The Spirit Himself Intercedes for Us with Groanings Too Deep for Words

There are experiences after which people have no words. A death can be one of those experiences, and so can illness, fear, a damaged relationship, and suffering that goes on too long.

You do not need to believe in God to recognise that condition. You may know it as shock, as exhaustion, or as the point at which you can no longer find words for what you feel.

Paul begins Romans 8 there. Before he reaches verse 28, he writes about a world that groans, people who groan, and a Spirit who intercedes when they do not know what to ask for.

I want to read that paragraph honestly, from one person who is still working it out to another. Paul offers no private explanation for every suffering, but he does show what God does when a person has no words left.

Paul begins with weakness

Paul wrote to Christians in Rome in the mid-to-late 50s AD. In Romans 8, he lets people who know suffering and weakness admit to both.

Romans 8:28 is one sentence within this larger argument. In it, Paul promises that God works in all things for good. However, he does not say that every event is good, or that a person must understand their suffering before they can bring it to God.

The city that Paul was writing to

Paul wrote this letter from Corinth to Jewish and Gentile believers in Rome. Those believers had lived through an exile, because around AD 49, Emperor Claudius ordered the Jews out of the city. In Acts 18, Luke records that order as the reason why Priscilla and Aquila had left Italy before Paul met them in Corinth. After Claudius died in 54, the exiles returned to a church that had carried on without them for years. Paul therefore wrote to people who knew what it was to lose a home and return to a changed one.

The heaviest blow to that church still lay ahead. When fire destroyed much of Rome in July 64, Nero blamed the city's Christians and had them killed, according to Tacitus. Paul wrote this paragraph about suffering roughly seven years before that persecution.

In the previous chapter, Paul writes in the first person about a divided self: 'I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing.' Interpreters still disagree over whether he means himself or anyone who lives under the law. In the sentence that follows, Paul says that there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. By verse 18, Paul has a chapter about failure behind him and eight verses about pain ahead of him. The passage therefore comes from a man who writes from within the trouble that he describes.

On its own, verse 18 can sound dismissive, as though Paul were saying that your suffering hardly counts. As the first line of an argument, however, it is where Paul weighs present suffering against future glory. In the next four verses, Paul widens his argument to the whole created world.

What Paul says about the whole world

Here is the rest of the paragraph that surrounds verse 28.

Paul widens the subject from the believers in Rome to the whole created order. Look closely at three details in verse 20, because each one applies to where you are now.

Creation was subjected to futility. Paul's word is mataiotēs, which means the emptiness of something that cannot reach the end for which God made it. A broken bone can mend, whereas futility is the damage that remains.

Creation was subjected not willingly. Someone else made that decision, so the created order had no say in it and has no sin of its own to answer for. If you wonder what you did to deserve this year, notice that Paul places the whole world in the same position, since creation endures a condition that is not of its choosing.

Creation was subjected because of him who subjected it, in hope. Paul says that the one who did the subjecting acted in hope. An accident has no purpose, and an enemy would want the damage to remain, whereas in Paul's argument the one who acts in hope is the one who intends to undo the damage.

With that phrase, Paul points back to the oldest damage in the Bible.

God cursed the ground because of what a man did, although the ground itself had done nothing. In Paul's account, the created order stays under someone else's judgement from then until now. His word in verse 21, phthora, means decay that works from within, so the world deteriorates with no attacker acting on it.

Stay with that, because it concerns you as much as it concerns the ground. When you look at what has happened to you and sense that this is not how life should be, you are reading the world correctly. Paul says that the whole created order groans under the same wrongness from the beginning until now.

One sentence later, he uses that groaning verb about you.

The three groans in this paragraph

Creation groans first, in verse 22. Paul attaches 'together' to the verb, systenazei, so the groan is a shared one. He sets a second verb beside it, synōdinei, which means labour pain. Labour is painful because a birth is coming, which is the shape that Paul gives creation's groan.

You groan second, in verse 23. Paul uses the same verb without the 'together', and he counts himself among the people who make that sound.

Paul calls what a believer already has the firstfruits of the Spirit. Firstfruits are the first part of a harvest, from which a farmer knows that the rest of the crop is real and coming. Although Paul had the firstfruits, he still groaned. If someone tells you that stronger faith would remove your ache, Paul answers them in verse 23, because the man who wrote this letter was aching as he wrote it.

The third groan is different from the other two, because Paul places it in God himself.

Paul builds the word for those groanings, stenagmoi, from the verb that he uses of creation and of you, so he uses one root for all three groans. When you have no words left and only a sound comes out, Paul says that the Spirit of God makes that sound within you, with you, and on your behalf.

In the next verse, Paul answers a fear that comes with a wordless prayer. When you cannot put a groan into words, you may fear that you are asking God for the wrong outcome.

In verse 26, Paul agrees that you do not know what to ask for, while in verse 27 he says that God still receives the request rightly. The Father searches hearts and needs no translation for a sound, while the Spirit forms the request according to God's will. God therefore hears the groan whether or not you can shape it into words.

Who is doing the working

Outside the paragraph, 'all things work together for good' can sound like a property of events. You could then take it to mean that circumstances arrange themselves kindly with enough time. Paul describes no such process; what he describes is a person at work.

Paul's sentence ends with 'for those who are called according to his purpose', and the purpose in that phrase is God's own. In the next two verses, Paul gives every verb to God: God foreknew, predestined, called, justified, and glorified.

