_THE SPIRIT OF PRAYER IN THE SAINTS: THEIR PRESENT AND ETERNAL WELFARE
IN THE LOVE OF GOD_
ROMANS viii. 26-39
In the last paragraph the music of this glorious didactic prophecy
passed, in some solemn phrases, into the minor mood. "_If we share His
sufferings_"; "_The sufferings of this present season_"; "_We groan
within ourselves_"; "_In the sense of our hope we were saved_." All is
well. The deep harmony of the Christian's full experience, if it is
full downwards as well as upwards, demands sometimes such tones; and
they are all music, for they all express a life in Christ, lived by
the power of the Holy Ghost. But now the strain is to ascend again
into its largest and most triumphant manner. We are now to hear how
our salvation, though its ultimate issues are still things of hope, is
itself a thing of eternity--from everlasting to everlasting. We are to
be made sure that all things are working now, in concurrent action,
for the believer's good; and that his justification is sure; and that
his glory is so certain that its future is, from his Lord's point of
sight, present; and that nothing, absolutely nothing, shall separate
him from the eternal Love.
But first comes one most deep and tender word, the last of its kind in
the long argument, about the presence and power of the Holy Ghost. The
Apostle has the "groan" of the Christian still in his ear, in his
heart; in fact, it is his own. And he has just pointed himself and his
fellow believers to the coming glory, as to a wonderful antidote; a
prospect which is at once great in itself and unspeakably suggestive
of _the greatness_ given to the most suffering and tempted saint by
his union with his Lord. As if to say to the pilgrim, in his moment of
distress, "Remember, you are more to God than you can possibly know;
He has made you such, in Christ, that universal Nature is concerned in
the prospect of your glory." But now, as if nothing must suffice but
what is directly divine, he bids him remember also the presence in him
of the Eternal Spirit, as his mighty but tenderest indwelling Friend.
Even as "that blessed Hope," so, "_likewise also_," this blessed
present Person, is the weak one's power. HE takes the man in his
bewilderment, when troubles from without press him, and fears from
within make him groan, and he is in sore need, yet at a loss for the
right cry. And He moves in the tired soul, and breathes Himself into
its thought, and His mysterious "groan" of divine yearning mingles
with our groan of burthen, and the man's longings go out above all
things not towards rest but towards God and His will. So the
Christian's innermost and ruling desire is both fixed and animated by
the blessed Indweller, and he seeks what the Lord will love to grant,
even Himself and whatever shall please Him. The man prays aright, as
to the essence of the prayer, because (what a divine miracle is put
before us in the words!) the Holy Ghost, immanent in him, prays
through him.
Thus we venture, in advance, to explain the sentences which now
follow. It is true that St Paul does not explicitly say that the
Spirit makes intercession _in_ us, as well as _for_ us. But must it
not be so? For _where is He_, from the point of view of Christian
life, but _in us_?
[Sidenote: Ver. 26.] =Then, in the same way, the Spirit also=--as well
as "the hope"--=helps,= as with a clasping, supporting hand
(συναντιλαμβάνεται), =our weakness,[139]= our shortness and
bewilderment of insight, our feebleness of faith. =For what we should
pray for as we ought, we do not know; but the Spirit Itself interposes
to intercede (ὑπερεντυγχάνει) for us, with groanings unutterable;
but= (whatever be the utterance or no utterance) [Sidenote: Ver. 27.]
