<p>8:26&nbsp;<i>And in like manner</i>- A phrase hard to interpret in this context. The sense may be more of &ldquo;And even moreover&rdquo;, &ldquo;even so&rdquo;; &ldquo;And now guess what, even more...&rdquo; might be the dynamic sense. That apart from us having a wonderful hope which we confidently await, it&rsquo;s not all jam tomorrow. The spirit, both as the Lord the spirit, i.e. Jesus personally, and also as His spirit which indwells us, is actively at work even now.</p><p><i>The Spirit also</i>- A title for Christ personally. See on Rom. 7:14.</p><p><i>Helps our infirmity</i>- &ldquo;Helps&rdquo; occurs in the LXX of Ex. 18:22 and Num. 11:17, where Moses is the one helped. Paul is suggesting that each believer can rise up to the pattern of Moses; he was no longer to be seen by Jewish believers as some distant, untouchable, stellar example of devotion. He was a pattern that through the Spirit could be realistically attained; although the point is being cleverly made that he too had weakness that needed Divine help. Paul made it a credo of his own life, and urged other believers to follow his example in this, that he would labour to support s.w. help, Rom. 8:26 the weak (Acts 20:35). For we are all weak, and helped only by grace. But the Greek word Paul uses for &lsquo;helps&rsquo; also carries the meaning of &lsquo;to participate it&rsquo;. It clearly has this sense in 1 Tim. 6:2, &ldquo;partakers participators in the benefit&rdquo;. The Spirit participates in our infirmities and thus helps us; just as we should seek to empathize as far as we can in the infirmities of others, both practical and moral. The &ldquo;infirmities&rdquo; Paul has in mind would seem to be the infirmity of spirit he laments in Rom. 7:15-24; our moral weakness. The same word is used of how the Lord Jesus in His ministry fulfilled the prophecy of Is. 53:4 that on the cross He would &lsquo;take our infirmities&rsquo; (Mt. 8:17). These &ldquo;infirmities&rdquo; according to Is. 53:4 were our sins, but sin&rsquo;s effect is manifested through sickness. The moral dimension to these &ldquo;infirmities&rdquo; has already been established by Paul in Romans, for in Rom. 5:6 he uses the word to describe how &ldquo;when we were yet&nbsp;<i>weak</i>&nbsp;s.w. &lsquo;infirm&rsquo;, Christ died for the ungodly; and he explains his sense here as being that &ldquo;when we were yet&nbsp;<i>sinners</i>&rdquo; (Rom. 5:8). Jesus as the Lord the Spirit engages with our infirmities, on the plane of the spirit, the deep human mind and psyche. What He did on the cross in engaging with our moral infirmity He did in His life, and He continues to do for us in essence. He does not turn away in disgust at our infirmities, rather through His Spirit within us He engages with them, perhaps deep within our subconscious, beneath our conscious will.&nbsp; The allusion to Mt. 8:17 seems certain- for there we read the same word for &ldquo;infirmities&rdquo; and &ldquo;took&rdquo; is&nbsp;<i>lambano</i>, a form of which is used by Paul in saying that the Spirit &ldquo;helps&rdquo; our infirmities. We are therefore led to understand &ldquo;the Spirit&rdquo; as a title of Christ personally. That title is used, however, because of the fact that in this context, His Spirit, His personality, is within us, He personally indwells us within our spirit; as we are in Christ so He is in us. His strength is perfected through our weakness (s.w. &ldquo;infirmities&rdquo;; 2 Cor. 12:9). He knows even now the feeling of our infirmities (Heb. 4:15; 5:2). If the Lord Jesus so engages with our weaknesses, we therefore ought to unhesitatingly &ldquo;support the weak&rdquo; s.w., 1 Thess. 5:14.</p><p><i>For we do not know how to pray-&nbsp;</i>Mt. 20:22 = Rom. 8:26. This is an example of where appreciating the links with the Gospels opens our understanding of Paul's letters. Paul is implying that we are like the mother of Zebedee's children, in that when we pray, we know not what we ask for in the sense that we don't&nbsp;<i>appreciate</i>&nbsp;what we ask for. I know what to pray for: my redemption, and that of others. Read wrongly, Rom. 8:26 implies we haven't the foggiest what on earth to ask God for. But we&nbsp;<i>do</i>&nbsp;know what to ask for; the point is, we don't&nbsp;<i>appreciate</i>&nbsp;what we are asking for, just as that woman didn't appreciate what she was praying for when she asked that her two boys would be in the Kingdom.