Speaking of
the intercession of the Holy Spirit, the Apostle Paul wrote:
I consider that the sufferings of this
present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us.
For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of
God; for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the
will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set
free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the
children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor
pains until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the
first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the
redemption of our bodies. For in hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is
not hope. For who hopes for what is seen? But if we hope for what we do not
see, we wait for it with patience. Likewise the Spirit helps us in our
weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit
intercedes with sighs too deep for words. And God, who searches the heart,
knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the
saints according to the will of God. (Rom 8:18-27)
Note that
this text is not poetical. I mention this
as the Spirit is clearly being presented as an intercessor (and ergo, as a person) in the same way Jesus is an
intercessor and a numerically distinct person from God the Father and the
people for whom He intercedes. This is a powerful text showing the personality of the Holy Spirit.
Commenting on this text, George T. Montague, a Catholic New Testament scholar
who has written many books on pneumatology, wrote:
The Spirit as intercessor for man is new. The
ruah of the Lord in the Old Testament
was never sufficiently personalized or personified to be a separately operating
entity, and certainly not toward God as in the case here. Intercession was the
function of the prophet (Ex 32:11; Am 7:2; Jer 15:1; 18:20 etc.) or, in later
Judaism, of angels, either by presenting the prayers of the faithful before the
throne of God (Tob 12:12) or by themselves personally interceding (Zech 1:12).
here in Romans the heavenly intercession is attributed equally to Christ (8:34)
and to the Spirit (here). So here again we encounter the same theological dynamic
as above in 8:10-11, where identical functions are applied in one case to
Christ and in another to the Spirit. The shade of difference here is that
Christ apparently intercedes in heaven and the Spirit here on earth. But the close
association of the two and the apparently "seperable" character of
the spirit as an interlocutor with God like Jesus himself, points to an understanding
of the Spirit akin to the Johannine paraclete . . . (George T. Montague, The Holy Spirit: Growth of a Biblical
Tradition—A Commentary on the Principal Texts of the Old and New Testaments [New
York: Paulist Press, 1976], 211)
As with
texts such as Acts 13:1-2 (see this post), this pericope is strong biblical
support for the Holy Spirit being a person, contra Jehovah’s Witnesses,
Christadelphians, and other groups.