=the Searcher of our (τὰς) hearts knows what is the mind,= the
purport, =of the Spirit; because God-wise,[140]= with divine insight
and sympathy, the Spirit with the Father, =He intercedes for saints.=
Did He not so intercede for Paul, and in him, fourteen years before
these words were written, when (2 Cor. xii. 7-10) the man thrice asked
that "the thorn" might be removed, and the Master gave him a better
blessing, the victorious overshadowing power? Did He not so intercede
for Monnica, and in her, when she sought with prayers and tears to
keep her rebellious Augustine by her, and the Lord let him fly from
her side--to Italy, to Ambrose, and so to conversion?[141]
But the strain rises now, finally and fully, into the rest and triumph
of faith. "_We know not_ what we should pray for as we ought"; and the
blessed Spirit meets this deep need in His own way. And this, with all
else that we have in Christ, reminds us of a somewhat that "_we know_"
indeed; namely, that all things, favourable or not in themselves,
concur in blessing for the saints. And then he looks backward (or
rather, upward) into eternity, and sees the throne, and the King with
His sovereign will, and the lines of perfect and infallible plan and
provision which stretch from that Centre to infinity. These
"_saints_," who are they? From one view-point, they are simply sinners
who have seen themselves, and "fled for refuge to the" one possible
"hope"; a "hope set before" every soul that cares to win it. From
another view-point, that of the eternal Mind and Order, they are those
whom, for reasons infinitely wise and just, but wholly hidden in
Himself, the Lord has chosen to be His own for ever, so that His
choice takes effect in their conversion, their acceptance, their
spiritual transformation, and their glory.
There, as regards this great passage, the thought rests and ceases--in
the glorification of the saints. What their Glorifier will do with
them, and through them, thus glorified, is another matter. Assuredly
He will _make use_ of them in His eternal kingdom. The Church, made
most blessed for ever, is yet beatified, ultimately, not for itself
but for its Head, and for His Father. It is to be, in its final
perfectness, "an habitation of God, in the Spirit" (Eph. ii. 22). Is
He not so to possess it that the Universe shall see Him in it, in a
manner and degree now unknown and unimaginable? Is not the endless
"service" of the elect to be such that all orders of being shall
through them behold and adore the glory of the Christ of God? For ever
they will be what they here become, the bondservants of their
Redeeming Lord, His Bride, His vehicle of power and blessing; "having
of their own nothing, in Him all, and all for Him." No self-full
exaltations await them in the place of light; or the whole history of
sin would begin over again, in a new æon. No celestial Pharisaism will
be their spirit; a look downward upon less blessed regions of
existence, as from a sanctuary of their own. Who can tell what
ministries of boundless love will be the expression of their life of
inexpressible and inexhaustible joy? Always, like Gabriel, "in the
presence," will they not always also, like him, "be sent" (Luke i. 19)
on the messages of their glorious Head, in whom at length, in the
"divine event," "all things shall be gathered together"?
But this is not the thought of the passage now in our hands. Here, as
we have said, the thought terminates in the final glorification of the
saints of God, as the immediate goal of the process of their
redemption.
[Sidenote: Ver. 28.] =But we know that for those who love God all
things work together for good, even for those who, purpose-wise, are
His called ones.= "_We know it_," with the cognition of faith; that is
to say, because He, absolutely trustworthy, guarantees it by His
character, and by His word. Deep, nay insoluble is the mystery, from
every other point of view. The lovers of the Lord are indeed unable to
explain, to themselves or others, how this concurrence of "all things"
works out its infallible issues in them. And the observer from outside
cannot understand their certainty that it is so. But the fact is
there, given and assured, not by speculation upon events, but by
personal knowledge of an Eternal Person. "Love God, and thou shalt
know."[142]
They "love God," with a love perfectly unartificial, the genuine
affection of human hearts, hearts not the less human because divinely
new-created, regenerated from above. Their immediate consciousness is
just this; we love Him. Not, we have read the book of life; we have
had a glimpse of the eternal purpose in itself; we have heard our
names recited in a roll of the chosen; but, we love Him. We have found
in Him the eternal Love. In Him we have peace, purity, and that deep,
final satisfaction, that view of "the King in His beauty," which is
the _summum bonum_ of the creature. It was our fault that we saw it no
sooner, that we loved Him no sooner. It is the duty of every soul that
He has made to reflect upon its need of Him, and upon the fact that it
owes it to Him to love Him in His holy beauty of eternal Love. If we
could not it was because we would not. If you cannot it is because,
somehow and somewhere, you will not; will not put yourselves without
reserve in the way of the sight. "Oh taste and see that the Lord is
good"; oh love the eternal Love.
