In Romans 8:34, “Jesus died, was raised to life, and is now at the right hand of God interceding for us.” He “always lives to intercede for us” too (Hebrews 7:25), so it’s an intercessory role both now and forever. 

But what is Jesus’ intercessory role and why is it necessary? There’s a clue in Hebrews 5:10, that Jesus was “designated by God to be high priest in the order of Melchizedek” – and that’s “forever” too (7:17). 

The purpose of that high priestly office is hinted at in the first appearance of “Melchizedek king of Salem and priest of God Most High” in Genesis 14:18. Melchizedek arrives on the scene just after Abram’s sensational victory over four kings to rescue his nephew Lot (11-17). And that’s when Melchizedek intercedes in the life of the exhausted Abram, by personally serving him with bread and wine, and saying to him, “Blessed be Abram by God Most High, Creator of heaven and earth. And blessed be God Most High who handed your enemies over to you” (19-20).

Three things of note here: that God already had a priest on hand for Abram long before he began the priesthood in Israel. Secondly, Melchizedek came to serve Abram in his hour of need; and thirdly, he “blessed Abram” (19), pronouncing a blessing from God on Abram himself, and then a blessing on God for pulling off Abram’s victory.

Which ties in with Jesus and his intercessory role as a Melchizedek priest. That first of all, God has a priest on hand for us in our day too (Hebrews 4:14). Secondly, Jesus came in our hour of need as well, that “at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly” (Romans 5:6), and he continues to serve us in our hour of need (Hebrews 4:14-16). And thirdly, Jesus was also sent by God to bless – with blessings from God (Luke 4:18-19), and blessings to God as well, as in Matthew 11:25-26, when Jesus prays, “O Father, Lord of Heaven and earth, I thank you (bless you) for hiding these things from the clever and intelligent and for showing them to mere children. Yes, I thank you, Father, that this was your will” – for pulling off such an impossible plan on our behalf. 

So Melchizedek and Jesus intercede in the same ways, as humble servants on hand to help in stressful situations, but also with full authority to pass on blessings from God to us, and blessings to God for what he’s done and doing on our behalf. But why do all this through a priest? To the second point in paragraph two, then: “Why is intercession by a priest necessary?”….(next blog) 

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)

Romans 8:28 follows immediately after “the Spirit himself interceding for us with groans that words cannot express” in verse 26, and “the Spirit interceding for us in accordance with God’s will” in verse 27, because verse 28 shows us what the result of these two intercessions is. 

The result is something that could only come from Spirit help too, because it certainly isn’t anything we could come up with naturally or by human will and wisdom. Imagine knowing with absolute certainty “that in all things God works for the good of those who love him.” But that’s exactly what Paul is saying the Spirit’s intercession on our behalf is for: it’s to bring us to the point of total trust in God, no matter what happens to us, good, bad or ugly. 

Thanks to the Spirit, then, what would normally be a source of anxiety, confusion, anger, estrangement and even bitterness at the senselessness of what’s happening to us and to others – it no longer is for us. Not that we have no emotions at all, or no fury at injustice; it’s that we have no fear, no consuming desire for revenge or vindication, just simple trust in the God we love that he works everything to our benefit. 

To the Spirit there’s nothing better he could want for us than that, to the point of groaning in ways we can’t even imagine that we’ll grasp it too. That’s because when Jesus asked his Father to give us the Spirit, what we “received was the Spirit of sonship” (15), whose great desire and skill is “testifying with our spirit that we are God’s children” (16). He desperately wants to get it through to the deepest part of our being that in God we really do have an “Abba, Father” (15) who never fails us. 

Tough to believe when suffering for no fault of our own, or being unfairly accused of a wrong we’ve never done, or having something horrible happen to us or to others that makes no sense. But in the fog of our despair the Spirit’s groaning on our behalf for us to realize that “in all these things we are more that conquerors” (37), because we are the children of a loving God. The Spirit is on constant watch in us to help us grasp that “Nothing can separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (39).

But it’s not only trust in our loving God that the Spirit is interceding on our behalf for; he’s also interceding for us “In accordance with God’s will”….(next blog)

In John 14:17, Jesus said we would “know the Spirit, for he lives with you and will be in you.” Paul then shows us how we can know the Spirit is living in us, because, Romans 8:26, “the Spirit helps us in our weakness.” 

