The work of the Holy Spirit - pagina 678

PRAYER

638 for

them

all.

And

prayer would

still

Head of the Body, it is the calling Tho their prayer were perfect, His All the members must pray, but He

thus, as the

of Christ to pray for the Body.

be needed.

must pray for them all. Entirely different, however, is the prayer of the mother for her dying child. Being only five or six years old, one can scarcely pray for himself. He has not the slightwhat is happening to him, nor of his own needs. Then his mother kneels by his side and prays for him, " helping his infirmities, for he knoweth not what to pray for as he ought." If he were twenty years older, there would be no need of it; he himself the

little

est conception of

And

could understand his condition and pray for himself. applies to the intercession of the

Holy Ghost.

If

this

the saint were

what he ought to be, and could pray as he ought, there would be no need of this intercession. But, being imperfect and beset by weaknesses, not knowing what to pray for, the Holy Spirit helpeth his infirmities, and prays for him. Christ intercedes for the body because He is the Head even tho the prayers of the members were perfect and mature. He would still intercede with the Father in their behalf. But the Holy Spirit prays because the prayers of the saints are itnperfect, immature, and His prayer is comJ>lementary and necessary, inasmuch insufficient. ;

as the saint can not yet pray as he ought

;

hence

decreasitig as the

more and more correctly. The intercession of the Holy Spirit is according

saint learns to pray

to the saint's

which is described in the seventh chapter of Romans. Surely, the Lord God might have been pleased to regenerate the sinner in such a way as to deliver him at once and completely from but He has orsin, and from all the after-effects of his old nature dained it otherwise. Regeneration does not effect such a sudden change. It does indeed change his state before God at once and

condition,

;

completely, but fect holiness.

does not place him at once in a condition of per-

it

On

the contrary, after regeneration

it

remains, on

inward man "; " but also, on the other, I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind." Hence the cry: "O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death? And the intercession of the Holy Spirit fully meets this condition. If in regeneration we became perfectly holy, without any the one hand,

" I

delight in the law of

God

after the

'

infirmity, with perfect

would be no need

knowledge what we should pray

of this intercession.

for.

there

But, this not being so, the

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