Prayer offered in the name of Christ and the action of the Holy Spirit in prayer are so closely linked, one with the other, that the former truth involves the latter. The sacred humanity of the Saviour received in the Incarnation itself the anointing of the Holy Ghost; at the Baptism there was a further anointing; once again, at His Ascension, the anointing was repeated. The same Spirit by which the manhood of the incarnate Lord has been moulded into what it is passes into His members; every part of their redeemed nature is pervaded by His presence; through His strength enabling their wills to respond to the Divine will, through His illumination developing their spiritual insight, through His gift of love enkindling their affections, they realize their true selves as God ever intended them to be. The result is that Christ Himself is revealed and formed within them. To glorify the Son who sends Him is the Spirit’s loftiest task. In effecting the vital union of the glorified Head with the members of His Body, of the branches in the Vine and the Vine in the branches, that function of the Holy Ghost in man is accomplished.
To understand how the coming of the Holy Spirit was indeed to commence a new epoch in the prayer-world, we must remember who He is, what His work, and what the significance of His not being given until Jesus was glorified. It is in the Spirit that God exists, for He is Spirit. It is in the Spirit that the Son was begotten of the Father; it is in the fellowship of the Spirit that the Father and Son are one. The eternal, never-ceasing giving to the Son, which is the Father’s prerogative, and the eternal asking and receiving, which is the Son’s right and blessedness—it is through the Spirit that this communion of life and love is maintained. It has been so from all eternity. It is so specially now, when the Son as Mediator ever liveth to pray. The great work which Jesus began on earth, of reconciling in His own body God and man, He carries on in heaven. To accomplish this He took up into His person the conflict between God’s righteousness and our sin. On the cross He once for all ended the struggle in His own body. And then He ascended to heaven, that thence He might in each member of His body carry out the deliverance and manifest the victory He had obtained. It is to do this that He ever liveth to pray; in His unceasing intercession He places Himself in living fellowship with the unceasing prayer of His redeemed ones. Or rather, it is His unceasing intercession which shows itself in their prayers, and gives them a power they never had before. And He does this through the Holy Spirit.
1. The Spirit assures us of the nearness and power of Christ Himself. It was this that Jesus taught His disciples on that same night when He told them that those who had seen Him had seen the Father. Much was said during those sacred hours of the Spirit who was to come when Jesus Himself should be seen no more. Why did He speak thus of that Spirit? It is reasonable to think that it was, in the main, a practical purpose which He had in view. He was about to leave His disciples, and they were miserable at the thought of losing Him. They would be like orphans in a desolate world if He were gone. The sun would have vanished out of their sky. And, reading their thoughts, He tried to reassure them. They were not to be troubled or afraid. It would not be as they were fearing. For, in the first place, if He were leaving them, it was only that He might make ready for them in a House in which there would be ample room for them as well as for Him. And, next, they were to understand that, though He might leave them for a little while, He would come again in another Form, and dwell with them, and within them, in fellowship yet dearer and more intimate than anything they had known in the happy days which now were coming to an end. The Spirit who was of Himself, and who was Himself, should be their abiding Guest. Unseen by any mortal eye, He yet would ever be by their side and nearer than by their side, a Helper and a Comforter whose home should be in the most secret chamber of their being. If any man would be obedient, Jesus and the Father would come, and would take up their abode with that man. Why should they be disconsolate? They would never be left alone. The Father would be with them. The Son would be with them, who, as their Human Friend and Lord, had interpreted the Father. Father and Son would be with them in the presence of that Spirit who could never be separated from either.
The presence then promised, now realized through, the Spirit, is the Emmanuel-presence, Divine and human. It is the presence that, in ways appropriate to each, gives its life to the word, to the sacraments, to prayer in public and private, to the ministry in the Church. It is the presence that constitutes the Christian standing before God, and forms the character into correspondence with “the mind of Christ,” which is the condition of asking in His name. In the teaching of St. Paul, those “in whom the Spirit of God dwells” are those “in whom Christ is”; those who are in Christ Jesus, and are owned as His, are those who have “the Spirit of Christ”. Such was the Apostle’s conviction as, under the guidance of the Paraclete, he developed and applied the Lord’s own revelation in passages saturated with inspiration. The presence of the assisting Spirit, the presence also of “Christ Jesus . . . who maketh intercession for us,” coincident and inseparable—this is the basis of teaching instinct with energy, hope, and stability respecting the action of the Holy Spirit in prayer.
