Part 2, Chapter 09

CHAPTER IX, THE WORK OF THE HOLY SPIRIT AS OUR HELPER IN PRAYER,

Besides the function of the Holy Spirit in making known to us the mind of God, there is also ascribed to Him in Scripture a special action in connection with our making known our requests to God in prayer. We have the promise of the spirit of grace and of supplications (Zechariah 12:10); the Spirit is said to help our infirmities in the exercise of prayer, and to make intercession for us (Romans 8:26-27); the Spirit is said to cry in our hearts, Abba, Father (Galatians 4:6); and we are exhorted to pray in the Holy Spirit (Jude 1:20). In the first of these passages there is no reason to believe that the prophet had the idea of a personal divine agent; it is rather a disposition or tendency in the human soul that is suggested by his words. But it is a disposition of a truly religious and devotional nature, including love or kindness in the heart, and the outcome of that in humble petitions for pardon and blessing; and this frame of mind is promised to be given by God, and to be such as to lead to a thorough conversion of the people from ungodliness and idolatry. Even here therefore we can hardly fail to see, that true prayer is represented as a special result of that renewing work of God in the souls of men, which we learn in the New Testament to ascribe especially to the Holy Spirit. In so far as he implants and nourishes in us the new life of faith, repentance, and love, the Spirit of God stimulates and helps the exercise of prayer; for that is, as it were, the breath of the new life, the natural and spontaneous action of it. Like every exercise of spiritual life, prayer presupposes the existence of that life itself, and it will be energetic and abundant in proportion as the life is healthful and strong. So, as that life both in its beginning and in its continuance and growth, depends on the power of the Holy Spirit, the habit and activity of prayer may be traced to His agency. “ Quicken us, and we will call upon thy name,’’ must ever be the language of God’s people. But the New Testament seems to point to a more special connection of the Holy Spirit with the prayers of believers in Jesus. In the same chapter in which he speaks of the Spirit bearing witness with our spirits that we are children of God, Paul says that the Spirit also helps our infirmities in the way of prayer. The infirmity here specially in the apostle’s view is our ignorance, not our disinclination to come to God in prayer: the remedy for that he had spoken of before, when he said that we “have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father” (Romans 8:15). But even when we are enabled thus to address God as our Father, we may be at a loss in prayer, from want of knowing what we should pray for as we ought. We know that we need much for our complete salvation; we have been saved in hope, but not yet in full fruition; we feel the evils that beset and surround us; and we are assured by our faith in Christ that these shall yet be entirely removed; but what really are the roots of these evils, or in what way we are to look and labour for their removal, we do not distinctly know. In our ignorance and confusion, we may often be apt to pray for the removal of what is really for our good, or for the bestowal of things that would be pernicious. Hence we need the aid of the Holy Spirit. But He helps us, not by revealing to us precisely what we should ask for in each particular emergency, but by securing that our groanings, even though they cannot be articulately expressed, shall serve the purpose of prayer. The Spirit makes intercession for us with these very groanings that cannot be uttered; that is, He not only prompts them, but presents them to God in such a way that they are heard and answered. He who is the hearer of prayer searches the hearts, and does not need that their desires should be expressed in words, in order that He may know what they are; and when they are wrought by His own Spirit in the hearts of those who are His own people, His holy ones, He knows that they are according to His will. Thus, since the Holy Spirit, dwelling in us and moving us to prayer, is ever in fellowship and union with the Father and the Son; our desires, however confused and inarticulate they may be in our consciousness, are yet the expression of the mind of the Spirit, and so are acceptable and prevailing prayers. To offer up our desires to God, under the influence of the Spirit, and trusting to His intercession, seems to be what is meant by praying in the Holy Spirit (Jude 1:20), crying by, or in, the Spirit, Abba, Father (Romans 8:15), having access through Christ by, or in, one Spirit unto the Father (Ephesians 2:18). Again, as the mystical connection of the believer with the Spirit is variously expressed, now by saying that he is in the Spirit, and again that the Spirit is in him; so this agency of the Holy Spirit is also described as His crying in us, “Abba, Father” (Galatians 4:6). The prayers of the children of God, and even their inarticulate longings after the full accomplishment of