief certain things aren’t sins anymore) and cheap grace (since God forgives all, we needn’t worry about goodness). Yes there are other loopholes, but the general idea is we know better—and we’re pretty sure we figured out how to get a heavenly hall pass.

If you’re reading TXAB because you wanna get serious about your relationship with Jesus, I’m gonna assume you are a repentant sinner. As am I. We’ve all made mistakes; we’ve all done stuff God doesn’t approve of; we’ve all repented of that behavior and are trying to not repeat it. We’ve asked the Holy Spirit and fellow Christians to alert us when we unknowingly slip up. And when we do slip up, we try, try again—because God’s given us unlimited grace to try again, and with his support and strength we might finally get it right.

So as repentant sinners, God does hear us. You’ve read your bible, right? Every single human being who has a relationship with God in it (again, except Jesus) is a repentant sinner. And when they pray, God hears ’em! They’re our examples of how God hears people and answers prayer. So are our fellow Christians, and whenever they share a story of God answering prayer, you know right there you got another example of God listening to a repentant sinner.

No, God’s not always gonna answer our prayers with, “Okay, I’ll get right on it.” Sometimes he tells us no. If we really do mean it when we pray “Your will be done,” we understand God knows best; if his answer is no, it really should be no. And just because we have a right standing with God—we trust him, we’re actively following Jesus—it’s still no guarantee we’re gonna get absolutely every request granted. If Jesus didn’t get “Take this cup away from me” granted, it’d be stupid to claim we should ever merit a 100 percent requests-granted rate.

But here’s the thing about too many of the folks who preach, “God won’t listen to sinners”: They often expect we should receive that 100 percent requests-granted rate. And they’ll often claim the reason we aren’t, has gotta be because there’s unconfessed, unrepentant sin in our lives. Gotta be. ’Cause it’s the only explanation they can think of.

Yeah, I know; they’re numpties. You might recall Jesus’s students made the very same mistake.

John 9.1-3 CSB

1As he was passing by, he saw a man blind from birth. 2His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”

3“Neither this man nor his parents sinned,” Jesus answered. “This came about so that God’s works might be displayed in him.”

Then Jesus displayed God’s works in him by curing him.

But as Jesus said, neither this guy nor his parents sinned. No doubt both he and his parents had prayed multiple times for him to be cured of blindness, and up to then God’s answer had been “Not yet.” But since it looked like the answer was “No,” Jesus’s kids automatically assumed it was a no, and unrepentant sin was the cause. (As did the Pharisees who later threw this guy out of synagogue. Jn 9.34)

This guy’s story is the source of one of the proof texts I listed at the beginning of this article. He’s the guy who said, “We know that God doesn’t listen to sinners.” Jn 9.32 And again, yeah—God doesn’t care to listen to unrepentant sinners. He doesn’t want to reward their unfaith, their gracelessness, and their evil. Nor does he want his actions to look like they do reward or condone such behavior. That is what the scriptures intend to teach us.

But as you know, people often have their own ideas of what they want the scriptures to say, and don’t care about the scriptures’ actual context. They wanna condemn sinners. As opposed to Jesus, who’s here to save us, not condemn us. Jn 3.17 But that’s why they’re so fixated on the consequences of sin, they ignore the fact—backed up by way more proof texts than they have!—that God does listen to, and answers the prayers of, repentant sinners. He answers mine. He’ll answer yours.