</p><p>A related word for &ldquo;pray&rdquo; is used in this same context by Paul in Rom. 9:3, where he says that he &ldquo;could wish&rdquo;, s.w. &ldquo;pray&rdquo;, that he himself were condemned by God so that Israel might be saved. His allusion is to Moses&rsquo; prayer that he would be excluded from God&rsquo;s book rather than Israel be excluded from the Kingdom. But Paul learnt the lesson from how God responded to Moses- that He doesn&rsquo;t accept substitutionary sacrifice. Paul is admitting he too doesn&rsquo;t know how to pray for Israel as he ought, but he leaves their salvation in the hands of their Saviour, whilst so earnestly desiring it in his own spirit.</p><p><i>As we ought</i>- We don&rsquo;t seem to have within us to pray as we&nbsp;<i>ought</i>, i.e. as we s.w. &lsquo;must&rsquo;. It&rsquo;s not that we just don&rsquo;t know what to pray about; we don&rsquo;t pray as we ought to / must, and yet our gracious Mediator makes intercession with unutterable groans. And the older Paul can lament his failures to preach as he &ldquo;ought&quot;, as he&nbsp;<i>must</i>, and therefore he appeals for prayer that he will witness to the Gospel as every believer of it&nbsp;<i>must</i>&nbsp;(Eph. 6:20; Col. 4:4).</p><p><i>But the Spirit Himself</i>- A clear reference to Christ, whose spirit indwells us and is in dialogue with&nbsp;<i>our</i>&nbsp;spirit on some unconscious level. Our innermost spiritual desires are thereby transferred to God by our Heavenly mediator. And our innermost desire is to be right with God, to obtain salvation, deliverance from this body of death and life of spiritual failure. Now we can better understand why all we are reading here flows on naturally from his groaning of spirit in Romans 7. The Lord Jesus indwells us, His spirit perceives the spiritual groaning of our spirit, and transfers it as it were to Himself; for if we are in Christ, then He is in us. And His intercession for us is in that sense successful; our salvation was obtained on the cross thanks to His own groaning in spirit there, and this guarantees that He will obtain it for us the idea of &lsquo;intercession&rsquo;, we have noted, includes that of &lsquo;obtaining&rsquo;.</p><p><i>Makes intercession for us</i>- A return to the legal metaphors. The Lord Jesus is our interceder, the counsel for the defence, and also an emotional witness, pleading with groanings to the judge in support of our case. The Greek for &ldquo;intercession&rdquo; cannot be taken too far, but it is derived from the verb &lsquo;to obtain&rsquo;. The obtaining of our salvation, the winning of our case, was achieved on the cross, in the groanings of Jesus in Gethsemane and on the stake; but in essence, He groans for us still in intercession, and in doing so, His groaning are in sympathy with our groaning for salvation. The type of groanings of spirit of Rom. 7:15-24 become the groanings of our Heavenly intercessor. He is not separate from our frustrations at our failures; He takes them fully on board. The crucial thing is that we have them; that we can read Rom. 7:15-24 with empathy and know that &lsquo;That&rsquo;s me&rsquo;. Which I believe most readers of these words can indeed say.</p><p><i>With groanings</i>- Heb. 5:7 comments that&nbsp; Christ prayed &quot;with strong crying and tears&quot;. These words are certainly to be connected with Rom. 8:26, which speaks of Christ making intercession for us now&nbsp;with &quot;groanings which cannot be uttered&quot;. One might think from Heb. 5:7 that the Lord Jesus made quite a noise whilst hanging on the cross. But Rom. 8:26 says that his groaning is so intense that it cannot be audibly uttered; the physicality of sound would not do justice to the intensity of mental striving. No doubt the Lord Jesus was praying silently, or at best quietly, as he hung there. The point is that the same agonizing depth of prayer which the Lord achieved on the cross for us is what he now goes through as he intercedes for us with the Father. Heb. 5:7 describes Christ on the cross as a priest offering up a guilt offering for our sins of ignorance. He did this, we are told, through &quot;prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears&quot;. This must surely be a reference to &quot;Father forgive them&quot;. Those were said with a real passion, with strong crying, with tears as He appreciated the extent of our sinfulness and offence of God. There is a connection between these words and those of Rom. 8:26,27, which describes