But if what we see not we hope, we expect in patience.
The verse just before this one says we are saved in hope. This verse draws out the logic: whatever you already hold is no longer something you hope for. So Christian life means waiting, with patience, for what we cannot yet see.
In everyday speech, "hope" usually means we are unsure. Commentators say the word works differently here. It carries confidence, not doubt.
Notice that the New Testament sense of hope is never uncertainty, but immature or deferred certainty. Confidence marks it as much as expectation. So we are not left in doubt and uncertainty. Our strength lies in quietness and confidence. The world has its hopes, but they are so steeped in uncertainty that the word hope has become almost a synonym for doubt. The believer, though, is so confident about what makes up his hope that he can say, "But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience."
The way we wait shows what kind of hope we hold. Doubts and fears would make us wait very differently.
Hope is an essential part of Christian character — "a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul" (Heb. 6:19), not a matter of vague uncertainty. If it were, we would not wait with patience, but with doubts and fears. Faith gives the certainty that hope will be fulfilled. We do not know when. Faith also makes us content to wait. This is true "patience of hope."
So what is it that we do not see? Commentators point to the redemption of the body. That guards the verse from a serious mistake: our forgiveness is not what hangs in the balance.
Notice, it is not for the salvation of our souls that we wait and hope, but for the redemption of the body. It may be from the grave, or we may be changed in a moment. It will be at the coming of the Lord. As to the body, even we have no relief from groaning and suffering until the coming of our Lord. We do not see that yet, and so we wait and hope. It is a fatal mistake to think all this means we do not know we have salvation. The opposite is true. We know we have eternal life — "whoever believes has eternal life." There is no waiting or hoping for that. But we can wait in patience for the redemption of the body.
The thing we hope for is not here yet. One writer sees the beauty of the verse in what that absence works in us.
We are saved now in hope, but that means we do not yet have before us what we hope for. If we see it, how can we still hope for it? How beautiful a thought this is! The hope is so perfect, and carries such complete assurance, that not having it only produces patience in us — not doubt, but patience! All human hopes may disappoint, but the hope God has given us is as sure as if we already had it. We wait with patience, and the patience itself is holy discipline for us.
Quiet waiting can look like not caring much either way. Commentators say the truth runs the other way.
Can it be strange, then, that we have to keep the word of His patience? That we have to remember what holds judgment back and delays the fulfilment of our hope as Christians? Patience is not indifference about that hope, but the very opposite. If we were indifferent, we could not speak of patience or know it at all: "if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience."
The scene around us stays the same while we wait. What changes is the spirit in which we look at it.
With this hope shining before us, we can wait with patience for the certain glory that will be revealed in due time. We may look at the sorrows around us in a selfish spirit, or as bystanders who only draw lessons from them. Then the power of evil will make us weary and impatient. If we view it all in the power of the Spirit, we will "wait with patience."
- Unseen — hope is hope only because it is not in hand yet. What a person already has, he no longer hopes for.
- Certain — this hope is deferred certainty, not doubt. The world's hope is almost a synonym for doubt; the believer's is an anchor.
- Bodily — we wait for the redemption of the body at the Lord's coming, not for the salvation of the soul. That we already have.
- Patient — the promise is sure, so delay produces patience, not fear. Patience is the opposite of not caring: only real longing can wait.
- Spirit-taught — a selfish look at the evil around us wears us down. Seen in the power of the Spirit, the same scene leaves us hoping and waiting.
And in like manner the Spirit joins also its help to our weakness; for we do not know what we should pray for as is fitting, but the Spirit itself makes intercession with groanings which cannot be uttered.
Romans 8 has already described a groaning creation. Here another groan rises inside the believer, and it is God's own Spirit. Two questions follow: why does a Christian still not know what to pray for, and how can a wordless groan be prayer at all?
The problem here is not sin. We see only part of the picture, so our prayers fall short.
As we look at the growing sorrows of this groaning creation, and feel our own need, we may find relief in prayer. Even then we do not know how to pray as we ought. While we are down here, we know only in part. We cannot take in the greatness and glory of Christ, or the weakness of our own flesh, or the sorrows of the groaning creation.
That gap does not shut us out of prayer. It is where the Spirit comes in.
Our ignorance of how to pray as we ought surely shows us our need of the Spirit's work, and should make us submit ourselves to Him all the more.
A groan is not a failed prayer. It is feeling that has outgrown speech, and it needs a listener who reads hearts rather than sentences.
Moved by the Spirit of God, we present our needs with an earnestness that no human words can express. A groan always assumes a depth of feeling beyond the power of words to utter. For this reason only God can interpret a groan. That is why Scripture says, "he who searches hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit." The Spirit expresses that mind in us by a groan.
The believer feels the groan as his own, yet Scripture credits it to the Spirit. That settles a fear many have — that their groaning is only selfishness or unbelief.
So it is my heart that groans, while it says, "the Spirit intercedes" — oh, the wonderful ways of God! It is a great comfort to know these are not selfish groans in me. While I groan along with everything around me, I might think, "Careful, there may be unbelief in that." But it is the Spirit's groan in us. Selfish groans we find in Romans 7. There it is all I, I, I — no Christ and no Holy Spirit until the end of the chapter. Romans 8 is full of Christ and of the Spirit.
The Spirit does not stand apart from the believer and plead on his behalf. He works inside, so that when God looks into the heart He finds the Spirit's own desires there. (The ESV reads "intercedes for us." The writer below follows older manuscripts that leave out "for us.")
The words "for us" in Romans 8:26 are not in the best texts. Like many well-meant additions to Scripture, they only spoil it. Adding "makes intercession for us" here would suggest that the Spirit and the saints are two separate parties. It would make Him someone outside of us, praying on our behalf. The next words show that this is not the meaning. God looks down into the heart. He sees there the desires and prayers the Spirit has worked in. That intercession, made inside the saints and on their behalf, is according to God.
Christ intercedes in heaven, and the Spirit intercedes within. One writer pictures this double support in a scene from Israel's history, where two men held up the arms of Moses during a battle.
Aaron and Hur held up his hands, one on each side… What divine strength this gives in the hour of strong temptation. On one side is the exalted Son of God, in the very presence of God, holding up the hands of faith and making intercession. And on the other side, down here, in the believer, the Holy Spirit is making intercession. How doubly we are held up!
This is why misdirected prayers are not a disaster. He does not answer at the level of our understanding.
God searches all hearts, and He knows the mind and desire of the Spirit. The Spirit's desires and prayers match the mind of God exactly, whatever our own desires might be. So God hears according to the Spirit's desires, not ours. We can be very thankful for that.
- Weakness — Not knowing what to pray for is the admitted condition of every believer here; we know only in part.
- Helper — That very ignorance is where the Spirit steps in. The weakest prayer is not left to its own strength.
- Groan — Feeling too deep for words is not failed prayer; only God can interpret a groan, and He reads it perfectly.
- Within — The Spirit prays inside us, not from outside. When God searches the heart, He finds the Spirit's mind there.
- Answer — God answers the Spirit's desires, not ours. Christ prays above, the Spirit prays within, and the believer is held up on both sides.