26 In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans. 27 And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for God's people in accordance with the will of God.
28 And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who [k] have been called according to his purpose. 29 For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters. 30 And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified.
Dig Deeper
I’m not normally a paranoid person but if I ever have gotten a little paranoid from time to time it would have been when my boys were younger and were not feeling well and their mother would work overnight at the hospital. I was always slightly worried that if something happened to them in the middle of the night, I wouldn’t know what to do without her there save for calling 911 and hoping the emergency medical team got there quickly. So, every now and then if I was up late into the night working and they were asleep in there rooms, I would go check on them just to make sure that everything was okay. When I did check on them, though, I didn’t want to disturb them or wake them up by going all the way into the room and touching them, or turning the light on. So, I would just open their doors up enough so a crack of light would fall into the room. Then I would quietly peak in and listen. All I was looking and listening for was the gentle sound of them breathing and the subtle movement of their sheets lifting up and down as they slept. This would assure me that they were okay and that I could go to sleep or continue working without any fear of having to answer to their mother for something that happened to them. Once I could hear them breathing, though, I knew that all was well.
We don’t often think of God in terms like that, gently looking and listening to us for signs of life but this is something of the fatherly picture of God that Paul sketches for us here. God knows that we are weak and often incapable of doing his will fully in the present age even with the firstfruits of the Spirit, so he gently watches and listens. He looks for little signs of life and the subtle sounds of the Spirit groaning within us. As his adopted sons, our loving Father simply listens and searches for the signs of life in us that demonstrate that all is well.
So far Paul has told us that the entire creation groans, a word that means sighs inwardly but inaudibly in the way that Paul has used it, waiting for the restoration of God’s will fully within his world. He has also told us that the church groans with the same sort of inaudible expectation of being fully redeemed and restored to the image of God, the state in which humans were intended all along. Now Paul says that it isn’t just the creation, or the apex of God’s creation that groans like this but that he groans also through his own Spirit.
At the present, not-yet-fully-redeemed humanity is in a state of weakness awaiting our final restoration and unveiling as the heirs of God’s creation. The church and creation stand in agreement waiting for the time when all things are renewed (Matt. 19:28; Acts 3:21) and heaven and earth are finally brought back together for eternity as Paul describes in Ephesians 1:8-10: “With all wisdom and understanding, he made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ, to be put into effect when the times reach their fulfillment—to bring unity to all things in heaven and on earth under Christ.” In the biblical economy, heaven is the place where God’s will is done (Matt. 6:10). This means that as Paul looks ahead to when the times reach their fulfillment he sees a time when God’s will is done perfectly though God’s human agents restored in his image. In the present time, though, we simply don’t know how that will works out in specific situations. Finding and doing God’s will is our goal but we are weak and often unaware of it. So, although we pray and are called to do so we often find it difficult to put into words what to pray for.
But God knows this. He is the heart searcher who looks and listens intently for the intercession of the Spirit on our behalves. What Paul certainly does not mean in saying that the “Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans” is that the Spirit prays through us by speaking in tongues so we don’t understand what is being said, as some are apt to claim. Paul is speaking of the will of God as it is expressed in inaudible longing. Just as the Spirit knows the mind of God (1 Cor. 2:11), so God knows the mind of the Spirit. It is the firstfruits of the Spirit that urges us to long for God’s age to come and his completed work in us, that knows the mind and the will of God, and that constantly pushes us towards his will even when we don’t understand all of it. God understands the Spirit and his working in our life even when we do not. God understands that the Spirit longs for the completion of redemption and works us towards that end even when we don’t see it or perceive it. Just as it is the role of the spirit to bring us to full fruition as the children of God (8:14) so that we can rightly call God our Abba in prayer (8:15-16), so the Spirit enables us through his intercession to pray and align ourselves with the will of God in anticipation of the time when we will be completely transformed to the will of God and be set in authority once again over his creation.
