G.W. North emphasizes the vital role of the Holy Spirit and Christ as intercessors in the life of believers, highlighting that their intercession is essential for fulfilling God's purposes in the Church and the world. The Holy Spirit creates a longing for Christ-likeness within us, initiating a prayer life that transcends mere words, as He groans in us to express our deep needs and concerns. North explains that while we may not know what to pray for, the Spirit guides us in our weaknesses, leading us toward ultimate glory and conformity to Christ's image. He reassures us that there is no condemnation in Christ, and as we trust the Spirit's intercession, we can rest in the assurance of God's perfect plan for our lives. Ultimately, the cooperation between the Spirit and Christ aims to perfect us in God's image, reflecting the glory of Jesus in our lives.

Having already mediated to men the Holy Spirit, that by Him He may dwell in us, the Lord Jesus is also able to minister to us all the fruits of His indwelling. Although only the firstfruits of that abundant harvest which we shall later reap, they are ours, and providing we allow the two intercessors to have their way with us, they will be very wonderful. Both Christ and the Holy Spirit are intercessors by nature and appointment, Christ in heaven and the Holy Spirit in our hearts. All intercession is carried on between these two; apart from them intercession is quite impossible. The Spirit has been given us so that we may be brought into God's purposes in the Church and in the world through intercession. These purposes lie beyond and are in addition to the glorious things inwrought by the Spirit in us when He first came to our hearts. These first things the Spirit has to do in us are to create within us the right conditions for intercession, that He may initiate us into the ministry. Besides the basic things already considered, He does this by creating great longings within us for total Christ-likeness. The Holy Spirit cannot be content with having given birth to a Christ-like spirit in us, wonderful as that is; He must develop this into an individual soul in whom God can see and recognize His Son — the very image of Him. This is God's great initial and overall purpose to which we have been called; it can be ours if we walk after the Spirit and not after the flesh. Even then it cannot be accomplished unless He who first cried 'Abba, Father' in us, commences also to groan in us. These inward groanings are as much the result of our ignorance as of our knowledge, they are the living spring of all prayer. By the Spirit's working and crying within we know that we are children of God, and although we may not know it we have been introduced to the prayer-life — it has commenced. This we know, but our knowledge is very limited. Despite all that He has done in us we do not know what we should pray for as we ought. The Spirit's work within us is to create a sense of need and of obligation. We know we can pray and that we both need and ought to pray, but what to pray for specifically we have no knowledge. By this method the Spirit deliberately teaches us that prayer is not words but basic, heartfelt power. Becoming scripturally informed, we learn what God wants us to know, namely that we were both conformed and predestinated by Him before time was, to be born at a certain point in time and formed in the image of the Son. The realization that this is why we were born of His Spirit, and that this is why He cried His first birth-cry in our hearts, is a marvellous thing. However, although this general knowledge is common to all the sons, we do not generally know that this is related to the future ministry of intercession to which we are predestined, and which is based upon it. Intercession can only become vital in us as the substance of these things is revealed to us step by step as we walk on in the Spirit. The fact that He groans over intercession proves that it is of great importance to Him, as it also must be to us. Groans are a confession, an expression of things baffling to the mind; of feelings that arise from deep concern and inward mental pain for which we can find no words — there are none. Even the blessed Spirit, who knows the glorious Son and the ultimate image of the Son which He hopes to reproduce in each one of us, cannot put it into words. Jesus is glorified, and because the Son is glorified, God has glorified all His sons; it is this wonder of glory in our lives that the blessed Spirit concerns Himself with. The glorious sons are a people liberated from the bondage of corruption which grips the whole creation; it is the privilege of every son of God to be free from it. But being delivered from that does not mean that we have no weaknesses; we have. Many of them are legacies from the past, all of which must be eliminated, so the blessed Spirit applies Himself to the task to which He has been called and sent to accomplish. The Spirit knows every one of our weaknesses, and to what degree they prevent our lives from being full of glory; step by step He leads us on, progressively dealing with everything, until the ultimate glory be reached. He also protects us from the potential destruction relating to the particular weakness the next step will expose in us; He makes us face up to what that step may uncover, dealing with it thoroughly as we trust Him to do so. What relief and joy it is to remember at all times that there is no condemnation in Christ, and that there is no need to groan on that account, but simply to rest in the assurance that he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit who groans in us. We do not know what the Spirit thinks about the various weaknesses we have; we just have to trust Him as He makes intercession for us according to His knowledge of us and of the will of God for us, which is complete Christ-conformity. He in heaven and the Spirit in our hearts are joint intercessors, and both are concerned with the same thing, namely perfecting us in the image of God. Jesus left heaven to become conformed to the likeness and image of man; to do this completely He went to the cross and, having accomplished it, He finally dismissed His spirit into His Father's hands. In a way similar to this, we who have the spirit of Christ must now be conformed to the image of God, and must in heart leave this world and be conformed to the revelation of that image as revealed in the man Christ Jesus. The glory and the groans in our hearts are akin to the glory and the groans of Jesus' heart as He lay on His face in the garden before His Father, and are evidence that the two intercessors are moving and working together to achieve God's ends in us. Prostrating Himself at God's throne that night He groaned His way through His agony to do God's will, and rose to hang on the cross finally for its perfect accomplishment. His own dreadful agonies apart, as it was with Him so it must be with us, and He intercedes for us because we are so ignorant of the way our perfecting shall be accomplished. It is planned on our behalf that, if we will go on with the Spirit and allow Him to work out this purpose of God in us, all things will work together for good in our lives; for this reason we have been called, and this is the way it must work out, for there is no alternative.