We all feel deeply the imperfection of our prayers: how weak, how ignorant they are! And St. Paul consoles us with the belief in an intercession—perfect, all-knowing, divine—which supports and sustains and, we may say, includes ours. The 'intercession of the Spirit' in our behalf, carried on, it is implied, 'in the hearts' of the saints which only God searches, is mentioned nowhere in the New Testament but here. But it is not to be separated from the intercession of Christ which is mentioned just below[[16]]. Christ's intercession is 'at the right hand of God,' but also He has by the Spirit taken us up into His own life. He dwells in us by His Spirit. By His Spirit we are knit into one and made His body. Doubtless, then, dwelling thus by the Spirit in the body, Christ intercedes for us. This is the intercession of the Spirit, which is also the intercession of Christ—an intercession gathering up into one, and sustaining and connecting and perfecting, all the imperfect prayers of all the saints.
This 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 manifestations 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.
St. Paul speaks of the groaning of suffering nature (ver. 22), and the groaning of the individual Christians (ver. 23), and also the groaning of the divine Spirit in the Church (ver. 26). No word could express more powerfully the intense desire after the manifestation of the divine kingdom which, in St. Paul's mind, should lie at the heart of true Christian prayer.
And the true prayer of the Spirit—the prayer which is according to God—is described (ver. 27) as 'on behalf of saints[[17]]'—on behalf of a separated and consecrated body. It follows, that is to say, the lines of Christ's own prayer—'I pray not for the world, but for those whom thou hast given me.' It is through the sanctified life that the divine influences are to spread over the world: and by praying for the consecrated body we are praying that that life may be exhibited more and more perfectly amongst men so as to strike their consciences and move them to conversion; that through our good works which they now behold they may glorify God in the day when they themselves are visited. The New Testament method of praying for the world is thus in great part indirect. But the direct method is also enjoined. We are also to pray directly 'for all men[[18]].'
iv.
There is, I think, no point on which St. Paul has been more misrepresented than on his teaching about predestination. He teaches plainly that it is God's purpose to 'have mercy upon all': that He 'willeth that all men should be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth[[19]].' But He works towards this universal end through a method of selected human instruments—through an elect body. Such an elect body had been the Jewish nation—selected, we cannot tell why, but very possibly in part because of its capacity for coherence and toughness, coupled with a singular aptitude for simple religious ideas—qualities which in themselves of course were the gift of God. This nation might have expanded, as was intended, into a catholic church. But, as it refused to correspond with its vocation in this respect, in fact the catholic Church appears in history as taking its place, even while it was developed out of it—an elect body gathered out of 'every nation and all tribes and peoples and tongues.' The election of this catholic body to be the heirs of salvation and to bear the name of God in the world was, it would have been held, a self-evident fact. St. Paul reasons not up to this fact but from it. He uses the admitted fact to strengthen its individual members under stress of trial. They must bear earthly troubles because they form the appointed discipline for the individuals who form the select body. Let men but love God, and then all outward things whatsoever work together for good for them. The fact that they love God is the sufficient evidence of their election. Those who love God are also those who are 'called according to His purpose.' But, we ask, Have none received the call and rejected it? were none called, who do not love God? is it not true, that 'Many are called and few chosen'? St. Paul says not a word to the contrary. But that is not the question he is considering. The members of the Christian Church, devoted to God, to whom he is writing have been called. This call of which they have become the subject is, St. Paul assures them, no afterthought, no momentary act of God, which as it came into being in a moment so may pass away. It is not a being taken up by God and then perhaps dropped again. His gifts and calling are without repentance on His side, because they represent an eternal will. In the eternal mind God 'foreknew' this chosen body. To 'know' as used of God (in contexts where it is implied that others are not 'known') means to 'take knowledge of or mark out for a divine purpose, as God said of the Jews, 'You only have I known of all the families of the earth[[20]],' that is, your nation only have I singled out or designated[[21]]. This divine marking out then was an eternal act. God eternally marked out certain persons, those presumably whom a certain preparatory discipline and moral education, Jewish or heathen, should have made apt for His purpose, such aptitude being of course again His gift. Anyway, for reasons which we cannot probe, God did eternally foreknow or mark out beforehand a body of men to be His catholic church. And those so marked out were in the eternal counsels appointed for a high spiritual vocation, to be made like the divine Son, who was to be made man, so that, with Christ as heir and elder brother, they together might represent in the world the divine ideal for man. And upon those so marked out and foreordained, in due time the divine call came by the apostolic preaching. And, at the first movement of corresponsive faith, they had been acquitted of all their old sins and planted all at once upon a new basis in Christ Jesus. And those thus set upon the new basis God also had already in His divine counsels clothed with glory, their share in the glory of the divine Son which is only waiting to be fully manifested. Every Christian therefore who has felt a movement of God in his heart, under which he has become a Christian, knows that he is in God's keeping. God will not fail him. He who has begun the good work will perform it. Trouble and anxiety within or without need not alarm him. He has but to keep himself, joyful and confident, in God's hands. The movement of God upon him and within him, as it proceeds out of the eternal mind, so it passes securely on into the eternal issue. No doubt St. Paul would say they might tear themselves by utter wilfulness out of the divine hand, as for the time at least the Jews had mostly done. But short of that they are safe. The movement of God, the protection of God, the purpose of God, is upon them and around them, and goes before them preparing their way, individually and corporately.
This is the moral use St. Paul makes of the doctrine of predestination. And it is to do egregious violence to his general teaching to suggest that he entertained the idea of persons created with an opposite predestination—to eternal misery. St. Paul is dealing here only with what God has already shown of His purpose in the actual vocation of some. Ultimately he assures us all men share the divine purpose for good[[22]]. But, on the other hand, he never suggests that they may not resist it, or allows us to say that so far as concerns themselves they may not defeat it.
[[1]] iii. 17-19; v. 29.
[[2]] xxiv. 5-7.