On August 31, 1422, King Henry V of England died. Henry V’s one-and-only son, Henry VI, then became king. However, a problem then confronted that island nation in the sea: Henry VI was only eight months old! So, because of Henry’s young age and inexperience, the English Parliament appointed Humphrey, the Duke of Gloucester, to serve as the king’s regent. The King’s regent served as the protector and defender of the Realm until young King Henry VI came of age and could rule on his own.
When you were baptized into Christ, God adopted you to be His own dear son and heir. Yes, even if you are a female, baptism has made you into a son of God. For in biblical times, only a son could inherit, not a daughter. And so, whether male or female, you are all sons of God in Christ Jesus, for, by faith, you will inherit what God has decreed to be yours.
It was as the Apostle Paul told us in last week’s epistle reading: “You received the Spirit of adoption as sons” (Romans 8:15). The scriptures also describe you, those who are baptized into Christ, in regal and royal terms. The Scriptures say, “Everything is yours” (1 Corinthians 3:21), and again, “God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms” (Ephesians 2:6).
But, like King Henry VI, we also have a problem. Although we are now legitimately and legally sons of God, we are still too young to handle our divinely given position and place. We don’t have anywhere near the needed ability to fulfill and live out the divine stature that God the Holy Spirit has given us through the water and Word of holy baptism.
Just as the eight-month-old Henry had little ability to serve faithfully as the King of England, so also do we have little ability to think, speak, and act faithfully as sons of God. Oh, we have much ability to think, speak, and act when it comes to living in this fallen world. But when it comes to living faithfully as sons of God, we are weak, and sometimes even unwilling. Just as weakness and immaturity reduced Henry’s ability to serve as king, you and I also suffer from weakness and immaturity in being sons of God.
Paul gives us an example of our enduring weakness and immaturity. He says, “We don’t know what to pray for as we should” (Romans 8:26). Like an eight-month-old baby set on the king’s throne, we don’t fully recognize, nor can we fully appreciate, our need to pray! If we could sense our need to pray as we should, we would pray continually as Scripture also tells us to do (1 Thessalonians 5:17).
Like the Prophetess Anna, who was waiting to hold the long-promised Messiah in her arms, we would never leave Temple courtyard. We would worship God night and day with fasting and prayers (Luke 2:37). If we could grasp the depth of our need to pray, we would want to do nothing other than pray for God’s continual mercy and protection.
How could the infant King, Henry VI, possibly have known the troubles his kingdom faced? How could Henry have even known what he needed to do as England’s king? How could he have made any plans to defend against his enemies? At eight months old, Henry’s main concern was for his mother to cuddle him and to feed him.
The Apostle Paul says something similar to us: “we don’t know what to pray for as we should.” It’s not that we don’t wish to call on God in every need, and with His name pray, praise, and give thanks. It’s that we don’t fully realize the spiritual troubles and dangers around us, which would bring us to our knees and cause us to cry out, “O Lord, have mercy on me, the sinner” (Luke 18:13). We can barely handle what’s right in front of us. We hardly remember to pray for food and drink, let alone what we can’t see with our eyes or what is beyond our understanding.
Like young Henry on the throne, unaware of Britain and the rest of the world, a similar malady also afflicts us. A big world is out there of which we are unaware. We live in a world of violence, destruction, and death that goes far beyond what we can see or sense. And this world is not just the state of Missouri, the United States, or even the other nations of the world. This world of which we are barely aware is spiritual. For Scripture tells us: “our battle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world, and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms” (Ephesians 6:12).
God, knowing that “we don’t know what to pray for as we should,” He gave us a great and wonderful gift on the day He adopted us to be His own in baptism. Then, God the Father made you His beloved son and heir. But He did more than that: He also gave you His Holy Spirit to live within you. As St. Paul tells us in Galatians, chapter 4: “Because you are [adopted] sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts to cry out ‘Abba! Father!’” (Galatians 4:6)
So, here we are. We are God’s sons because He adopted us into His family. And yet “we don’t know what to pray for as we should.” We are too young and immature to handle this high and divine calling of prayer on our own. And God the Father knows that! And so, to offset for this weakness and immaturity, God gave us His Holy Spirit when we were baptized, for “the Spirit helps us in our weakness.”