But those who thus simply and genuinely love God are also, on the
other side, "_purpose-wise, His called ones_"; "_called_," in the
sense which we have found above (p. 19) to be consistently traceable
in the Epistles; not merely invited, but brought in; not evangelized
only, but converted. In each case of the happy company, the man, the
woman, came to Christ, came to love God with the freest possible
coming of the will, the heart. Yet each, having come, had the Lord to
thank for the coming. The human personality had traced its orbit of
will and deed, as truly as when it willed to sin and to rebel. But lo,
in ways past our finding out, its free track lay along a previous
track of the purpose of the Eternal; its free "_I will_" was the
precise and fore-ordered correspondence to His "_Thou shalt_." It was
the act of man; it was the grace of God.
Can we get below such a statement, or above it? If we are right in our
reading of the whole teaching of Scripture on the sovereignty of God,
our thoughts upon it, practically, must sink down, and must rest, just
here. The doctrine of the Choice of God, in its sacred mystery,
refuses--so we humbly think--to be explained away so as to mean in
effect little but the choice of man. But then the doctrine is "a lamp,
not a sun." It is presented to us everywhere, and not least in this
Epistle, as a truth not meant to explain everything, but to enforce
_this_ thing--that the man who as a fact loves the eternal Love has to
thank not himself but that Love that his eyes, guiltily shut, were
effectually opened. Not one link in the chain of actual Redemption is
of our forging--or the whole would indeed be fragile. It is "of Him"
that we, in this great matter, will as we ought to will. I ought to
have loved God always. It is of His mere mercy that I love Him now.
With this lesson of uttermost humiliation the truth of the heavenly
Choice, and its effectual Call, brings us also that of an
encouragement altogether divine. Such a "purpose" is no fluctuating
thing, shifting with the currents of time. Such a call to such an
embrace means a tenacity, as well as a welcome, worthy of God. "Who
shall separate us?" "Neither shall any pluck them out of My Father's
hand." And this is the motive of the words in this wonderful context,
where everything is made to bear on _the safety_ of the children of
God, in the midst of all imaginable dangers.
[Sidenote: Ver. 29.] =For whom He knew beforehand,= with a
foreknowledge which, in this argument, can mean nothing short of
foredecision[143]--no mere foreknowledge of what they would do, but
rather of what He would do for them--=those He also set apart
beforehand, for conformation,= deep and genuine, a resemblance due to
kindred _being_,[144] =to the image,= the manifested Countenance, =of
His Son, that He might be Firstborn amongst many brethren,= surrounded
by the circling host of kindred faces, congenial beings, His Father's
children by their union with Himself. So, as ever in the Scriptures,
mystery bears full on character. The man is saved that he may be holy.
His "_predestination_"[145] is not merely not to perish, but to be
made like Christ, in a spiritual transformation, coming out in the
moral features of the family of heaven. And all bears ultimately on
the glory of Christ. The gathered saints are an organism, a family,
before the Father; and their vital Centre is the Beloved Son, who sees
in their true sonship the fruit of "the travail of His soul."
[Sidenote: Ver. 30.] =But those whom He thus set apart beforehand, He
also called,= effectually drew so as truly and freely to choose
Christ; =and those whom He= thus =called= to Christ, =He also
justified= in Christ, in that great way of propitiation and faith of
which the Epistle has so largely spoken; =but[146] those whom He= thus
=justified, He also glorified.= "_Glorified_": it is a marvellous past
tense. It reminds us that in this passage we are placed, as it were,
upon the mountain of the Throne; our finite thought is allowed to
speak for once (however little it understands it) the language of
eternity, to utter the facts as the Eternal sees them. To Him, the
pilgrim is already in the immortal Country; the bondservant is already
at his day's end, receiving His Master's "Well done, good and
faithful." He to whom time is not as it is to us thus sees His
purposes complete, always and for ever. We see through His sight, in
hearing His word about it. So for us, in wonderful paradox, our
glorification is presented, as truly as our call, in terms of
accomplished fact.