And one weakness in particular: “not knowing how and what to pray” (26). Which isn’t a criticism; instead, it ties in with “the creation being subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it” (20). God limited us on purpose. He made us “weak in our natural selves” (6:19), which can be seriously frustrating, as Paul himself found out. Try as hard as he could to “do what is good, he couldn’t carry it out” (7:18). It was so frustrating. But it made him realize his weakness and his need for help, and that’s when he discovered that help beyond himself was available (24-25).

And the same in our frustration with prayer. On the one hand, we’re so fortunate in having the Spirit living in us, because our minds are “set on what the Spirit desires” (8:5). Search our hearts – as God does – and what he finds in us is “the mind of the Spirit” (8:27).

On the other hand, we’re still frustratingly stuck in weak bodies. And until our bodies are “redeemed” (23) and freed from their “bondage to decay” (21), we’ll be doing a lot of “groaning inwardly” (23) at our weakness, and not knowing how and what to pray when things happen to us and to others that we simply cannot see the sense in. It’s so frustrating. But from Paul’s example maybe that’s good, because is there help beyond us available too?

Yes there is, according to Paul: it’s in the Spirit’s prayers for us. And very personal prayers too, since the Spirit is in us, and therefore knows every frustration we’ve got. So when we run out of words to express our frustrations the Spirit “intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express” (26). He loves and cares for us that much. And that’s what the Father sees the Spirit doing in and for us. Which is exactly what he gave the Spirit to us for, to dive into the depths of our frustrations and feeling them with us, and then “interceding for us in accordance with God’s will” (27), so that we rise up from the depths fully confident again in the Father’s will and purpose. 

No wonder the Father answers the Spirit’s prayers for us. And we get to know the Spirit’s doing this for us too. How? By “Romans 8:28”….(next blog)

According to Paul in Romans 8:27, “he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit.” So when John speaks of us “knowing that Jesus lives in us by the Spirit he gave us” in 1 John 3:24, the reason we know it is the mind of the Spirit at work in us. 

And we need the Spirit’s mind at work in us, because “no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him,” 1 Corinthians 2:9. Our own human mind, left to itself, hasn’t got the capacity to grasp what “God destined for our glory before time began” (7) – “but,” verse 10, “God has revealed it to us by his Spirit.” 

Which is why Paul didn’t depend on his own “wise and persuasive words” (4) to “clue you in to God’s secret plan” (1). Rather, Paul wanted everything he taught to be “a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, so that your faith might not rest on human wisdom, but on God’s power” (4-5). And again in verse 13, “When we speak, it’s not in words taught by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, expressing spiritual truths in spiritual words” – because, verse 11, “no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God.”

In other words, to know the thoughts of God – or to understand God’s mind – it takes a spiritual mind like his. And the Spirit is that mind. Not only does the Spirit have the ability to “search into everything about God,” verse 10, he can “delve into God’s deepest secrets” too. 

That’s the amazing mind of the Spirit. There’s nothing about God and his plan for us humans that he doesn’t know, including God’s deepest secret of all, which is “what God has freely given us” (12) through “Jesus Christ and his death on the cross” (2). God’s entire plan revolves around that, but it’s only through the Spirit mind at work in our minds that we understand it (12). And that’s our proof we have the Spirit. As John writes in 1 John 4:2, “You’ll know it’s God’s Spirit, because you’ll have no trouble accepting that Jesus came to us as a human being” – and know why too – to be “the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and for everyone else’s sins too” (2:2). 

So when God searches our hearts he knows it’s the mind of the Spirit at work in us too. Not only because we understand the part Jesus played in his plan, but also because of “The Spirit’s prayers for us”….(next blog)

According to 1 John 3:24, the Spirit has been given to us so that “we know Jesus lives in us.” But what does “Jesus living in us” mean, and why is it important?

The Greek word for “lives” in that verse is meno (may-no), meaning to “abide, dwell, reside in,” so Jesus living in us means he now resides and is always present in us, just as God was always present for the Israelites in the temple of old. And we’ve been given the Spirit to grasp that. 

But why is it important for us to grasp? Because according to Hebrews 2, it’s why Jesus lives and resides in us. In verse 10, he lives to fulfill his Father’s plan to “bring many sons to glory,” which the Father made possible by “making Jesus, the author of their salvation perfect through suffering.” With that completed, Jesus is now “making us holy” like himself so that we can become members “of the same family” as he is, and he can then “call us brothers” (11). 

But why did Jesus go through all that, just so we could be his brothers? Because, verse 12, he could then “declare his Father’s name to (us) his brothers.” And again in verse 12, that “in the presence of his brothers he could sing his Father’s praises.” In other words, Jesus wants to reside with, in, and among his brothers to reveal his Father to us – and he said so himself in John 17:6 and 26, that his great wish is to “make his Father known to us.” 

