Romans 8:26,27 - The Spirit who prays for us

This hoping for something more and sharing Christ's sufferings is difficult, for it highlights a weaknesses. In fact if we had no weaknesses then we wouldn't find anything difficult! But we do, and we do. So further work of the Holy Spirit is to help us in our weakness, and note that the key way He does this is through prayer. He intercedes for us, and does so with groanings too deep for words. Now this does not mean, or at least is certainly not restricted to, praying in tongues. The work of the Holy Spirit goes beyond our understanding (and of course praying in tongues is beyond understanding (1 Cor 14:14)). There is a key lesson here. We are to use our intellect, to use our minds, but our minds will only take us so far. We so easily fall into one of two traps. On the one hand some people despise the mind. If you do that then you are a fool, and an unbiblical one at that. Who created your mind? Who gave you your mind? And as we will read later, who renews the mind? But on the other hand our minds can only take us so far. It was never intended to take us all the way. We need to remember this in the area of apologetics.  Intellectual defence and explanation of the gospel is important, but it cannot get us, or anyone else, all the way.

Particularly in difficult situations we often do not know what to pray for, or how to pray. You know what? It doesn't matter. The Holy Spirit knows what to pray, and He prays according to the will of God (for He is God), and God knows the mind of the Spirit. In any and every situation we need to learn to rest in Christ, knowing that the Holy Spirit is praying for us perfectly. Now this does not mean we do nothing, it does not mean we pray nothing, but we need to find a peace that trusts and rests in Christ even when we do not know what to do. 

Romans 8:22-25 - Realisation

The Bible, especially the OT prophets (eg Jer 12:4), draw a close connection between the state of nature and man's sin. Conversely, the prophets said that when Israel turned to God creation would flourish. 

Verse 23 is a typical example of the "now, but not yet" nature of our salvation. We have been forgiven, we have received the Holy Spirit, we have been redeemed, we have been adopted as sons of God (v15). Yet at the same time we long for these things. We need more of the Holy Spirit in our lives, we need more redemption, we need to be more sons of God. For much of the old still remains, and there is a longing within us for more, and a recognition that we far from being all that we should be.

Here Paul says we wait for our adoption, but in v15 he says our adoption has already happened. So what does this mean? We are the children of God now, but there is so much more to this than we already experience. This shows us that being sons of God is not just a state, but a reality that has real effect in our lives and shows itself by transformation in our lives, and the outcome of our lives. Right at the start of Romans (1:4) Paul says that through the resurrection Jesus was declared to be the Son of God. This does not mean Jesus was not the Son of God before then (He was so from all eternity), but that the significance, the full implications of it, were realised, made evident, when He was raised from the dead. So it is with us. There is much more to happen in our lives than has happened already. We can sometimes look ahead in life with fear. We should not do so, instead we should look ahead with hope. For there is more transformation to come in our lives, God is going to do more work in and through our lives, He is going to demonstrate to the world who we are.

"For in this hope we were saved". Hope is an essential element of life, and we hope for what we do not yet have, and we wait for it patiently.

Romans 8:18-21 - All of Creation

What Paul says here follows on from what he has just said about sharing in Christ's sufferings. This does not sound like good news. I like the idea of sharing in His glory, I don't like the idea of sharing in His sufferings. So how does this work?

What Paul says is that the level of suffering is as nothing compared to the level of glory. Note also that glory does not just include splendour, but also includes moral excellence and significance. In Chapter 5 Paul spoke about sufferings producing character etc. It is also true that it is those who are prepared to suffer who have a real impact on the world.

And this is not just about us, but is about the whole of creation. All of creation is waiting for the God's plans to come fruition, for the sons of God to be revealed. Ie for us to become what we were always meant to be. In Genesis 1 God told man to subdue the earth. Since we sinned against God we have failed to do this. In a sense creation is incomplete because of our sin. The whole plan of creation depended upon mankind living in trust, obedience and fellowship with God. Creation is dependent upon man. 

Romans 8:16,17 - Heirs with Christ, suffering with Christ

The Holy Spirit bears witness with our spirit that we are sons of God. So this being sons of God is not a theological nicety, but something that we actually know in our innermost being, in our heart of hearts. The Holy Spirit is not a force, but is the person of God. He communicates to us our relationship with God. 

We are heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ. We have an amazing inheritance. We were created to share in all that God has. See what God said right back in Genesis 1. He gave us dominion over the earth, we were to subdue the earth and fill it. 

Why are God's standards so strict (at least as some see it)? It is because of the high calling there is on our lives. If you are going to play for the top sports team you expect a strict training regime and for the coach to insist that you play your best. If you are going to get a top job you expect to need the best qualifications and to perform to the highest level. So it is with God. We are being groomed for the top!

