I'll Pray for You

Paul asks seven potent questions in the closing verses of Romans 8.

Almost all of them expect a negative answer. Like verse 31, “If God is for us, who can be against us?” Nobody! After posing these seven questions, he names seven things that are unable to separate us from the love of Christ: not tribulation, not distress, nor persecution, famine, nakedness, danger, or sword.

Finally, he cites five sets of realities which cannot obstruct God’s love for us in Christ: “neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, neither height nor depth…”

How can Paul make such strong claims? On what basis can we say that the position of mortal sinners like us is so secure? Verse 34 says it is because,

Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who is interceding for us.

Intercession means praying on behalf of someone else. We make intercession for a person when they’re in distress: “Heavenly Father, please be with Grandma when she is lonely. God, give strength to that family.” In verse 26 Paul has already told us that the Holy Spirit is praying for us, which is good because there are times we find it hard to pray. We can be so tired, or beside ourselves with worry, or even unsure what to ask for. Then the Spirit prays for us.

God the Spirit is praying, and God the Son is praying. Some explainers say this means that Jesus remains in the Father’s presence as a perpetual reminder that He has paid sin’s penalty. Christ points to his healed-over wounds and says: “Father, remember what I have done for these sinners who believe in me. Remember how I died and rose for them.”

It’s a beautiful picture. Every time we sin and every time we repent, Christ’s once-broken body is a wordless prayer in God’s throne-room: “Father, forgive them.”

But He’s also making requests on our behalf. During his time on earth, Jesus was often praying (see e.g., Luke 5:16). When Jesus prayed, He prayed for himself, and He prayed for others. Consider John 17 where He prays at length for his disciples, and He prays for all believers—there He even prays for people who haven’t yet come to faith!

This what Christ continues to do: He prays. The letter to the Hebrews says that Christ is in heaven as our perfect high priest. Besides sacrificing, one of the priestly jobs was the work of prayer: to confess the people’s sins, to pray for the king, to offer thanksgiving. Through the blood of sacrifice, the priests petitioned God, calling on him to hear and answer.

In the same way, Christ offers petitions to God. Sitting at his right hand, He’s in the perfect place to speak to the Father on our behalf. And what makes Jesus’s prayers so powerful is that He prays with understanding. When on earth, Christ was a person like us—even ascended, He remains fully human. So He knows the full human experience, the trials, but also the joys. He knows the awesome power of God, but also the vicious strength of Satan.

Jesus knows our nature too. During his ministry He was surrounded by people just like us: proud, forgetful, and weak. He encountered doubters and complainers. So He gets how faith can be fragile and that temptation can be overwhelming. He knows our condition and prays for us in our condition.

Just think of how it comforts us to know that others are praying. “I’ll pray for you” is an encouragement, even more so when they know us personally. We’ve told them what sin we struggle with, they understand a little of our anxiety, so when they pray, we’re reassured that God is hearing about our concerns. Well, when Christ prays, He’s aware of our deepest needs, our hardest struggles, our ugliest sins. He presents all these to the Father with compassionate love: “We do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin” (Heb 4:15).

How we need his sympathetic prayers, especially because our own prayers are so often imperfect: unfocused, or selfish, or incomplete. But Christ prays perfectly on our behalf. He prays with words we could never utter, prays with confidence we could never muster. He presents to the Father those many good things missing from our prayers, like asking for our safekeeping when we’re naïve about temptation, or for our maturing when we walk through serious trouble. Even in those times when we neglect prayer, Christ prays for us.

When we’re anxious about our health or worried about our children, facing ridicule for Christ or despairing of the church’s future, we can be comforted to know that the Father’s caring eyes are on us already.

The Father knows what we need even before we ask him because Jesus is busy praying!

Then we carry on with good courage. Because if this God is for us, who can be against us? Who shall separate us from the love of our perpetually praying Christ?