This message is targeted at newly baptized Jackson and Liam…while we listen in. Congratulations and hallelujah on this occasion. Let’s pause and consider what to expect in this existence that is baptized in Christ Jesus, raised to new life, a life toward God.
Jackson and Liam, you are being saved and your baptism is an important milestone in that. You have come into something massive. In Romans, the letter to the church in Rome, Paul is explaining the history of this victory of God over evil that will eventually end up in salvation throughout the cosmos.
And Romans 8 is considered the high point of this letter. Please, everyone, would you turn there? In this chapter Paul is reveling in what we come into when we believe the Creator’s Gospel.
But, there’s a shadow that keeps showing up in these sentences. As Paul writes to the church in the capitol city of the world’s lone superpower, in v.23 he remembers they – even after having been saved by the Gospel – are groaning. We are claimed by God, already justified, yet waiting for the redemption. The world, the flesh, and the devil aren’t letting us go easily. And while we wait we’re experiencing some pain.
Scan through Romans 8 to review some of these painful things:
v. 10 – the body is dead because of sin – we live in a world and in a body that is dying even while we believe the great renewal of creation has already begun in the resurrection of Christ. There’s distress both in the decline and in the apparent contradiction.
v. 13 – if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body – Christ has died and we are baptized into his death. Among other things this means that there are habits – habits acquired through living with a body in a fallen world – that a Christian must put to death. Kill with skill. Put to death implies that this will be at least a little painful.
v. 16 – heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him – suffering as a Christian isn’t just one possible route but rather the necessary condition on our way to glory
v. 22- the creation has been groaning together and we v. 23…groan inwardly – the inwardlysuggests that this suffering isn’t put on, but genuine. Like when Hannah a few days ago was groaning, she wasn’t reading from a script but involved in real pain due to a real birth!
v. 36 – For your sake we are being killed all the day long/ we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered – as we are loyal to Christ and his word while ordering our public life within our family and community and state, the Church is sometimes ridiculed, put on the margins, opposed, very occasionally killed.
So, exactly while he talks up our salvation, Paul also highlights our present hardship. There are people who repent and believe the gospel and suppose that now they will have an easy life. In actuality, Jackson and Liam, you have entered into some unique suffering, the with Christ kind.
So, if believing the Gospel brings on a new kind of suffering, then why call it “Good news”? What kind of salvation is it that makes things worse?
And there are a few responses. V. 6 – Armed with the understanding given by the Spirit, even as we pass through trials we can experience fullness of life and peace that simply isn’t possible without the Spirit. V. 28 – We are encouraged by the realization that the suffering that is connected to Christ is productive. The Spirit is in it, working out all things for good. The suffering you experience is analogous to fixing some drywall, but then you discover the studs are rotted, then you discover the gutters have a leak… It often feels like moving backward but it’s all progress and moving forward but. V. 17 – And we understand that the path of suffering with Christ now leads to glory then. Glory! Glory!
And here’s one more perspective on a Christian’s suffering:
26 Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words.
There are in this letter a few references to God the Holy Spirit before Romans 8, but now, in a veritable cascade, in this chapter Paul pours out ways the Person of the Holy Spirit is working in our salvation.
Including this: Likewise, the Spirit helps us in our weakness.
Jackson and Liam, it was by the Spirit you were baptized into Christ’s body. He’s joined you into the holy and ancient community.
In mulling that over and testing that truth, you might look around for signs of new competency – in yourself or in the Church. But Paul’s point here is this: We’re weak…groaning. But not groaning on our own. The Church and individual members of it are often frustrated and perplexed. But the Spirit isn’t apart from this frustration and perplexity. He is God with us, a present Helper to aid Gospel-believers, the children of God, Christ’s Community.
The Spirit himself has shown up to help us. Paul wants to emphasize that it’s God, the Holy Spirit who is arrived to us. No, Jackson and Liam, you haven’t been assigned an angel or even an archangel. The text stresses: the Spirit Himself has seen our fundamental weakness…and He falls in with us, stands up for us, picks up the heavy end.
Imagine showing up for your first day of work at a multinational corporation, and there to orient and instruct you is the founder and COO of the company. And then, look, he returns on day 2, then again on day 3, and every day going forward… and you discover that he sees it as his role to personally train you into the work. But not just for the position you were hired to do, he’s shaping you to eventually lead the company alongside him. Over time you see that he’s not stunting your development by coddling you but he’s bringing you alongside him into harder work, more complex scenarios, delicate conversations. Though even as you gain competence you never leave behind the fact that this job is always too big for you!
Sometimes you stop and pinch yourself: I can’t believe that the founder of this company – the Founder! – who has taken it from ground 0 into this huge success… is totally invested in me.
Sometimes, Church, we should pinch ourselves: the One who brought forth the color yellow, who installed the finchiness into finches, who has long gone out to war against the threatening floods of evil, by whom Samson brought down the pillars around the Philistines, whose power was the power by which Christ rose from the dead – THIS ONE IS IN OUR MIDST, YEA, HOLDING US IN HIS RIGHT HAND, SHAPING US INTO LORDS OVER THE NEW CREATION.
Jackson and Liam: Receive the Spirit’s aid by daily taking up the sword of the Spirit, the word of God. My suggestion is that every day you read a chapter in Proverbs, a Psalm, and a chapter in the New Testament. Read with an open notebook and jot down phrases or sentences to mull over throughout the day. Be filled with God’s Spirit.
