The Gospel and Worship - Part Two
This section from Torrance's The Mediation of Christ is NOT an easy read, but it is well worth the effort of mind and heart to work through his words. You may wish to reread Part One of The Gospel and Worship (February 18th post) before reading Part Two below. Have fun!
“In that perspective we must think…of Christian prayer as grounded in and governed by the fact that through His Incarnation Jesus Christ has stepped into that relationship as the Mediator, who not only brings God and man and man and God near to each other in propitiation but who in doing so stands in our place where we cry in prayer to God and makes Himself our prayer, a prayer not in word or even in an act only but a prayer which He is in His own personal Being. Just as in Jesus Christ God addresses His word to us in such a way that He Himself is wrapped up in His word in the form of personal being, so in Jesus Christ God has provided us with prayer that is identical with the personal self-offering and self-oblation of Jesus Christ to the Father on our behalf. It is as such that Jesus Christ stands in our place where we pray to the Father, so that from deep within our humanity, where He has united Himself to us, and from out of it, assimilated to His own self-consecration to God He prays: ‘Our Father who art in heaven. Hallowed be Thy Name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven…’ That is to say, where we are unable to pray to the Father as we ought or in any way worthy of Him for all our prayers are unclean, Jesus Christ puts His prayer, prayed with us to the Father, into our unclean mouth that we may pray through Him and with Him and in Him to the Father, and be received by the Father in Him: ‘Thou art my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased’” (T.F. Torrance, The Mediation of Christ, pp. 87-88).
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This is surely the essence of our prayer life, and the meaning behind it in Romans 8 where the Spirit intercedes for us: He makes our prayers His own! That is powerful! Our groans and utterings, caused by our ailing and suffering bodies which yearn for redemption, are too deep to produce any words that adequately describe what we are feeling inside. The Spirit of God takes that, in whatever frail and sometimes formless shape it may be, wraps it up with the oblation of the Son of God, and hands it to the Father. This brings two comforts. First, if there is any doubt as to whether or not the Father hears our prayers, can He possibly deny His Son in whom our prayers are wrapped by the Spirit? Second, if there is any doubt that the Father will answer such frail and formless prayers, can He possibly deny the answers to the Son's prayers for us which are prayed by Him, in Him and through Him? God will neither turn a deaf ear to such prayers or neglect to answer them! Praise the Father, Son and the Spirit for their triune work in capturing and enrapturing us in the Beloved!