How? Verse 26, by living in us the relationship he had as a human with his Father. His purpose being that we’d come to “know and rely on the love God has for us,” 1 John 4:16 – just as Jesus in his human life relied on his Father’s love for him (John 5:20). “I will put my trust in him,” Hebrews 2:13, is what characterized every moment of Jesus’ life, so that by living that same trust in his brothers, he could then say to his Father, “Here am I, and the children you have given me (who know and rely on your love, Father, just like I did).”

Jesus came as a human to live that life of trust in his Father’s love himself, in preparation for living it in us. Sharing his trust, then, is our proof that he lives in us. And we’ve been given the Holy Spirit so we truly know it. 

Coming to understand that and believe it, therefore, depends very much on “The mind of the Spirit” at work in us….(next blog)

According to 1 John 3:23-24, the Holy Spirit was given to us to provide obvious evidence in our lives that Jesus lives in us and we live in him. Part of that obvious evidence is Jesus “purifying us from all unrighteousness” (1:9) “by the Spirit putting to death the misdeeds of our body” (Romans 8:13). And so effectively is that being done by the Spirit that we’ll “know” it’s happening (1 John 4:13). 

In other words, we’ll sense there’s a switch going on, which in John’s words is a switch from darkness to light (1 John 1:5-7), and – in Jesus’ instructions to Paul – a switch from “the power of Satan to God” (Acts 26:18). Not only, then, is the Spirit “putting to death” whatever had us held in Satan’s grip, he’s also replacing it with what God’s all about. Comparing us to a house, the Spirit’s not only scrubbing and scraping and cleaning out all the engrained muck we accumulated from not knowing God, he’s also filling up every cleaned out room with brand new furnishings. And because of the Spirit we can sense both these things happening, both the scrubbing out and the refurbishing. 

It’s this massive and obvious switch that helps us really know Jesus is living in us. Paul gives us several practical illustrations too, writing about “our old self that was being wrecked by deceitful desires,” Ephesians 4:22, and in its place “being made new in the attitude of our minds, and putting on a new self that’s like God in his nature and character” (23-24). 

And the same again in Colossians 3:9-10, “for you’ve finished with that old self and its rotten habits and put on a new self, which God, its Creator, is constantly renewing in his own image, in order to bring you to a full knowledge of himself.”  

And the switch is so obvious – from being angry, resentful, nasty and dishonest (8-9), to being kind, humble, sensitive, patient and quick to forgive (12-13). And the same in Ephesians 4 – from bearing grudges to being forgiving, and from hateful feelings to being tender-hearted (31-32). Such total and obvious opposites. The Spirit’s taking us on a wild journey – a bold escape from the clutches of the devil into a totally new home filled with love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control (Galatians 5:22-23). 

And the Spirit makes sure we know it too, because what the Spirit wants for us is “Knowing that Jesus lives in us”….(next blog)

In 1 John 3:24, “we know that Jesus lives in us by the Spirit he gave us.” It’s the Spirit’s job, then, to help us know for real that Jesus is living in us – so how does the Spirit go about doing that?

According to Paul in Romans 8:13, it’s “by the Spirit that we put to death the misdeeds of the body” – because, Titus 2:13-14, this is what “Jesus gave his life for, to free us from our messed up lives, to clean us up and become his kind of people, totally committed to doing good.” 

The Spirit, therefore, is like a house keeper, cleaning house, getting rid of the dirt, and doing whatever needs to be done to mature us into Christ’s likeness (Ephesians 4:13). Which fits Jesus’ own analogy in John 14:23, when he told his disciples, if “you obey my teaching” then “My Father will love you, and we’ll come to you and make our home with you.” The author of Hebrews says “we are his house” too (Hebrews 3:6), so the Spirit being the house keeper gives us a practical picture of what he’s been given to do, that in the doing makes Jesus living in us real. 

Imagine ourselves, therefore, being a house where the Father and Jesus wish to reside. To begin with it’s a mess, left that way by the previous owner who filled the house with “gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts” (Ephesians 2:2-3). In every room there’s garbage that needs to be taken out and worthless trash destroyed. All those unhealthy appetites and desires on every shelf to be thrown in the bin. And in all the hidden corners, under the stairs, inside the closets, and all the places where cobwebs have grown on bad habits left unswept, the Spirit misses nothing. He works his way into every nook and cranny, wherever we’ve been “foolish, disobedient, deceived and enslaved by all kinds of passions and pleasures, sucked in by malice and envy, hating and being hated,” Titus 3:3.