* * * * *
Here, in a certain sense, the long golden chain of _the doctrine_ of
the Epistle ends--in the hand of the King who thus crowns the sinners
whose redemption, faith, acceptance, and holiness, He had, in the
Heaven of His own Being, fore-willed and fore-ordered, "before the
world began," above all time. What remains of the chapter is the
application of the doctrine. But what an application! The Apostle
brings his converts out into the open field of trial, and bids them
_use_ his doctrine _there_. Are they thus dear to the Father in the
Son? Is their every need thus met? Is their guilt cancelled in
Christ's mighty merit? Is their existence filled with Christ's eternal
Spirit? Is sin thus cast beneath their feet, and is such a heaven
opened above their heads? "Then what have they to fear," before man,
or before God? What power in the universe, of whatever order of being,
can really hurt them? For what can separate them from their portion in
their glorified Lord, and in His Father's love in Him? Again we
listen, with Tertius, as the voice goes on:
[Sidenote: Ver. 31.] =What therefore shall we say in view of these
things? If God is for us, who is against us?= [Sidenote: Ver. 32.]
=HE[147] who did not spare His own true (ἰδίου) Son, but for us all
handed Him over= to that awful expiatory, propitiatory, darkness and
death, so that HE was "pleased to bruise Him, to put Him to grief"
(Isai. liii. 10), all for His own great glory, but, no whit the less,
all for our pure blessing; =how= (wonderful "_how_"!) =shall He not
also with Him,= because _all_ is included and involved in Him who is
the Father's All, =give us also freely all things= (τὰ πάντα, "_the
all_ things that are")? And do we want to be sure that He will not,
after all, find a flaw in our claim, and cast us in His court?
[Sidenote: Ver. 33.] =Who will lodge a charge against God's chosen
ones?= Will =God--who justifies them?[148] Who will condemn them,= if
the charge _is_ lodged? Will =Christ--who died, nay rather who rose,
who is on the right hand of God, who is actually (καὶ) interceding
for us?= (Observe this one mention in the whole Epistle of His
Ascension, and His action for us above, as He is, by the fact of His
Session on the Throne, our sure Channel of eternal blessing, unworthy
that we are.) Do we need assurance, amidst "the sufferings of this
present time," that through them always the invincible hands of Christ
clasp us, with untired love? We "look upon the covenant" of our
acceptance and life in Him who died for us, and who lives both for and
in us, and we meet the fiercest buffet of these waves in peace.
[Sidenote: Ver. 35.] =Who shall sunder us from the love of Christ?=
There rise before him, as he asks, like so many angry personalities,[149]
the outward woes of the pilgrimage. =Tribulation? or Perplexity? or
Persecution? or Famine? or Nakedness? or Peril? or Sword?=
[Sidenote: Ver. 36.] =As it stands written,= in that deep song of
anguish and faith (Psal. xliv.) in which the elder Church, one with us
in deep continuity, tells her story of affliction, ="For Thy sake we
are done to death all the day long; we have been reckoned,= estimated,
=as sheep of slaughter."= Even so. [Sidenote: Ver. 37.] =But in these
things, all of them, we more than conquer;= not only do we tread upon
our foes; we spoil them, we find them occasions of glorious gain,[150]
=through Him who loved us.= [Sidenote: Ver. 38.] =For I am sure that
neither death, nor life,= life with its natural allurements or its
bewildering toils, =nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers,[151]=
whatever Orders of being unfriendly to Christ and His saints the vast
Unseen contains, =nor present things, nor things to come,= in all the
boundless field of circumstance and contingency, =nor height, nor
depth,= in the illimitable sphere of space, =nor any other creature,=
no thing, no being, under the Uncreated One, =shall be able to sunder
us,= "_us_" with an emphasis upon the word and thought (ἡμας χωρίσαι),
=from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord=--from the
eternal embrace wherein the Father embosoms the Son, and, in the Son,
all who are one with Him.
So once more the divine music rolls itself out into the blessed Name.
