8-Day Commentary Challenge - Romans 8Sample

The Spirit’s Help in Prayer, 8:26–27

Now the Spirit not only creates hope in us but also provides help for our infirmities (vv. 26–27). The tension between the suffering of the present time and the expectation of future glory certainly marks the Christian life on this earth and calls forth its groaning and longing. If the sufferings of Christ, which include all the forms of frustration and suffering under which we must live in the present age, weigh us down, so also does our “weakness” (v. 26). “In the same way the Spirit also helps our weakness” (v. 26 nasb) is Paul’s description of the second help we receive in present sufferings. “In the same way” may refer to a comparison between the way the Spirit enables us in present suffering to experience the firstfruits of the certain and blessed future glory and thus wait patiently (vv. 18–25), and in the same way also the Spirit relieves our weaknesses by His help. Our main weakness is spiritual, that is, our struggle to allow the new life of the Spirit to have freedom in us as we live in a body corroded with sin and in an environment scented with death. Our weakness may also lie in our uncertainty, confusion, and nagging unbelief in the face of suffering (vv.18–25, 33–39).

The English word helps translates the Greek compound word synantilambanō. The root word means “to take hold” (lambanō). The first prefix of the compound (anti) means “over against” or “face-to-face” while the second prefix (syn) means “together with.” The great Greek scholar, A. T. Robertson, suggested the combined meaning to be: “The Holy Spirit lays hold of our weaknesses along with (syn) us and carries His part of the burden facing us (anti) as if two men were carrying a log, one at each end.” The word is found elsewhere in the New Testament only of Martha’s plea to Jesus to tell Mary to get into the kitchen and help her (Luke 10:40; but see LXX Ex.18:22; Num. 11:17; Ps. 89:21).

Probably the most comprehensive example of how the Spirit lends a hand to help us in our weakness is in the matter of prayer: “what we ought to pray for” (v. 26). Our problem is not ignorance of the form of prayer (how), but our weakness is an inability to articulate the content (what), that is, what we should ask for especially in sufferings that will meet our needs and at the same time fulfill God’s will. The Spirit lends a hand by “interceding” for us to God (vv. 26–27). Christians have two divine intercessors before God. Christ intercedes for us in the court of heaven in respect to our sins (Rom. 8:34; Heb. 7:25; 1 John 2:1). On the other hand, the Spirit intercedes in the theater of our hearts here on earth in respect to our weakness. The Spirit pleads to God for our true needs “through wordless groans” (v. 26). Creation is groaning (v. 22); Christians are groaning (v. 23); so also God the Holy Spirit groans. As God the Father “searches the hearts” of His children—sobering but also comforting—He finds in their consciousness unspoken and inexpressible sighings. Though inexpressible, they are not unintelligible to the understanding of the Father. Furthermore, these sighings of the Spirit in our hearts turn out to be spiritual desires in the will of God because in reality they are the expressions of the Spirit’s intercession on behalf of our weaknesses (v. 27). In this manner, we can understand how God does “immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine” (Eph. 3:20). When one of our preschoolers desires to write to Granny, my wife gives her a sheet of paper and a pencil, and she expresses her feelings in lines, circles, and zigzag marks. They are truly unintelligible signs. When Mother gets the paper back, she adds certain intelligible words to appropriate marks on the paper such as, “Hello, Granny” with an arrow to the first few scribblings, “We miss you” connected to other marks, and finally “Come visit us soon. I love you, Lynn.” Mother truly has interceded for Lynn to Granny, even as the Spirit intercedes for us to the Father.

What are the practical implications of the Spirit’s intercession? First, this truth helps us to recognize the distinction between the intention of our prayers and the actual specific requests we may voice to God. He is able to separate the two even when we cannot. A number of years ago my daughter, who was ten at the time, came and sat down next to me on the couch while I was reading the newspaper after dinner. She just sat there quietly. Sensing that this was not her normal behavior, I put down the paper and asked her if anything was wrong. “Oh, no,” she said, “There’s nothing wrong, Daddy.” I asked her how things went at school. She said, “Fine.” After a while I finally got her to admit that she had had a misunderstanding with one of her teachers during a study hall period. She was supposed to bring enough work to keep herself busy during the whole hour. But even though she had brought ample work, she had finished early and was quietly talking to a friend next to her. The teacher came up and severely reprimanded her for not doing her work. As a very sensitive girl, my daughter was crushed by this seeming injustice, and she wasn’t able to function the rest of the day. Now she was in tears. After we had talked further about the matter, I asked her if she would like to pray together about the situation. She said, “Yes.” I said, “How should we pray?” She said, “Pray that I won’t ever see that teacher again!” Her real need was to be accepted and understood by her teacher. This was the intention of her request. But the best way she saw that intentions being fulfilled was not exactly what I had in mind. When I prayed I said, “Lord, help Lynn’s teacher not to jump to false conclusions and to be more understanding, and help Lynn to be patient and forgiving.” I interceded by interpreting Lynn’s intention to God. In the same way, the Spirit intercedes for us.

Second, a further implication of the Spirit’s intercession is that no believing prayer ever goes unanswered. There may be a revision of the ways that I propose. I must trust in the thousands of ways God has at His disposal. Nevertheless, I must enter into a dialogue with God and be ready, as were Jesus and Paul, to have my specific requests corrected by God’s answer (study Matt. 26:38–44 and Rom. 15:30–32, and review the comments in this book on the latter passage). In this sense Luther could say, “It is not a bad, but a very good sign if the opposite of what we pray for appears to happen. Just as it is not a good sign if our prayers eventuate in the fulfillment of all we ask for. If everything were to go the way I want it, I would end up in that kind of false security which is really an instrument of the divine judgment.”