God, therefore, has given us a Spirit who is so practical in making Jesus real to us, because we know it when another room gets cleared out. He makes us aware of another layer of grime in us that needs a good scrubbing, or as Titus put it, there’s some obvious “washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit” going on (3:5), so that we know for real we’re “being transformed into Jesus’ likeness with ever-increasing glory,” 2 Corinthians 3:18. 

Thanks to the Spirit, then, we’ll know “There’s a switch going on”….(next blog)

When John writes that “There is no fear in love” in 1 John 4:18, he means the kind of love that gives us total “confidence on the day of judgment” (17). When Jesus comes to judge the world, therefore, we’ll have nothing to be afraid of. John gives us the reason why in verse 17 too: it’s “because in this world we are like him.” 

But how do we become so much like Jesus in our lifetimes now that his judgment later holds no fear for us? John’s simple answer to that in verse 13 is: “because he has given us of his Spirit.” 

It’s by the marvellous work of the Spirit, therefore, that even while we’re living in this world we can – as Paul phrases it – “become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ,” Ephesians 4:13. And just as “in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form,” Colossians 2:9, we too “have been given fullness in Christ” living in our bodily form. In other words, we really can become like Christ in who we are now.  

But how does the Spirit do that for us? According to Jesus in John 16:15, “the Spirit takes from what is mine and makes it known to you.” That’s the Spirit’s job, to feed everything there is to know about Jesus to each of us individually. And the Spirit won’t stray from that (13), because his entire focus is on “bringing glory to Jesus” (14). 

But how does the Spirit bring glory to Jesus? By fulfilling Jesus’ wish for his disciples in John 14:18, when he told them, “I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.” It’s by the Spirit, then, that Jesus makes sure his disciples never feel lost, unloved, or unattached to him. And how would the Spirit do that? By being an umbilical cord constantly feeding two things about Jesus into them, verse 21: first of all that Jesus loved them, and secondly by revealing more and more about Jesus to them so in time they’d become more and more like him too.  

The result of which would be verse 27, when Jesus told his disciples, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you.” So through that umbilical cord of the Holy Spirit feeding all that Christ is into us – both his love and his likeness – it dawns on us that “There is no fear in love.” What do we have to be anxious about, both now and “on the day of judgment,” when through the Holy Spirit we know Jesus loves us and know we’re becoming like him too (1 John 4:17-18)? He makes Jesus real to us, all right, but “How does the Spirit make Jesus real?”….(next blog)  

In 1 John 4:13, John writes that “We know we live in God and God in us, because he has given us of his Spirit.” The Spirit, therefore, is the tie that binds us to God, a phrase first coined in an old hymn, “Blest be the tie that binds our hearts in Christian love; the fellowship of kindred minds is like to that above.”  

That last phrase captures what ‘the tie that binds’ is: it’s us experiencing the same fellowship that the Father and Jesus “above” experience together. Which is exactly what Jesus prayed for in John 17:26, that “the love you (Father) have for me may be in them.” 

And how would that come about? By the Father giving us the Holy Spirit, John 14:16-17, because “On that day (when it happens to us personally) you’ll realize I am in my Father, you are in me, and I am in you” (20). It’s that kind of fellowship the Spirit would provide, “the fellowship of kindred minds like that above” – just like the fellowship the Father and Jesus have always enjoyed together.

And God has provided all kinds of experiences in our physical lives to illustrate that: in our own families, for instance, because something unseen and marvellous all over the world binds males and females to each other for life – and it happens without us even thinking about it. And it’s staggering how different two people can be, but still be happily attached to each other for life. 

It’s a taste now of what life will be like forever; an unending happy attachment to God and each other – just like the ending in a child’s book: ”And they all lived happily ever after.” But that’s exactly what Jesus wants for us, and thanks to what he did on our behalf, the Father provided the means to make it possible, through the Holy Spirit “living with and in us” (14:17). 

This is God’s great gift to us, because, as Paul points out in Romans 8:16, “The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children.” This is how we come to know our Father’s love, the very thing Jesus prayed for. And if ever we’re in doubt about the Father’s love, “the Spirit within us,” verse 26, “is actually praying for us in those agonizing longings which never find words” – making sure the tie that binds us to our Father is never broken. So that no matter what happens to us we reach that wonderful point John spoke of in 1 John 4:18, that “There is no fear in love”….(next blog)