God Is Spirit

Paul continues 'that I have great heaviness and continual sorrow in my heart. For I could wish that myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren ...'. These are the words of a true intercessor. Paul was a man called to highest office, (walking in the Spirit and after the Spirit as he said) a man who had the spirit of Christ and was full of assurance. Earlier he had spoken of the Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are the children of God, and O what a vital ministry of the Spirit this is; without it none can know that he or she is born again. But here he is speaking from the opposite point of view, that is, from the viewpoint of the Spirit. Life eternal for every individual derives from two positions, man's life in God and God's life in men.

Every one must be able to speak in both terms -- saying 'the Spirit is in me and I am in the Spirit'. Both these positions and consciousnesses are equally important, one is God's, the other is mine. A man's conscience must have witness in the Holy Spirit as well as the Spirit's conscience bearing witness in him. The conscience of the Spirit rings true when He cries 'Abba Father' in a man. He does so with clearest of conscience when that man is made a righteous and holy child of God, in other words regenerate. The Spirit's conscience is exercised in this matter; He has to be absolutely right and true about it in view of and in full knowledge of the standard demanded by the work and agony and sacrifice of Christ on the cross by the Father; the Spirit must be absolutely right.

If His conscience is right He will witness with(in) a man's spirit that he is truly a son of God. Corresponding to that, a man's conscience must bear him witness with(in) the Holy Spirit on every matter. Unless a man's conscience is right his spirit is not right -- something is wrong and unless corrected will go radically wrong.

At this point Paul is drawing attention to a ministry of the highest importance, though perhaps not always recognized as such. We are being presented here with the true relationship which exists between the Holy Spirit and the sons of God. The consciousness of the Spirit in me and the consciousness of I myself in the Spirit is another way of saying, 'in the mouth of two witnesses every word may be established'.

Here Paul is facing us with it at highest levels of spiritual life and function. Here then is the position: The spirit crying in me bears witness to me that I am a son (and that is wonderful beyond words) and the Spirit groaning in me is preparing me to be an intercessor: if possible that is a more wonderful thing still. What a wonderful thing it would be if every man's conscience bore him witness in the Spirit that he was an intercessor. If this is so in any man he is a son of God in very truth, ministering in the very Spirit of God at the highest possible level of spiritual life and function.

Half way through chapter eight Paul begins to prepare his readers for the introduction of these things, revealing the reason why God makes us His sons, sending the Holy Spirit into our hearts crying out unto Him. The whole creation is groaning and travailing in pain together, waiting for the manifestation of the sons of God. Paul was groaning too. He realised that with all that he had, he had only the firstfruits of the Spirit and he groaned for that which he did not yet have; he wanted the full harvest. But he did not want only that -- he was not so selfish, he wanted God to have His full harvest. Paul wanted the fulness of the gentiles to be brought in, he wanted his kinsmen according to the flesh to be saved -- all Israel.

He realised why he had been saved; he lived for this, worked for it, felt for it -- crying out and groaning within himself to God he became an intercessor. He realised that both the Son and the Spirit are intercessors and he became one with them.