A Deep-Dive Into Romans 8:26

First, I give thanks on this day to honor all military members who have died while serving in U.S. forces. My son is in the U.S. Marine Corps and when I think of his service and those that came before him who have died while serving, I reflect on the scripture found in John 15:13 (NLT), “There is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”

Why This Insight Into Romans 8:26?

Last week during Tuesday night Bible Study my pastor, Bishop Kenneth Harper, spoke about the five benefits of speaking in tongues. One of the welcomed challenges of this past Tuesday evening that came from our Bishop was to seek additional insight into Romans 8:26. I was excited to dig a little deeper into this verse and I hope my findings are insightful for you. As Bishop always says . . . “I love the Bible!”

Historical Context | Book of Romans

GREEK CITY OF CORINTH, AD 57: It might be surprising to some to know that the book of Romans is one of the most-read books in the Bible. Paul’s Letter to the Romans is one of the most significant things he wrote. Paul was a Jewish Rabbi, formerly known as Saul of Tarsus. It wasn’t until Jesus commissioned him as an Apostle to the Gentiles, that Saul of Tarsus started going by his Roman name, Paul. Paul traveled the Roman empire ministering about Jesus. Romans is one of the 13 letters written by Paul, known as the Pauline epistles.

One thing that we should be mindful of is that the Church of Rome was made up of Jewish and non-Jewish followers of Jesus. Now, understand that there was a time in the Roman church when Emperor Claudius expelled all Jewish people from Rome. Once the Jewish people were allowed to return some five years later, it resulted in a divided church. Paul’s Letter to the Romans was in hopes of unifying the church.

Romans 8:26 | New Living Translation

26 And the Holy Spirit helps us in our weakness. For example, we don’t know what God wants us to pray for. But the Holy Spirit prays for us with groanings that cannot be expressed in words.

Romans 8:26 is Paul’s final specific segment in his discussion of the ministry of the Spirit, which is the main focus of this verse. This is no doubt one of the most relevant verses in the Bible when it comes to the encouragement of prayer. My dive into this scripture revealed to me the act of the Spirit coming to the aid of believers confused by the perplexity of prayer. The act of the Spirit takes our concerns, as believers, to God with a power far greater than we could understand. Although we might go into this reading with a confused understanding, through a deeper dive into the text we will find God’s Word here to be encouraging.

I am going to be as succinct as I can in breaking this verse down. In short, this verse is describing the work of the Holy Spirit to help sustain believers. In other words, in times of depravity, the Holy Spirit is our lifeline when we are not capable of knowing what to pray and are unable to explicitly state God’s will. However, in Romans 8:26 Paul is encouraging believers by lifting that the Holy Spirit is interceding in a way that only the Father understands, and the intercession is made according to God’s will, on behalf of us as believers.

Let’s Take a Deeper Diver Into Romans 8:26

We should not get the text “. . . we don’t know what god wants us to pray for” twisted. We should understand this text to mean we don’t know WHAT to pray for as opposed to we don’t know HOW to pray. Reaching this understanding helps bring us clarity that through intercession under God’s will, the Holy Spirit is interceding regarding the content of our prayer, not because we are not praying correctly. The bottom line here is that there are times when we as believers simply do not know God’s will and therefore we don’t know what to pray for, ESPECIALLY, during times of trials and tribulations. But, here Paul is going much broader than just our everyday trials and tribulations, Paul’s letter is speaking to “our weakness,” meaning our living under the curse of sin, which in turn prevents us from always knowing God’s will. It is our weakness that does not allow us to get an adequate grasp of what God’s will is during our times in prayer. It is with gratitude that I accept that during times when my weakness is undermining my certainty in prayer, the Holy Spirit intercedes on my behalf.

Groanings

When we dig even deeper into the text that reads “But the Holy Spirit prays for us with groanings that cannot be expressed in words” a few questions come to my mind. Whose groanings are these? and What is the nature of these groanings?

Whose groanings are these?

I found a few different interpretations of who these groanings belong to. Some believe that the “Spirit” referenced in the text is referring to the body in the church that had the gift of tongues. My studies found these beliefs difficult for me to receive since the entire 8th chapter of Romans speaks to the work of the Holy Spirit in the life of the believer. Given that the gift of tongues only belongs to certain people, yet everyone has the ministry of the Holy Spirit, I am led to the belief that it is the Holy Spirit that is groaning, not the believers.

What is the nature of these groanings?

This is the deep, deep dive. The keywords in the text here are “that cannot be expressed in words.” The “why” that needs to be looked at here is why these groanings are inexpressible. Are they inexpressible because they cannot be put into words or are they inexpressible because they’re just plain unexpressed? This could go a couple of ways and one could say that the fact that the groanings cannot be expressed in words does not matter since the Holy Spirit and the Father do not need words to communicate. Whether the groanings are metaphorical or not, they belong to the Holy Spirit and are the unique way of intercession on our behalf as believers and in a manner invisible to us.