The English Parliament gave Humphrey of Gloucester to help Henry VI do what he could not do for himself. In a similar way, God has given us His Spirit, “the Spirit of adoption” (Romans 8:15), “the Spirit of His Son” (Galatians 4:6). Humphrey of Gloucester became protector and defender of the Realm. You could also say that the Holy Spirit is your regent, the faithful protector and defender of the divine Kingdom into which you have been adopted as sons of the King, “heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ” (Romans 8:17). Indeed, the Holy Spirit has called you through the Gospel, enlightened you with His gifts, and sanctified and kept you in the one, true faith.
What grace-filled news! Now we don’t have to be caught unaware. We don’t have to allow our enemies–our sinful flesh, this fallen world and its fallen ways, or even the evil one, Satan–to blind-side us and exploit our weaknesses. Why? Because “the Spirit helps us in our weakness” (Romans 8:26). “The Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groans too deep for words…. The Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God” (Romans 8:26-27).
As Humphrey of Gloucester stood in for King Henry VI, speaking on Henry’s behalf, so the Spirit of God’s Son also stands for us, speaking prayers for us that our human mouths cannot form, and our untrained tongues cannot express.
To get an inkling of the Holy Spirit’s importance, think about our first parents, Adam and Eve. When they ate from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, they must have felt despicable about their sin. For what was their reaction? They saw that they were naked (Genesis 3:7) and were afraid (Genesis 3:10).
Those were reactions knowing that they had messed up and done wrong. But Adam and Eve didn’t realize the full scope of the damage they had done. If they did, despair would have overtaken them right there where they stood, crushing them to dust!
Their one act of eating the forbidden fruit did more than disappoint God. Their one act shattered God’s perfect creation. As you heard in the first part of today’s epistle reading, “The creation was subjected to futility… [and] bondage to decay” (Romans 8:20-21). But all Adam and Eve could see was that they had broken God’s commandment and now needed clothes. Yet, beyond their now-fallen minds, the entire creation was collapsing because of Adam’s sin.
So it is with you and me. What we need for our eternal salvation is simply too much for us to realize fully. We don’t realize–and can’t fathom–the debt of our sin that we have brought about by our own actions. And that’s above and beyond the sinful nature that we inherited from our first parents. In other words, apart from Jesus Christ, we are doubly damned. We’re damned because of our inherited sinful nature and damned because of our sins of thought, word, and deed.
If we were to catch more than a glimpse of our sin’s enormity before God, we also would be reduced to dust. So, God graciously protects us from the full knowledge of ourselves. Oh, He allows us to see enough of our sin to cause us to cry out to Him for mercy, which He generously gives to us in Christ Jesus. But the full knowledge of your sin would be too much for you as it would be for me.
And so in His great love for us, God has, instead, seen fit not to overwhelm us and destroy us with every detail of our sins. Instead, by the Holy Spirit’s working in our lives, He brings us to give it all to Jesus. Our heavenly Father gives us His Holy Spirit, who “helps us in our weakness.”
That’s why we plead guilty of all sins in the Lord’s Prayer, even those we don’t know we have committed. We say, “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.” That’s also why, “The Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groans too deep for words.”
Because of God’s great mercy, we get to go through each day of our lives blissfully unaware of all the dangers around us, just like the eight-month-old King Henry VI of England. But what came of Henry VI? He grew up and no longer needed His regent to help him in his duties.
That same day will also come for you, that day when you will no longer need the Spirit’s help to pray. But that won’t take place on this side of heaven. But it will take place for you, just as sure as God’s Son will return for you on the Last Day, and you will bask in His glory, in body and soul, and in the fullness of your salvation. Amen.
