04.25. LESSON 25

LESSON 25 The background of the Spirit’s helping "our infirmity" (singular) in prayer is "the whole creation" lying in groaning misery under the ling misrule of usurping Satan, whose tyranny and power of death have been broken (Hebrews 2:14) so that "the whole realm of nature," in process of being delivered, may lift up its head in hope. About a matter of such huge dimensions, intricate problems, and prodigious issues, we especially need the aid of the Holy Spirit in prayer. In studying this scripture, it helps to keep in mind its context.

It is most difficult for fallen man, to whom God in the beginning gave dominion over all the earth, "And over every living thing that moveth upon the earth," to realize that, since his treachery and rebellion against God caused the miscarriage and distress of the earth, its restoration turns upon his unconditional surrender and penitent return to God. His constitutional "infirmity" is denying his fall, failure, and bankruptcy, proudly to spurn God’s proffered help. Nevertheless, not until he comes to see the true state of affairs, I think, can he be convicted of sin in the full Christian sense, or repent in the full gospel sense.

We who are baptized into Christ, thus signifying our identification with him in death, life, mind, vocation, and destiny, surely should be groaning in spirit and praying as Christ, though he had no part whatsoever in causing the sorrows of the earth, groaned in spirit and prayed under the crushing weight of the world’s woe at the grave of his friend. Only after we come to this heart-pricked, self-effacing condition can the Spirit of Christ witness with us and pray for us. Unless we have a real sense of our human inability to pray aright about the earth’s deep wound; unless, as we raise our heads above the whelming flood of suffering and realize to what depths we were submerged, we feel a profound gratitude unto God for his deliverance, and, consequently, respond unto him with an unutterable passion of commitment unto him, how can the Holy Spirit in fellowship make "intercession for us with groanings which can not be uttered?"

God’s Unshakable Purpose
(Romans 8:29-39) As if Paul feared the doctrine of Justification apart from law (Romans 3:4) might seem too good to be true and enduring, he immediately adds probably his strongest passage of Christian assurance (Romans 5:1-11), namely, that God’s immutable character of pure, free grace and undying love gives the doctrine an unshakable bedrock foundation. The same thing occurs here again. After using Romans 8:1-28 dilating upon the work of the Spirit in, with, and for saints, ending with the astounding statement that all things work together for their good, he spends the rest of the chapter anchoring the doctrine of Sanctification and Glorification to the same unshakable bedrock of God’s character and fixed purpose. His argument is that God’s purpose from all eternity past to glorify men who freely choose him in Christ as they once freely rejected him in Adam, is unfolding through the running centuries as he ordained; that no opposition, demonic or/and human, can thwart it; that its success depends upon no contingency; that the purpose has built-in provisions for every need of willing, cooperative men, even their sorrows and disappointments becoming God’s appointment for their good; and that the threefold groaning of earth, under God’s omniscient, gracious ruling and overruling, is but infallibly working out their final glory. Therefore, Paul, unafraid, looks out through all space and time, and issues his threefold challenge: "Who is against us?" "Who shall lay anything to the charge of God’s elect?" "Who shall separate us from the love of God?" It is not a question of human strength, courage, and stability, for all who keep themselves in the love of God (Jude 1:21) live charmed lives, and are swept on to certain joint-victory with Christ? This truly eloquent, magnificent passage, quivering with ecstatic feeling and music throughout, ends in grand crescendo: "For I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature shall separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." Paul hears a harmony in God’s purpose as fulfilled in Christ through the Spirit that silences all earth’s discords. God’s ship may toss in stormy seas, but will not capsize.

"God Is One Jehovah" (Deuteronomy 6:4) In Luke 17:1-37, Christ says that, as the world in the days of Noah was too busy and too merry with fleshly things to think about spiritual things, so shall it be again at his coming. This is the setting of his parable (Luke 18:1-8) of the persecuted widow who cried to her judge until she got redress. Christ’s application is: "And shall not God avenge his elect, that cry to him day and night?... I say unto you, that he will avenge them." This parable teaches that despite outward appearances, the over-all, long-range divine government of the universe justifies patient, hopeful, Christian prayer. If Christians are mentally perplexed about the injustice, cruelty, and wretchedness of the world, they "Ought always to pray, and not to faint," for the almighty, moral-dealing God purposed before he created it to bring it at last to a good end. This world must therefore end right. Does not the fact that God is one, and that the universe and everything in it, is one orderly, closely knit whole help us to "know that to them that love God all things work together for good?" If the Creator has so ordered his world that everything favors "them that are called according to his purpose," should we not be grateful? God is the hinge upon which history turns. In his last interview with his brothers, Joseph summed up the tragic story of his life: "Ye meant evil against me; but God meant it for good." He saw at last that the cup of his life, bitterness and all, had been mixed by God’s own hand. To make things work together for good is God’s predestined purpose and prerogative. But alas and alack! how often do Jacob’s false, foolish words to these same men, earlier, "Me ye have bereaved of my children: Joseph is not, and Simeon is not, and ye will take Benjamin away: all these things are against me," befit our poor, unbelieving hearts? This blessed doctrine is not addressed, brethren, to our reasoning, but to our believing, faculties. On the great venture of faith and hope, may we try it out to find that it works. We must be afflicted and "suffer many things," but in spite of, nay, because of, this, we shall grow in peaceful trust and "mellow fruitfulness" of life. As an eagle in a storm may be lifted on wings, properly atilt, to calm upper air, so we in the storms of life may be lifted on Christian faith, properly atilt, to the serene heights of Romans 8:1-39.

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