Lord, I have shut my door !
Come Thou and visit me; I am alone !
Come, as when doors were shut, Thou cam’st of yore,
And visitedst Thine own.
My Lord, I kneel with reverent love and fear,
For Thou art here.
2. The Spirit gives us confidence in our approach, by witnessing to our sonship. Twice in St. Paul’s Epistles there is a remarkable reference to Him in the matter of prayer. “Ye received the spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father” (Rom_8:15). “God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father” (Gal_4:6). In that name our Saviour offered His greatest prayer to the Father, accompanied by the entire surrender and sacrifice of His life and love. The Holy Spirit is given for the express purpose of teaching us, from the very beginning of our Christian life onward, to utter that word in childlike trust and surrender. In one of these passages we read, “We cry”; in the other, “He cries”. What a wonderful blending of the Divine and the human co-operation in prayer. What a proof that God has done His utmost to make prayer as natural and effectual as though it were the cry of a child to an earthly Father, as He says, “Abba, Father”.
Abba, the Syrian vocative for father, was a word familiar to the lips of Jesus. No one had hitherto approached God as He did. His utterance of this word, expressing the attitude of His life of prayer and breathing the whole spirit of His religion, profoundly affected His disciples. So that the Abba of Jesus became a watchword of His Church, being the prayer name of the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Gentile believers pronounced it, conscious that in doing so they were joined in spirit to the Lord who said, “My Father, and your Father” Greek-speaking Christians supplemented it by their own equivalent, as we by the English Father. This precious vocable is carried down the ages and round the whole world in the mother-tongue of Jesus, a memorial of the hour when through Him men learned to call God Father. [Note: G. G. Findlay, The Epistle to the Galatians, 253.]
3. This sense of sonship is, then, a sense of oneness with the other members of the Body of Christ. In the light of the common prayer, “Abba, Father,” we can hardly doubt that it was in acts of earnest, corporate worship that this intercession of the Spirit made itself felt in the Apostolic age. Such, for instance, was that act of worship described in the Acts of the Apostles, consequent on the return of St. Peter and St. John from their examination before the Council, followed by a renewed manifestation of Christian self-sacrifice and Christian energy; such also that solemn “ministration to the Lord,” during which the Holy Ghost made known His will: “Separate me Barnabas and Saul for the work whereunto I have called them”; and then, after a new and special act of fasting and prayer, He bade the officers of the Church send them on their mission. Probably if attendance at our own public worship were characterized by greater earnestness, more expectancy, a deeper desire to set forth the Divine glory, it would be in the great congregation, chiefly at the Holy Communion, though at other acts of corporate praise, thanksgiving, and intercession also, that the presence of the interceding Spirit would be realized. Into prayer new energy and interest would be infused; into the worshippers there would enter a desire so to consecrate their lives that the Kingdom of God might be extended, and the lofty hope of the Second Advent might be fulfilled.
A “belief in the Holy Catholic Church” should react on our religious life in several beneficial ways. It should give us a lively sense of gratitude to our predecessors in the Christian faith and a sense of the unbroken continuity of the Christian life in all ages. We need to remember how continuous has been the spiritual life in the Church, and how a long-suffering God has borne with the faults and superstitions which in every age have adhered to its organization. The more vivid and the farther-reaching is our impression of the patience of the wooing Spirit of God, the deeper will be our personal sense of obligation, the more truly “evangelical” our spirit. For it is just the sense of infinite debt to the Supreme, “the habit of grace,” it is just this that is the dominant note in the Christian life everywhere: the universal Church of Jesus is one vast Brotherhood of Infinite Obligation. The thought of the vastness, variety, duration, and essential unity of the common life to which we belong if we be members of Christ’s Body, the Church, should impose upon us a sense of responsibility as having our place in the inheriting and transmission of that common life. We come into the Christian life, not as though we were the first that ever burst into the sea of Christian truth and feeling, but as the successors, heirs, and debtors of a vast company who represent the purest, sanest, and most serviceable element in the life of humanity. Every one of us who is baptized into the spirit of Jesus is the successor of apostles, confessors, martyrs, monks, evangelists, reformers, who have mediated the Christian view-point and temper—and, better still, of the great anonymous crowd of holy men who have lived and prayed, and live and pray now, in heaven, in the Spirit of Jesus Christ. [Note: G. A. Johnston Ross, The God We Trust, 153.]
