Day 5 | God’s Rescue Plan

Read: Romans 8:22-27

22 Let me explain. We know that the entire creation is groaning together, and going through labour pains together, up until the present time. 23 Not only so: we too, we who have the first fruits of the spirit’s life within us, are groaning within ourselves, as we eagerly await our adoption, the redemption of our body. 24 We were saved, you see, in hope. But hope isn’t hope if you can see it! Who hopes for what they can see? 25 But if we hope for what we don’t see, we wait for it eagerly – but also patiently.

Prayer, Sonship and the Sovereignty of God

26 In the same way, too, the spirit comes alongside and helps us in our weakness. We don’t know what to pray for as we ought to; but that same spirit pleads on our behalf, with groanings too deep for words. 27 And the Searcher of Hearts knows what the spirit is thinking, because the spirit pleads for God’s people according to God’s will.

THE KINGDOM NEW TESTAMENT: A CONTEMPORARY TRANSLATION by N.T. WRIGHT. Copyright (c) 2011 by Nicholas Thomas Wright. Courtesy of HarperCollins Publishers. Used by permission.

Reflect:

Have you experienced any situations that made you feel like you didn’t know what to pray for? Why do you think this was? How did you feel during that situation? How did you approach that situation? How can this passage help you the next time you find yourself in similar circumstances?

Consider:

This passage is about suffering, but not in the way we might expect. The suffering here is deeply personal, even intimate. Paul isn't simply talking about outward persecution, poverty, sickness, or anything so tangible. No doubt, those may create the backdrop, but Paul here writes about the deepest, most incomprehensible groanings that emerge from the innermost depths of our being.

This isn't just about going through a rough time, nor is it simply something we occasionally have to put up with. Paul is talking about our vocation, not just to get through the difficult times but to stand in prayer where the world is in pain so that God's spirit may be present and intercede. This is one of the most revolutionary and innovative moments in the whole letter. Here, Paul joins together his Trinitarian theology of New Creation and his pastoral understanding of the depths of the Christian heart.

God's spirit comes to dwell in the midst of his world in the persons of Jesus's faithful followers. But that world is in great pain. The Spirit inhabits that pain and calls out to the Father from within its darkest depths by means of God's people being in prayer. This painful vocation is at the heart of God's rescuing plan for the whole creation. This passage doesn’t make much sense if we only think of Romans 8 in terms of how we can assure our own salvation. But in the context of our vocation as part of God’s rescue plan for the world, it makes perfect sense.

To say it again, God's plan is not to rescue humans from creation to go and be together somewhere else. Rather, it is God coming in person to dwell with image-bearing people so that together they may bring rescuing, ordering wisdom to bear upon the world, on earth as in heaven. This is key to how early Christians understood Jesus's actions and the Spirit's role. As Jesus, God comes into his world as the truly human rescuer and ruler. Through the Spirit, God comes into the hearts and lives of puzzled and frightened believers who don't know what to pray for as they ought, so that precisely in their prayer of unknowing, their prayer from within the darkness of their own lives and of the world around them, God will be at work, interceding from within creation.

This means that God is working with these praying-in-the-dark people for the wider good of his world. “Those who love God” in verse 28 refers to those who, precisely at the point where they are at the end of their own mental, emotional, and spiritual tether, find within themselves the deep sorrow of all the world, as it were, concentrated into one place, and find at that moment that they are part of the dialogue of love between the Father and the Spirit. This is what we are called to do and be. Just as the glory of Jesus was fully revealed on the cross, so too the Spirit-given glory of Jesus's followers is fully present in the dark moments. Like Jesus in Gethsemane, where he prayed the Abba prayer, God's suffering people ask in perplexity whether there might not be another way. Like Jesus on the cross, God's people feel as though they have been forsaken entirely. But at such points, we are to discover that what we deeply want to say has already been said by Jesus himself.

Practice:

Sit in a time of silent prayer with God. Pray, without using words, for the renewal of creation. Let the inarticulable utterings of the Spirit lead you during this prayer.