OK, review: We – the community of Christ – are characterized now by an ever-present weakness. We won’t grow past our weakness. Our weakness especially shows up in that we don’t know what to pray for as we ought.
Wait, we don’t know how to pray? We might inwardly balk at hearing this. For one thing, Scripture has plenty to say about prayer. It has plenty of examples of people praying. We’re given a template by which to pray: Our Father who art in heaven… Paul tells us a few times how he is praying. He asks the church to pray for various things. So how can Paul now say we don’t even know how to pray?
And further, it’s one thing when we’re told we don’t know how to preach, or to understand obscure passages… but isn’t prayer the most basic and simple activity that a Christian can do? Several times I’ve had people who never darken the door of a church, don’t read their Bible, say to me, I pray every night before I go to bed.
So why would Paul say that we don’t know what to pray for as we ought?
There are two senses in which we don’t know what to pray for. Jackson and Liam, all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. And the Spirit will sometimes lead you into situations in which the right answers aren’t clear. Not only will doing the right thing be hard but you won’t even know what the right thing is. You’re weak; you need help outside of yourself. You need divine help.
But there’s a deeper sense in which we don’t know what to pray for as we ought. Perhaps we could illuminate this by asking some questions: According to the Gospel that Paul sets forth in Romans, the Church will enter the age to come. What will that be like? What should you do today to prepare for what you’ll be doing then? What does the Church need right now from God with that big picture in view? What seems pressing now that in the light of that Day will be unimportant? To what extent do our decisions now affect our experience in the age to come?
Let’s keep going: Write down all the ways that sin has interfered with your reasoning. What practices and outlooks have been passed down from your parents and grandparents that are weighing you down in this new life toward God? What do you fear that is actually harmless? What should you be fearing instead? Are you completely aware of how your environment is attempting to mold you into its image?
Let’s talk about prayer specifically: Every time you pray does God hear you the same way as every other time? Could you hold habits of heart or life that annoy God and will likely move Him to be less generous with you than He otherwise would be? When your mind wanders in prayer, does God always hang with you? Is there a certain amount of interruption that negates the prayer? When are we fully engaged in prayer?
Basic questions: How much faith do you have? Under some pressure, will your faith fold? How much pain in your life now would be good for you?
Jackson and Liam: When we begin to ask questions about who we are, what is the state of our heart, what it means to pray, to be heard in prayer, what is in front of us, what is important…– what strikes us is how little we know. In several senses, we don’t even know what to ask for.
Here’s a reminder for us not to be arrogant of what we know. At key points we’re in the dark – like old Job who didn’t realize that his situation could largely be explained by knowing about a conversation between the Creator and Satan.
But more to the point of this passage: here is an encouragement that we will be brought into situations that are too big and too deep for us… and that we are indeed always over our heads in many ways … and yet the Spirit is not perplexed or confounded.
But the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words
We are weak – reckon with that. But even though the weakness is a fact, it is not a deciding factor, because the Holy Spirit is present to support us. And to do so not reluctantly, not formally, not carelessly, not begrudgingly, not with a sneer, not triumphantly like a superhero, not apathetically, not effortlessly – but with groanings too deep for words.
God’s Spirit is fully invested in you. He’s intently concentrating. The love and drive and earnestness behind His work in you is something that cannot be expressed with words, it’s beyond the frontiers of language.
Jackson and Liam, sometimes in the life in Christ it’ll seem like you’re pulling all the weight and talk of the Holy Spirit’s help is just warm and fuzzy words. But then in clearer moments you’ll look back and appreciate how much the Spirit was laboring…with supernatural power…among your Church and in your own mind and body.
So, Liam and Jackson [and this might be counter-intuitive]: KEEP PRAYING! And so, weak and in significant ways clueless, Church. KEEP PRAYING. I’ll conclude with four short clarifications/ instructions:
- Our basic cluelessness is not a reason to stop praying. Indeed, this passage assumes that we are praying. Since prayer is the only activity mentioned it implies that prayer is the essential Christian practice. As Martin Luther said, “Faith is prayer.” Many of the commenters of this passage make the point that the Holy Spirit is effectively interceding as we’re rather cluelessly praying. Our prayers are the setting for the Spirit’s prayers.
- Nor should this passage be taken to mean that we shouldn’t give attention to how we pray. Further, the fact that we will always be fundamentally ignorant doesn’t say that we shouldn’t grow in our understanding. Indeed, in another place immediately after Paul tells us to take up the sword of the Spirit which is the word of God he tells us to pray at all times in the Spirit. That is, pray with a growing knowledge given by the Spirit of what to pray for. So, we’ve got two sides of a truth and our Romans 8 passage focused on one of them: in significant ways we don’t know what to pray for. However, in several ways we have a growing knowledge of what to ask for. So, yes, grow in your understanding in prayer. We can at least grow from not knowing that we don’t know to knowing that we don’t know.
- Surely the seriousness and passion of the Holy Spirit’s intercession is an example for us. Too many of our prayers end with a whimper, our thoughts trailing off, and we get up off our knees having no clue what we’ve just said or even meant to say.
- That we are basically clueless in prayer should reinforce our Lord’s exhortation: we don’t need many words in prayer. Again to quote Luther, “The fewer the words, the better the prayer.”
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