Christ as our High Priest making intercession for us &quot;with groanings&quot;. &quot;Groanings&quot; is surely the language of suffering and crucifixion. It is as if our Lord goes through it all again when He prays for our forgiveness, He has the same passion for us now as He did then. Think of how on the cross He had that overwhelming desire for our forgiveness despite His own physical pain. That same level of desire is with Him now. Surely we can respond by confessing our sins, by getting down to realistic self-examination, by rallying our faith to truly appreciate His mediation and the forgiveness that has been achieved, to believe that all our sins, past and future, have been conquered, and to therefore rise up to the challenge of doing all we can to live a life which is appropriate to such great salvation. The suffering and groaning of which Paul speaks in Rom. 8:17, 22-26 is in my view a reference to the &lsquo;groaning&rsquo; he has just been making about his inability to keep the Mosaic Law see on Rom. 7:18. Our helplessness to be obedient, our frustration with ourselves, is a groaning against sin which is actually a groaning in harmony with that of the Spirit of the Lord Jesus, who makes intercession for us with the same groanings right now (Rom. 8:26). Indeed, those groanings are those spoken of in Heb. 5:7 as the groanings of strong crying and tears which the Lord made in His final passion. In this sense, the Spirit, the Lord the Spirit, bears witness with our spirit / mind, that we are the children of God (Rom. 8:16). This clinches all I am trying to say. Our inability to keep the Law of God leads to a groaning against sin and because of sin, which puts us into a unity with the Lord Jesus as our Heavenly intercessor in the court of Heaven. Because of this, we are declared justified, there are no credible accusers, and the passionate intercessor / advocate turns out to be the judge Himself. Thus through our frustration at our own failure, we are led not only to Christ but to the certainty of an assured salvation. But that wondrous realization of grace which is expressed so finely in Romans 8 would just be impossible were it not for the conviction of sin which there is through our experience of our inability to keep the Law of God. Our failure and groaning because of it becomes in the end the very witness that we are the children of God (Rom. 8:16). God thereby makes sin His servant, in that the experience of it glorifies Him. How God works through sin is revealed in the way that although God always provided food for Israel in the wilderness, He &lsquo;suffered them to hunger&rsquo; for 40 years, in order to try to teach them that man lives not by bread alone, but by God&rsquo;s word (Dt. 8:2,3). The Jews in the wilderness despised the food God gave them as worthless (Num. 21:3); they went hungry not literally, but in the sense that they despised the manna of God&rsquo;s provision. And He allowed them to have that hunger, in order that He might try to teach them about the value of His word. He didn&rsquo;t simply punish them for their ingratitude. He sought to work through it in order to teach them something. Even the process of rejection results in the victims coming to &lsquo;know the Lord&rsquo;.</p><p><i>Which cannot be uttered</i>- In the same way as our inner groanings for salvation, for deliverance from how we are, are unspoken, rarely verbalized (although Rom. 7:15-24 is a fine exception), so His intercession for us isn&rsquo;t in human words, it&rsquo;s a dialogue of the Spirit with God, a meeting of innermost minds. Our sinfulness and desire to be free from it is articulated through the spirit of God&rsquo;s perfect Son, to the mind or spirit of God Himself. Intercession, therefore, isn&rsquo;t a question of translating words which we say in prayer into some Heavenly language which is somehow understandable to God, rather like a translator may interpret from one language to another. It is our spirit which is perceived for what it is and articulated before God. This explains why both in Biblical example and in our own experience, our unspoken, unformulated desires of the spirit are read by God as prayers and responded to. I devote a whole chapter in my analysis of &ldquo;Prayer&rdquo; to exemplifying this Biblically, but we should also know it from our own experience. Desires which we had, above all we asked or thought, are read by God as prayers and responded to. Paul gives an