The truth is we groan, we don’t know exactly how to pray and see God’s will in everything but that’s okay because, says Paul, “we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” God knows the mind of the Spirit but we know that God works everything according to his will so we who have the Spirit at work in us can rest assured that God’s will is leading us to good of being transformed into his image. We should not abuse Paul’s words and claim that he is saying that only good things will happen to those in Christ. That would be a rather odd conclusion after declaring in 8:17 that part and parcel of the way of Christ is to share in his sufferings. Like he said in 5:3, Paul believes that all things, whether good times or times of trial, are being used by God to create Christ in us. He is constantly working us towards our final goal. The great comfort in understanding this is that whatever trial I may be going through (we can rightly distinguish these from self-imposed problems due to our own sin or lack of obedience), I can rest assured that God knows that this trial is better for me in the long run of who I am becoming than to not have gone through it. When I am obedient to God and live as though I know that he works in all things for my eventual good, every hard time, struggle, and trial in my life makes me more like Christ.
We know that God works for our good because he has a final destination in mind. It is vitally important in this passage and really all the way through the rest of the book that we must continue to keep in mind that Paul has been thinking in terms of people groups primarily and not individuals. Keeping that thought close at hand will help guide us properly through what Paul is saying rather than hunting down some rabbit trial of Enlightenment-style individualism. God has had a plan, a purpose in mind for a Christ-shaped family since before the foundations of the earth were laid.
In Revelation 22:16, we are told that Christ is both the root and the offspring of David. How can he be both the root and the offspring? The point that John is making, building off of Isaiah 11, is that Jesus is the cause of all history. It was always God’s intention to reveal himself in the person and work of Jesus Christ, the offspring of David. Thus, he is the offspring but he is also the very reason for David and everything else in history. Just as Paul delineates in Ephesians 1:1-14, here he makes it clear that part of that purpose in revealing himself through Christ was that God would have a people transformed to the image of his son. His son would be the firstborn, a term that referred to uniqueness as the heir of the inheritance, but would not be alone. He would have brothers and sister adopted into the covenant family by entering into him. Paul declares this clearly in Ephesians 1:4: “For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight.” Rather than being a statement concerning the individual predestination of certain people, this passage is entirely focused on God. It was his plan to have a people “conformed to the image of his Son.” It was predestined before the world began that God would reveal himself through Christ and have such a family but Paul is not here trying to argue that God has chosen some to be saved and others to go to hell for eternity because they have not been pre-selected to receive grace and faith as others have. He is thinking in terms of people and what God has done rather than individuals.
But who is part of these predestined people? To explain that Paul uses three terms that we need to individually define before we can unpack his complete thought. The first is “called.” Theologian NT Wright says that “called” is “God’s action in setting people apart for a particular purpose, a purpose in which their cooperation, their loving response to love, their obedient response to the personal call, is itself all-important.” Thus, when Paul uses the term “called” it is virtually synonymous with “saved.” The second term is “justified.” As we have seen in previous passages, justified is God’s declaration that those who are called really are part of God’s covenant family. Finally, the term “glorified” refers to the full expression of a thing. Thus, when Paul says we are glorified he speaks of the time when we have been fully restored to God’s image and set in ruling authority over his restored creation as co-heirs in God’s Christ-shaped family. The members of the predestined family then, are those that have responded in believing obedience to the gospel, who have been declared to be part of God’s covenant family in the present awaiting the final vindication and judgment at which time we will rule with Christ in God’s age to come for eternity. It is of vital importance that we keep this all in mind as our destination while ordering the lives of churches and our individual lives in the present time. Does the way we spend our time, resources, and energy reflect that we truly believe that God is working in us for this final result?
Devotional Thought
Do you truly believe that God is working even through trying times to conform you to the image of his Son and that this is for your good? Do you embrace those times of stretching and transformation or do you fight against them and try to escape? How would your life and attitude change if you truly embraced them and trusted in God?
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