We have heard the previous cadences as they came in their order;
"Jesus our Lord, who was delivered because of our offences, and was
raised again because of our justification" (iv. 25); "That grace might
reign, through Jesus Christ our Lord" (v. 21); "The gift of God is
eternal life, in Jesus Christ our Lord" (vi. 23); "I thank God,
through Jesus Christ our Lord" (vii. 25). Like the theme of a fugue it
has sounded on, deep and high; still, always, "our Lord Jesus Christ,"
who is all things, and in all, and for all, to His happy believing
members. And now all is gathered up into this. Our "Righteousness, and
Sanctification, and Redemption" (1 Cor. i. 33), the golden burthens of
the third chapter, and the sixth, and the eighth, are all, in their
living ultimate essence, "Jesus Christ our Lord." HE makes every
truth, every doctrine of peace and holiness, every sure premiss and
indissoluble inference, to be life as well as light. HE is pardon, and
sanctity, and heaven. Here, finally, the Eternal Love is seen not as
it were diffused into infinity, but gathered up wholly and for ever in
Him. Therefore to be in Him is to be in It. It is to be within the
clasp which surrounds the Beloved of the Father.
* * * * *
Some years ago we remember reading this passage, this close of the
eighth chapter, under moving circumstances. On a cloudless January
night, late arrived in Rome, we stood in the Coliseum, a party of
friends from England. Orion, the giant with the sword, glimmered like
a spectre, the spectre of persecution, above the huge precinct; for
the full moon, high in the heavens, overpowered the stars. By its
light we read from a little Testament these words, written so long ago
to be read in that same City; written by the man whose dust now sleeps
at Tre Fontane, where the executioner dismissed him to be with Christ;
written to men and women some of whom at least, in all human
likelihood, suffered in that same Amphitheatre, raised only twenty-two
years after Paul wrote to the Romans, and soon made the scene of
countless martyrdoms. "Do you want a relic?" said a Pope to some eager
visitor. "Gather dust from the Coliseum; it is all the martyrs."
We recited the words of the Epistle, and gave thanks to Him who had
there triumphed in His saints over life and death, over beasts, and
men, and demons. Then we thought of the inmost factors in that great
victory; Truth and Life. They "knew whom they had believed"--their
Sacrifice, their Head, their King. He whom they had believed lived in
them, and they in Him, by the Holy Ghost given to them. Then we
thought of ourselves, in our circumstances so totally different on the
surface, yet carrying the same needs in their depths. Are we too to
overcome, in "the things present" of our modern world, and in face of
"the things to come" yet upon the earth? Are we to be "more than
conquerors," winning blessing out of all things, and really living "in
our own generation" (Acts xiii. 36) as the bondmen of Christ and the
sons of God? Then for us also the absolute necessities are--the same
Truth, and the same Life. And they are ours, thanks be to the Name of
our salvation. Time hath no more dominion over them, because death
hath no more dominion over Him. For us too Jesus died. In us too, by
the Holy Ghost, He lives.
[139] Read ἀσθενείᾳ.
[140] So we venture to render κατὰ Θεόν.
[141] _Confessiones_, v. 8.
[142] See a noble poem by James Montgomery, _The Lot of the
Righteous_.
[143] See _e.g._ xi. 2; Acts ii. 23; 1 Pet. i. 2, 20.
[144] Συμμόρφους: μορφὴ is likeness not by accident but of
essence. The Greek here is literally, "conformed ones _of_ the image,
etc."; as if their similitude made them part of that which they
resembled.
[145] Let us banish from the idea of "_predestination_" all thought of
a mechanical pagan _destiny_, and use it of the sure purpose of the
living and loving God.
[146] Δέ: the "_but_" of logic. He is _proving_ the security of the
prospect of _glory_.
[147] Ὅς γε: the particle deeply _underlines_ the pronoun.
[148] Ὁ δικαιῶν: we adopt the interrogative rendering of all the
clauses here. It is equally good as grammar, and far more congenial to
the glowing context.
[149] Observe the τίς of the question, not τί.
[150] Cp. 1 Cor. iii. 22: "All things _are yours_, whether life _or
death_."
[151] Strong documentary evidence favours the transference of
"_powers_" to a place after "_things to come_." But surely rhythm, and
the affinity of words, look the other way.