salvation, are utterances of the will of the Spirit of God, who is one with the Father and the Son in the wonderful purpose of love from which salvation springs. In this function of the Holy Spirit, as making intercession for us, we may see, more distinctly than in any other of His works, the meaning and importance of the scriptural statements about the Spirit not merely working, but dwelling in believers. As before observed, these statements cannot refer to the essential presence of the Spirit of God, for being divine, that is everywhere; but they denote that the Holy Spirit works in the souls of Christians in a way that He does not work in those of others. Yet it is not merely the works of the Spirit, or the gracious feelings and inclinations wrought by Him, that we mean, when we speak of, or pray for, the indwelling of the Spirit. Were this all that is promised and granted to us, it might indeed, for ought we know, be sufficient for our faith and holiness; but on that supposition it could not be said in any natural sense, that the Holy Spirit made intercession for us. That action implies personality and personal agency; and so we must conclude that not merely the gifts or operations of the Spirit, but the Spirit Himself is given and sent into our hearts. Whatever difficulty there may be in forming a conception of how this is so, this is the meaning obviously suggested by our Lord’s promises in the farewell discourses recorded by John; and although He does not there speak of the Spirit making intercession for them, He gives that view of the Spirit as a person, which makes His intercession intelligible; and when He calls Him another Comforter or Advocate, who is to supply His place, and remain with His disciples always, He at least suggests this as one of His functions. The evidence to individual Christians of the Spirit’s help and intercession in their prayers is not always their freedom and fluency of expression, or their comfort and delight in the exercise, or their fervour and rapture of devotion. All these may sometimes be due to natural causes, or to baseless imagination; and they may sometimes be absent when there is really prayer in the Holy Spirit. The only true and unfailing test of His assistance is the accordance of the prayer with the mind of God. That includes two things: for as prayer is essentially the offering up of our desires to God, it is needful that the desires themselves be right, and that they be offered up aright. By renewing and sanctifying our affections, the Holy Spirit secures that our desires are for things agreeable to God’s will, moving us to seek His face and favour as our chief good, and raising us above mere selfish and worldly inclinations. When we are desiring holiness, and hating sin, longing for the glory of God and the truest good of our fellowmen, and wishing temporal comforts and happiness only in subordination to these ends, and as far as they conduce to them, then our desires are in harmony with God’s will, and as such desires are not natural or spontaneous in the heart of any unrenewed man, and even in the heart of the renewed have to contend with many opposing tendencies, we may be sure that where they really exist, in however small a degree, the Holy Spirit has been their author, and so is helping to pray. But it is as necessary for acceptable prayer, that the desires be offered to God aright, as that they be right in themselves. They are to be offered in the name of Christ, with confession of our sins, and thankful acknowledgment of God’s mercies. Now, these things are all involved in Christian faith, and are secured if we have faith in Christ as He is offered to us in the gospel. For that implies, that we feel and acknowledge that we are sinners, guilty and inexcusable, and that any good that we enjoy is altogether undeserved and of God’s free mercy; that we have and express humble thankfulness to Him for all the benefits He bestows; and that we trust in Christ for forgiveness, and all blessings that we need and ask in prayer. Such sentiments and convictions as these are the work of the Holy Spirit moving and enabling us to repentance and faith; and to pray under the influence and impression of them is to pray in the Holy Spirit. But as these convictions are in their nature of a humbling and self-abasing tendency, the aid of the Holy Spirit in prayer may oftentimes appear in the intense grief, self-loathing, and self-distrust with which our petitions are offered. Thus Zechariah describes the pouring out of the spirit of grace and of supplications as leading to the bitterest mourning; and Paul speaks of the Spirit making intercession for us with unutterable groanings. The Spirit indeed always prompts the childlike cry, “Abba, Father; “ and thus gives confidence, even when we are most cast down; often too His help in devotion may be seen in the freedom, and delight, and hopefulness with which we are enabled to make known our requests to God; but we are not to suppose that when these joyful feelings are absent, we are without His assistance. The true test is the holiness and the faith with which we pray.