Then Paul adds "provided we suffer with Him in order that we may also be glorified with Him". This really knocks a lot of the so-called prosperity gospel nonsense on the head. Christ is the example and the pioneer of our faith. He is the way, the truth and the life, and that way included going to the cross. We are called to share in the work of Christ here on earth.

Romans 8:14,15 - Abba Father

What is this new life based upon? There are three essential tenets here in Romans:

1. Through the sacrificial death of Jesus we are justified, the slate is clean.
2. We live by walking in step with the Spirit, who renews our lives.
3. We live in relationship with God as sons of the living God.

Paul now introduces this third element. We are children of God. Literally the Greek says sons of God. In using the word sons Paul is not being sexist. for elsewhere he says there is neither male nor female in Christ. What he means is that we are all first class children of God. It was the sons who received the inheritance.

Living by Law and out of our own strength makes us slaves and means we live out of fear. We live out of fear of getting things wrong, knowing that we could fail at any moment. We were not saved so that we could be slaves to fear. It is a tragedy that the church has so often ended up making people slaves to fear. If a teaching or a way of life is making you a slave to fear, then that is cause to question that teaching or way of living. 

The Holy Spirit is the spirit of sonship. We have been adopted into God's family. Jesus spoke a lot about His Father and our Father. He referred to Himself as a Son. He did this not just because it was who He was, but also because it was what we would become. Sonship is to be a defining characteristic of our relationship with God.

We cry "Abba Father". We need to remember that these are the words Jesus used when praying to His Father in Gethsemane, so we should dispel any notion of sonship and fatherhood that is limited to a "nice" relationship with our "heavenly dad". Such a concept of sonship is far too shallow. The sonship the Bible talks about enables us to cope with the darkest times of life, and enables us to do the most difficult things that God call us to do.

Romans 8:12,13 - An Obligation

"We have an obligation .." What is this obligation and how does it work? Well it can work in two ways.

First, the Jews would have had a deeply ingrained sense of obligation to the Law. We all can have a similar sense of obligation to a set of rules, or feel we have to live out of our own strength in order to achieve a good goal. This way seems good. It is trying to achieve a good goal. For the Jew wanting to follow the Law was not a wrong desire. For the Christian wanting to do good is clearly not a bad thing! But the principle of law and self-effort does not work, it leads only to death. It does this because the source of power is our sinful nature, our flesh. Our nature is deeply corrupted by sin, and it will leads us only to death, even when our motives are good.

Secondly the "lusts of the flesh" often make demands upon us, demanding to be satisfied. This is not just the overtly sinful desires like sexual lust or greed, but fear and anxiety as well. The anxiety within you demands that you find some security, and we usually look for it in the wrong places. We look for security in circumstances. Circumstances will never gives us security, for circumstances can change in an instant. Now this is not saying that circumstances do not matter, they do, but we often have the order wrong. We think: if the circumstances were only such and such a way we would be happy and at peace. This is ultimately futile, for even if the circumstances go the way we like for a while, they will not stay that way forever. Moreover, seeking this way can lead us to trust in the wrong things, and to do wrong things. The right way is to look to God and trust in Him. Then we find true peace, and we also will often find that circumstances then start to come into line. But most importantly our trust is then in God, where it belongs, and our peace, our life, is not blown off course by a change of circumstances.

So we need to live by the Spirit, not by the flesh. When we live by the Spirit little by little our flesh comes under authority. Wrong desires, both of the sinful (eg lust) and natural (eg anxiety) type, start to die.

Romans 8:9-11 - Life in the Spirit

We are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit. We are different. When we come to Christ we change, that is why elsewhere Paul says we are a new creation, and why Jesus talks of us as being born again. We become people who live not by the flesh, but by the Spirit. Someone who lives by the flesh is a person whose life is directed, or even dictated, by what they feel, by circumstances. This can be someone who is directed by lust and greed, but it can also be someone who is directed by fear and anxiety. If our lives are dictated by anxiety and fear then we are living "in the flesh". A person whose life is directed by the Spirit is someone whose life is directed by God. This is the way we are meant to be. When we live by the flesh circumstances dictate our lives. When we live by the Spirit we have authority over the circumstances.

Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to Him. We can take this as a judgement, or as a positive statement that if we do belong to Christ then we will have the Spirit.

Now we are all aware of the reality that we do not always live by the Spirit, there are times when we do live out of the flesh. We live in an inbetween time. Our body is dead because of sin, we still have the consequences of our fallen nature. But at the same time the Spirit is life. It is a fact that we have a fallen nature, it is equally a fact that Christ's blood has justified us. Then Paul goes immediately to the resurrection. The death and resurrection of Christ go together. Christ died for our sins, and was raised to life. So in the same way the Holy Spirit gives life to our bodies. The Holy Spirit works in us to change us, to transform us.

Our new way of living depends upon the death of Christ, the resurrection of Christ and the Holy Spirit of Christ.