4. The Spirit intercedes with us, transfiguring our prayer. How inestimable is the support of the revelation that the interceding Spirit, to whom as God the mind of the Godhead is known, takes up our prayers, in themselves so unworthy, andso inadequate in every quality which prayer should possess, supplies their deficiencies, inspires them with “comfort, life, and fire of love,” and unites them with the intercession of the Mediator, who presents them to the Father. In gaining this supreme benefit, we find ourselves possessed of the secret of effectual prayer, and are on the way to be delivered from all perplexity and uncertainty in our supplications, for the Holy Spirit is our Advocate and Intercessor within, even as Christ is our Intercessor before the throne of God; and if He inspires our prayers, we may in offering them be freed from all misgivings as to the Divine will. St. Paul’s language is very clear and very striking on this point: “The Spirit also helpeth our infirmities: 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”. If, therefore, we are filled, as we may be, and as God intends us to be, with the Holy Ghost, we may expect such Divine guidance in our prayers as shall render their answer certain. For, as the Apostle puts the matter in another place, “Who among men knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of the man which is in him? even so the things of God none knoweth, save the Spirit of God. But we received, not the spirit of- the world, but the spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us by God.”
You have intimated your doubt of what spirit it is said that he “maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered”. Let us then refer to what has gone before, that the passage may make plain what we are seeking. Likewise, it is said “the Spirit helpeth our infirmities”. Does it not seem to you that this is the Holy Spirit, for He is our Helper, as He to whom it is said, “Thou hast been my succour, leave me not neither forsake me, O God of my salvation!” For what other Spirit could teach Paul how to pray? The Spirit of Christ, like Christ Himself, teaches His disciples to pray, for who could teach us, after Christ, but His Spirit, whom He sent to teach us, and to direct our prayers, “for we pray with the Spirit and we pray with the understanding also”. That the understanding may pray well, the Spirit goes before and “leads it forth into the right way,” so as to prevent carnal things, or what either falls below or exceeds its strength, from secretly stealing over it.
“For the manifestation of the Spirit is given to every man to profit withal.” It is written also, Seek great things, and small things shall be added unto you; seek heavenly things, and earthly things shall be added unto you. [Note: S. Ambrose.]
The interceding Spirit is in Himself perfectly conscious of God’s mind and purpose, and God is perfectly conscious of His. He intercedes “according to God”. This intercession is but a form of the perfect Divine life. But in the heart of the Church this desire of the Spirit can make itself felt only in groanings for the Divine manifestation which, like the aspirations which music suggests or expresses, are too deep to admit of articulate utterance. St. Paul, when he speaks of groanings which cannot be put into words, is perhaps thinking of the “tongues” in which the spiritual emotion of the first Christian churches found expression. And we should think of some earnest act of corporate Christian worship when, under the workings of the one Spirit, the strong desire after what is holiest and highest possesses men, and binds them together with a sense of longing for the Divine manifestation which could not be put into definite words. [Note: Bishop Gore, St. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, i. 313.]
5. The Spirit regenerates our nature, and that in all its parts — understanding, feeling, imagination, will. And what our prayer can do depends always upon what we are. It is living in the name of Christ that is the secret of praying in the name of Christ; living in the Spirit that fits for praying in the Spirit.
It is abiding in Christ that gives the right and power to ask what we will: the extent of the abiding is the exact measure of the power in prayer. It is the Spirit dwelling within us that prays, not in words and thoughts always, but in a breathing and a being deeper than utterance. Just so much as there is of Christ’s Spirit in us, is there real prayer.
It is as when the vessel nearing land flings its rope and finds that it holds. In prayer we know ourselves in contact with a higher realm of things, and our rope holds. Our answer is the thing we want, the best thing there is. Not words; for what are they? Not words, but what is so much better—the inflowing of peace, a sense of security, the feeling of a near Presence, often an ineffable happiness. Are there better things in this or any world than these? Prayer is the soul’s contact with the realm to which it belongs. Throw your cable across to it, and you find that it holds. Throw your bridge across to it, and the treasures, the society, of that realm will begin to pour in. Nature in all her departments is full of answers, most of which we have not yet learned to decipher. But our highest nature, as it throws out its signals to the silent air—that, too, is answered back. The notes that come to us, faint and far off though they may seem, are from the realm of the real. Nature, so honest with us in all our lower questionings, will not turn traitor to us in this last and highest. The range of things through which she leads us are the outer courts of a temple. Her final secret is God. [Note: J. Brierley, Religion. and Today, 252.]
