Straight to the Heart

Earlier this week, I sent the manuscripts for “Straight to the Heart of Romans” and “Straight to the Heart of Moses” to my publisher, ready to hit the bookshelves in the first week of July. To celebrate, I’m posting one of the chapters from Romans on this blog. I hope it helps you understand the promise of Romans 8 that God has provided all you need in order to experience him daily.

“We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us … Christ Jesus … is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us.” (Romans 8:26&34)

On 14^th January 1878, Alexander Graham Bell gave a telephone to Queen Victoria. It wasn’t much use to her. She had no idea how to use the as-yet-unknown invention, and she was sceptical of the idea that a telephone could work at all. How could she use this wooden box and ivory handset in her summer palace on the Isle of Wight to speak to her staff in London? Yet the Scottish inventor was very excited about his present, so she trusted him enough to give the telephone a try.  Picture that scene in your mind for a moment. It will help you to understand what Paul says in Romans 8.

We are almost at the end of section one of Paul’s letter, and in particular the verses which talk about experiencing our salvation. Paul tells us that the Gospel gives us intimate friendship with God, but the truth is that many of us feel a bit like Queen Victoria. We don’t know how to experience this in practice. To help us, Paul uses a Greek word three times in these three verses which only occurs in three other places in the whole of the New Testament. Paul wants this key word to teach us how to experience this relationship, because God has provided us with two intercessors.

First, let’s look at verse 34, where Paul talks about Jesus as our first intercessor. He “is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us,”because the Gospel isn’t just about Jesus dying, but about him being raised to life as well. One of the other three occurrences of this word in the New Testament is when Hebrews 7:24-25 expands on what Paul is trying to say: “because Jesus lives forever … he is able to save completely those who come to God through him, because he always lives to intercede for them.”The Gospel isn’t just the news that Jesus died to save us from death and judgment, but also that he rose to life and ascended to heaven in order to ‘save us completely’ by leading us into full experience of that salvation. It is a promise that at this very moment, Jesus is sitting with the Father and directing his favour towards you and me. He has gone on before us as our great intercessor to ensure that the prayers we pray never fail to get through.

Alexander Graham Bell gave Queen Victoria a wooden box with an ivory handset, but she trusted that what she saw was the evidence of much, much more. She believed that he had also laid cables from her palace across the seabed to the English mainland and then over eighty miles of fields to London. She had to trust him that his gift was not an ornament for display, but a promise that the infrastructure was in place to make her call.

It’s very difficult to experience our relationship with God without trusting that Jesus is our constant intercessor. Intercession means influencing someone’s attitude towards another, and both Romans 11:2 and Acts 25:24 use the word to describe someone making accusations of guilt. The context of verse 34 is Paul’s warning that there are plenty of accusers whose condemning voices want to cut the line between us and God. Satan literally means Accuser in Hebrew, and if we listen to his lies then we won’t pick up the phone. He specialises in making Christians run away from God’s presence by focusing them on their own shortcomings instead of on Christ’s intercession. The English Puritan, Thomas Brooks reminds us:

“God’s hearing of our prayers doth not depend upon sanctification, but upon Christ’s intercession; not upon what we are in ourselves, but upon what we are in the Lord Jesus; both our persons and our prayers are acceptable in the beloved. When God hears our prayers, it is neither for our own sakes nor yet for our prayers’ sake, but it is for his own sake, and his Son’s sake, and his glory’s sake, and his promise’s sake.”

But Paul tells us one intercessor is not enough. How could it be? If Alexander Graham Bell had merely laid the phone line between the Isle of Wight and London, and sent the phone by post to Queen Victoria, she would not have had the first idea how to make her call get through. He needed to travel to her palace and sit with her, and in verses 26 and 27 Paul uses the same Greek word to say God has: “We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us … the Spirit intercedes for the saints in accordance with God’s will.”Don’t miss the point and start debating whether ‘groaning’ in these verses is a reference to speaking in tongues. Paul’s main point is that we need the Holy Spirit to come alongside us to enable us to pray in the manner which releases our experience of salvation.

Back in the palace on the Isle of Wight, Alexander Graham Bell contravened strict royal protocol. Queen Victoria was struggling to make her telephone work and complained that “It is rather faint and one must hold the tube rather close to one’s ear.” Instinctively, he put his hand on her arm to help, forgetting commoners and royalty were not allowed to touch. Paul breaks royal protocol himself in verse 26 by using the same Greek word to describe the Holy Spirit’s help as was used by Martha in Luke 10:40 to request her sister help her with the household chores. It was a servant’s word, a word which describes a person rolling up their sleeves to lend a hand. Paul wants us to grasp that it’s the humble way our second intercessor works, as he comes alongside us to help us experience the Father. Jesus has paved the way for our calls and is sitting with the Father to ensure our words get through, but the Spirit sits with us at the other end of the line to help us know what we should say.

So take some time today to enjoy your relationship with the Father through the help of the Spirit and the Son. Fix your thoughts on what Jesus says to the Father to bring you near, and not on the voices of condemnation which drive you away. Let the Holy Spirit help you as your assistant as you pray. When you do so, you will find that you have God on the line, fulfilling the promise he made back in Jeremiah 29:12-14:

“You will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you.”