Some early copies of the letter have God's name in the sentence itself. In the ESV footnote at verse 28, the translators note that the wording in some manuscripts is 'God works all things together for good'. Translators still weigh which wording Paul used; however, with either wording, the sense from the paragraph is the same.

In the next verse, Paul says what the work is for.

Paul describes an outcome that may differ from the one that you are praying for, which is that God is making you like his Son. You can still rely on this promise when the worst has happened. Paul does not ask you to call suffering worthwhile; he says that God works with what remains.

Once you have that promise, you can make sense of something strange that Paul says a few verses earlier, about a world that is waiting.

Why the world is waiting for you

In verse 21, Paul writes that God will set creation free into the freedom of the glory of God's children. Creation's release therefore depends on what God does for his children. In verse 19, Paul gives the other side of that claim, which is that the created order waits for the revealing of God's children.

Why would the created order be waiting for human beings?

To answer that, go back to how the damage began. God cursed the ground because of what a man did, and in the same way God frees the ground through what a man does. In chapter 5, Paul builds an argument on that pairing, in which one man let the damage in, while a second man undoes it. In verse 29, Paul calls Christ the firstborn among many brothers. Under the law in Deuteronomy 21, a firstborn son receives a double share of the inheritance and a place of standing in the family. That son then brings his brothers into what he receives.

The Son entered the created order and took on the flesh that is under judgement. God is making people like him, so that when God reveals them as his children, the creation, which is in labour from Genesis 3 until that day, will go free with them.

Read that with your own situation in view. Paul places you within the rescue because God frees creation through what he does in people such as you.

If you don't believe any of this

I will speak directly here, with no argument to win.

In the first half of the passage, Paul may describe something that you already hold to be true, which is that the world is not as it should be and that much of what people count on can fail them. You do not need a religious text to reach that conclusion, although you may also conclude that nobody is there.

Christians agree with you that the world is not as it should be. However, Paul says that this condition is not the world's own choice and that God will not leave it this way.

God's answer to the wrongness was to enter it. Christians call that the incarnation, which is God taking on a human body and a human life. In that life, Jesus stood at the grave of his friend. You do not need to accept any of it today. But if the ache that you feel when you look honestly at the world is a true reading of it, that is worth knowing.

What Jesus did at his friend's grave

Jesus reached Bethany four days after Lazarus had died. Before he set out, he told his disciples what he would do.

Jesus was about to call a dead man out of a tomb; however, first he wept. 'Jesus wept' is the shortest verse in most English Bibles.

If you could not grieve once you knew the ending, that verse would not exist. Jesus knew the ending, yet he wept at the grave of a man who had died. When someone suggests that your tears are a sign of weak faith, point them to this verse.

The groaning that you bring to God also has a history, which begins in Egypt, where Israel groaned under slavery before anyone composed a prayer about it.

In the next verse, the writer says that God saw the people of Israel and knew. In Exodus, God first answers a groan, while in Romans 8 the Spirit makes the same sound within people who groan.

What to say when someone has died

You may be reading this as someone who is supporting a person after a death. There is something in Paul's paragraph for you too.

Paul gives the Roman church no reason for their suffering, but he offers them company in it. Jesus also wept at the grave of a man who had died. Paul and Jesus give you the same task: remain with people who mourn without explaining the death. Say that you are sorry and that you do not know why it happened. Say the name of the person who has died. Keep saying it months later. Offer one specific action, such as cooking a meal or collecting the children. If you want to quote a verse, read the whole paragraph. You can also read nothing and stay.

Where to start

You can take each of these five steps from where you are today, in whatever mood you are in.

1. 1

   Give up defending God to yourself

   You can speak to God without a verdict on why this happened, since Paul himself offers the Roman church no reason for their suffering in this passage. You can leave the question open for as long as it remains open.

2. 2

   Say what is true, even when it is unwelcome

   If you feel anger, bring that anger. Psalm 88 is dark to its last line, which is 'my companions have become darkness', with no resolution or apology after it. God hears an honest complaint, while in a polite sentence that you do not mean, you cannot say what hurts.

3. 3

   Read Romans 8 aloud, from the first verse to the last

   Read the whole chapter in one sitting, because Paul wrote it for someone to read aloud to a room. The argument is one piece from start to finish, so once you hear what comes before verse 28, you may hear that sentence differently.

4. 4

   Let the groaning be the prayer

   In verse 26 Paul says that you do not have to know what to ask for, while in verse 27 he says that God still receives the request rightly. If all that you can make is a sound, the Spirit of God is already bringing that sound to a Father who searches hearts.

5. 5

   Find one person who can be near you without explaining it

   Look for someone who will stay close to your grief without trying to resolve it. Tell that person plainly what you want from them, because you may find more help in their presence than in an answer.

If you are still in the middle of it

The world that you live in groans, from the beginning until now, under a judgement that it does not deserve. You groan too, even with the Spirit of God, since Paul had the Spirit and still groaned. When you groan past words, you are still praying, because the Spirit takes up that groan and brings it to a Father who searches hearts and needs no translation.

In verse 28, Paul promises no quick end to pain; he promises that God works within it to make you like his Son. The whole creation waits for the day when God completes that work.

You do not have to feel fine about any of it, because Paul's point is that you do not groan alone.