Today’s Passage: Romans 8:14–17, 26–27
Paul is writing to the Christians in Rome, and Romans 8 is his long, unhurried chapter on what life in the Spirit looks like. Today we take up two pieces of it: first the family that God makes out of us, and then the prayer that God Himself prays on our behalf when we have run out of our own.
As you read, hold this: When you have no words, the Spirit still prays for you.
Context How Rome made a son
In those days a Roman family could take in someone born outside it and make him a son by law, and often the one adopted was a grown man rather than a baby. From that day on he inherited like any son born to the house, and he carried the family name as his own. He was not a servant given a nicer title; he was a son.
Romans 8:14 (BSB)
¹⁴ For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God.
This verse is not measuring how hard a person works; it is naming a family. Wherever the Spirit of God is doing the leading, there stands a son of God. Paul says sons because in Rome it was the son who inherited, and a few lines later, in verse 16, he says children, so that daughters are gathered in as fully as sons.
Romans 8:15 (BSB)
¹⁵ For you did not receive a spirit of slavery that returns you to fear, but you received the Spirit of adoption to sonship, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!”
Paul sets two things side by side. The first is a spirit of slavery, which only drags a person back down into fear; the second is what God has actually given. And notice the verb he chooses, for he does not say that we mention God’s name, he says that we cry it out.
Abba is Aramaic, the everyday language of the streets and homes where Jesus lived, and it was the ordinary family word a child used for a father. Paul was writing in Greek and could easily have translated it, yet he did not. He left the home word standing right there on the page. It is the same word Jesus Himself prayed in the garden (Mark 14:36). So the very first word God gives a person to say back to Him is a family word, and it is the Spirit who places it on our lips.
Romans 8:16–17 (BSB)
¹⁶ The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children.
¹⁷ And if we are children, then we are heirs: heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ—if indeed we suffer with Him, so that we may also be glorified with Him.
Count the voices in that room. Our own spirit says that we belong, and the Holy Spirit stands alongside and says the very same thing. Yesterday we saw the Spirit called the first payment on our inheritance; today Paul tells us whose inheritance it is, for it belongs to children.
And Paul is honest about the road these children walk. There is suffering to be shared with Christ first, and only then the glory to be shared with Him.
Romans 8:26–27 (BSB)
²⁶ In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know how we ought to pray, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groans too deep for words.
²⁷ And He who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.
Read that second sentence slowly, and notice that Paul puts himself right inside it. He does not say that some people do not know how they ought to pray; he says that we do not, and he counts himself among us. And it is exactly there, into that not-knowing, that the Spirit hyperentynchanei, pronounced hoo-per-en-toong-KHAN-eye. Strong's G5241, to intercede on behalf of, to plead someone's case. This word means to step in and speak for someone who cannot speak for himself. The Spirit does not wait for you to find better words. He prays for you with groans, so the prayer you cannot finish is still carried to God. .
Verse 27 tells us who is listening. God searches the heart, so the Father is already reading what lies inside a person, and the Spirit is already speaking in that very place. The prayer has no distance at all to travel. And because it goes up according to the will of God, we can be sure the Spirit is asking for the right thing, the thing we would have asked for had we known how.
Study notes The same help, from the Son
Paul says this same thing again only a few verses later, this time about Jesus.
"Who is there to condemn us? For Christ Jesus, who died, and more than that was raised to life, is at the right hand of God—and He is interceding for us." Romans 8:34 (BSB)
So the Spirit prays within you, and the Son prays for you at the Father’s right hand. You are not the one holding this family together by finding the right sentences; God Himself is holding it together in prayer.
We come to God with no words of our own, and He answers us not with a technique but with a Person who prays.
Personal Application
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What is one thing you could bring to God today, even though you have no words to shape around it?
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Where have you been waiting until you could pray well enough before you would come to Him at all?
Today’s decision: I will pray once today in the first plain words that come, and I will not start over to make it sound better.
Pray to Close
The central truth: When you have no words, the Spirit still prays for you.
Give thanks: thank God that He did the adopting, and that the praying was His idea too.
Ask: ask the Holy Spirit to carry to God the things you cannot say well.
Bring: bring God one thing exactly as it sits in you, without tidying it up first.
Worship for Today
No Longer Slaves · Bethel Music
The title of this song grows straight out of verse 15, and it simply says back to God what Paul says there: that a spirit of slavery no longer owns the people God has adopted, and that God is now our Father. Sing it last, as praise.
Listen: