04.24. LESSON 24

LESSON 24

Though being joint-heirs with Christ does not exempt us from the present suffering under which "The whole creation groaneth and travaileth together" anymore than Christ was exempted from suffering, the sufferings of time weighed against the glories of eternity are as nothing. Moreover, since the Holy Spirit within us bears witness with our spirit that we are sons and heirs of God, we, already enjoying the first-fruits, hopefully wait for our full inheritance.

It should soften our hearts, enlarge our sympathies, and improve our conduct to recall how close even God’s dumb creatures are to his paternal heart. In the beginning animals were not incompatible with sinless human society. God forbade Jews to muzzle the ox that trod out their grain. To hard-hearted Jonah, he gave one reason for not destroying Nineveh the fact that "much cattle" would suffer (Jonah 4:11). Not Even one little sparrow "Is forgotten in the sight of God," or "Shall fall on the ground without your Father" (Christ). Does not God expect everything in his Bible to help us to know, love, and trust him? When Christ made common cause with groaning creation, the beasts about his manger-cradle were affected, and since have fared better in Christian than in Christ-less lands. If a man is a Christian, even his dog finds it out. Any degree of Christ is better for this world than no Christ at all. The by-products of Christianity constitute the blessing of our modern civilization. Alexander Campbell wrote to the effect that those who nibble at Christ become civilized, those who eat lightly of him become moralized, and those who eat fully of him become Christianized.

"We Know Not..."

"And in like manner (as he bears witness with us and as hope sustains us) the Spirit also helpeth our infirmity: for we know not how to pray as we ought; but the Spirit himself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered; and he that searcheth the hearts knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit, because he maketh intercession for the saints according to the will of God."

Who, tenting in a ruined, groaning world that "Lieth in the evil one, the old serpent, who is called the Devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world," can know how to pray as he ought? Infinitely intricate questions and deep, vast, eternal issues, utterly baffling to the best human brains and strategy, are involved in Christian prayer. At the climax of the world-old conflict between God and Satan for world-dominion, it seems that Christ himself felt the clash of alternatives in his praying. Upon the coming of the Greeks just before his cross, he prayed: "Now is my soul troubled; and what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour. But for this cause came I unto this hour. Father, glorify thy name." A little earlier midst the wailing at the tomb of Lazarus, he groaned, prayed, and wept. It must have been the havoc wrought by Satan among the sons of men from Eden onward that moved him so deeply on this occasion. And in Gethsemane, sore troubled in agony and bloody sweat, he prayed: "Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me." Had there been no momentary reluctance in him, could we but feel that somewhat of real man were lacking? Surely, these sacred incidents in the life of our blessed Lord stir us to our depths, take us into the heart of Christianity, God’s kingdom for reducing the rebellion of earth, and fill us with holy awe, with a profound sense of racial infirmity, and with a spirit of tremulous prayer.

We Christians are so identified with Christ in death and in life (Romans 6:1-23) that God’s mind is our mind and his interests are our interests, as "Ye are Christ’s; and Christ is God’s" (1 Corinthians 3:23) puts it. The principle of Christ’s in carnation is extended to us through the indwelling Holy Spirit, who is thus, so to speak, "found in fashion as a man." He moves within us both to cry "Abba, Father" and to pray "with groanings which cannot be uttered" in such unison with our spirit that we are not conscious of any impulse or impression being independent of our own spirit. This is all according to the will of God, who, searching human hearts and knowing the mind of the Spirit, can interpret the inarticulate divine-human groanings. Cannot a mother project her understanding and feeling into the inarticulate cry of her baby, and know its needs?

These spiritual things make no sense to the natural man, for he "Receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God...Things which entered not into the heart of man" (1 Corinthians 2:1-16). "The wind bloweth (Spirit breatheth) where it will" (John 3:8). Is it necessary for a small child to understand the discussion of its parents it overhears pertaining to its welfare? Does not Romans 8:26-27 have God, the Holy Spirit, and human spirits in communion without words? Who is so foolish as to say it cannot be? What may not be the potency of prayers wrought by the Spirit and presented by Christ to God! If we are living the unfulfilled lives of Romans 7:1-25, Romans 8:1-39 tells why. Need it be said again that the word of God is the only seed that produces this unspeakably rich Christian harvest?

"We Know..."
(Romans 8:28-30)

"And we know that to them that love God, all things work together for good, even to them that are called according to his purpose." We do not know how to pray as we ought, but we do know that all things work together for good to lovers of God, because they choose to fall in with his purpose. The word, "purpose," is the key to this great Scriptures. To know that the eternal, unchanging Father "before the foundation of the world" (1 Peter 1:20) conceived his entire scheme, from beginning to end, for the redemption and glorification of fallen men, by leading them to become "conformed to the image of his Son," is enough for men of faith in God. Gratefully and freely, such men will to accept God’s way. This purpose, yet in process of development, so compactly outlined here, ’is compatible with God’s character as revealed in nature and in the Bible. It is in-conceivable that he does anything without foresight and his own approval; that he has no law and design concerning that which he in foreknowledge plans is unthinkable. Therefore, foreordination and the remaining items of Paul’s outline, all essential parts of God’s eternal purpose, follow inevitably and irrevocably. Hence, to question that everything works together for good to Christians is to challenge God’s sovereign purpose, word, wisdom, grace and power. Verily, Christianity proposes to manage and to integrate all the circumstances and experiences of our checkered lives for our spiritual good. Do we believe it?

Questions