example of this in saying that Elijah made intercession to God&nbsp;<i>against</i>&nbsp;Israel (Rom. 11:2,3), when clearly it was his thoughts in this context which were being interpreted as prayer. Perhaps the statement that the Lord Jesus intercedes for us without human words, in terms which &ldquo;cannot be uttered&rdquo;, is intended as a comfort to those who feel they&rsquo;re &lsquo;not good at praying&rsquo; because they don&rsquo;t know how to put it all in words. Verbalization skills are hardly a prerequisite for powerful prayer- because some people are more verbal, better with words, than others. Rom. 8 speaks of the importance of being spiritually minded, and then goes on to say that our spirit, our deep inner mind, is transferred to God by Christ, called by His title &quot;the Lord the spirit&quot; ,&nbsp;<i>without</i>&nbsp;specifically spoken words. This is surely proof enough that the Lord does not mediate our prayers as an interpreter would, from one language to another, matching lexical items from one language with those from another. &quot;We know not what to pray for&quot;, so the Lord Jesus reads our inner spirit, and transfers this on a deep mental level, without words, to the Father. The whole process of mediation takes place within the Lord's mind, with the sort of groanings He had as He begged the Father to raise Lazarus (Rom. 8:26 cp. Jn. 11:38), and as on the cross He prayed with strong crying and tears for our redemption (Heb. 5:5 cp. Is. 53:12). The Lord Jesus is the same yesterday and today. That same passion and intensity of pleading really is there. This is why the state of our mind, our spirit, is so vitally important; because it is this which the Lord Jesus interprets to the Father. The Lord's Spirit struggles in mediation with crying and groaning (Rom. 8:26), as He did for the raising of Lazarus. There is a further connection with Heb. 5:5, where we learn that the Lord prayed on the cross with a like intensity. And this Lord is our Lord today. He can be crucified afresh, therefore He has the capacity for struggle and mental effort. The Greek for &quot;groanings&quot; in Rom. 8:26 also occurs in Mk. 7:34: &quot;Looking up to heaven, he&nbsp;<i>sighed</i>&nbsp;and saith unto him, Ephthatha&quot;. The sighing of intense prayer by the Lord was His more spiritually cultured reflection of the number one desire of that man's spirit, as was His groaning and tears for Martha's desire to be granted, and Lazarus to be raised. It has been wisely observed that the language of Christ's mediation can be quite misunderstood. The picture we should have &quot;is not that of an orante,&nbsp;<i>standing</i>&nbsp;ever before the Father with out-stretched arms... pleading our cause in the presence of a reluctant God... but that of a&nbsp;<i>throned</i>&nbsp;Priest-King, asking what He will from a Father who always hears and grants His request&rdquo;. The description of Christ groaning in spirit to transfer our spirit to God (Rom. 8:26) is a reflection of the fact that we groan for redemption and the coming of the day of the liberty of God's children (Rom. 8:22,23), when what is guaranteed by &quot;the firstfruits of the Spirit&quot; which we have, will at last be realized. &quot;All things work together for good&quot; to this end, of forgiveness and salvation. It certainly doesn't mean that every story ends up happily-ever-after in this life. &quot;We know not what we should pray for as we ought&quot; (Rom. 8:26) seems to be some kind of allusion back to the mother of Zebedee's children asking Christ to get her two sons the best places in the Kingdom (Mt. 20:22). He basically replied 'You know not what you pray for', in the sense of 'you don't appreciate'. It may be that Paul in Rom. 8 is saying that in our desire for the Kingdom, in our groaning for it, we don't appreciate what we ask for as we ought, yet Christ nonetheless makes powerful intercession for us to this end. Because there is only &quot;one Spirit&quot;, even the terms &quot;Spirit of God&quot; and &quot;Spirit of Christ&quot; can be paralleled because they are manifestations of that same one Spirit: &quot;Ye are... in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his. And if Christ be in you... the Spirit is life... if the Spirit of (God) that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you... the Spirit (Christ, 1 Tim. 2:5; 2 Cor. 3:18 R.V.) maketh intercession for us&quot; (Rom. 8:9-11,26). See on Jn. 7:39.</p>