In accordance with God’s will

God “knows the mind of the Spirit” in us because, Romans 8:27, “the Spirit is interceding for us in accordance with God’s will” – God’s will being “the righteous requirements of the law being fully met in us” (4).  

So, if we find ourselves wanting to obey God’s law as fully as possible – or as Paul put it in Romans 7:22, “delighting in God’s law in my inner being” – then we, like God, also know that’s the Spirit in us. Just wanting to obey God is proof that the Spirit is interceding for us, because naturally our minds are “hostile to God” and “cannot submit to God’s law” (8:7). The fact, then, that we have any interest in God at all is a miracle. But that’s exactly what God gave us the Spirit for – to “work miracles” in us (Galatians 3:5) 

But it’s not only our interest in God coming out of nowhere that’s a miracle, it’s finding ourselves not giving up on God too, taking into account what John wrote in 1 John 5:19, that we’re living in a world that’s “under the control of the evil one.” And the devil is very good at what he does, because he’s made “the whole world a prisoner of sin” (Galatians 3:22). He knows our weaknesses and exploits them – just as he did in the Garden of Eden. We’re also up against Ephesians 6:16, the “fiery darts of the wicked one” inflaming all sorts of rotten thoughts and attitudes in us, including rotten thoughts about God.

So it’s no surprise if we’re tempted to give up on God. To find ourselves instead, therefore, being lifted out of the depths of despair at our pathetic inadequacy and knowing we’re still loved by God and every failing of ours is forgiven, is a miracle too, because our natural impulse when we give in to temptation is to hate ourselves for being so weak. 

But despair and hating ourselves aren’t “in accordance with God’s will.” His will for us is “the law of the Spirit of life,” Romans 8:2. It’s God’s will that in the Spirit we have another heartbeat pumping away Inside us, that never stops circulating God’s mercy, love, joy, trust and peace through our inner being – so that we find ourselves experiencing the greatest miracle of all, living our eternal life now (just as Jesus promised in John 3:36, 4:14, 5:24, 6:47, 6:54, 10:28, and 1 John 5:13).

But amazingly, it’s not just the Spirit interceding for us, we have “The intercessory role of Jesus” too….(next blog)