The Spirit of Prayer

1. The Spirit in the Prayer Life of Jesus

   1. It is reasonable to suppose that the pattern of the Lord’s Prayer recapitulates the central elements of the prayer life of Jesus. The Lord’s Prayer is headed by a reference to the Fatherhood of God, and expresses a concern for the coming of his kingdom.
      (Luke 11:1 – 13)
   2. It is while Jesus is praying that the Holy Spirit descends upon him and he hears  the voice from heaven affirming his Sonship.
      (Luke 3:21 – 22)
   3. Jesus rejoices in the Holy Spirit and prays in the context of the victorious return of the 70, who have been commissioned to bring the kingdom of God near. His prayer to the Father incorporates the statement that the Son alone is the revealer of the Father.
      (Luke 10: 1 –22)
   4. The cleansing of the temple is in relation to its proper function as a universal house of prayer. Like all the powerful acts of Jesus this must have been worked in the energy of the Spirit of God
      (Luke 19:45 –46; Acts 10:38)
   5. The prayers of Jesus on the cross, including the cry of dereliction, must be uttered in the power of the Spirit.
      (Luke 23:34,46; Mark 15:34; John 19:30; Heb 9:14)
   6. These prayer related actions are connected around the theme of sonship and the kingdom of God. The passion of the Son for the kingdom of the Father in the Spirit means that he is always moved to pray. Even when the Spirit is not expressly mentioned, as in the case of the choice of the twelve apostles (Mark 3:13 –19; Luke 6:12 – 16), the combination of prayer and the concern for the kingdom contains this reality, for the Spirit is the actualisation of the presence of the kingdom (Matt 12:28).
   7. Since the death of Jesus is the means by which the kingdom will come, the handing over of his spirit to God (Luke 23:46) and of “the S/spirit” (John 19:30) must be understood as a representative action. This is the ultimate submission of the life (spirit) of Jesus to God the Father in the power (Spirit) of the kingdom. As such, in the purity of its Father – directedness, it is the perfection of the S/spirit of sonship.
   8. The Spirit is handed over to the Father in order that he may be received by the Son and passed on to the people of God to make them sons in the Son. This means that the life of Christ, in terms of the complex of sonship outlined above, is imparted to the believer.

2. The Spirit, Sonship, and Prayer

   1. The Son of God entered into the presence and power of God to intercede on our behalf.
      (Romans 8:34; Heb 7:25)
   2. The outcome of this is that he receives the answer for us in the gift of the Spirit who he pours out on the people of God.
      (John 7:39; Acts 2:33; 8:17)
   3. As the gift of the Spirit of the Son he unites the temple of our bodies on earth (1 Cor 3:16; 6:19) with the temple in heaven (Heb 8:1 –7; 9: 11 –12, 23 –28).
   4. This means that the prayers of the saints are “in Christ” and “in the Spirit”, enfolded in the reality of the Father’s love.
   5. This finds clear expression in the letters of Paul, especially in Romans 8 and Galatians 4:
      1. Christians are those who are “in the Spirit” and not “in the flesh”
         (Rom 8:9)
      2. this means that they are “led by the Spirit” in “putting to death the deeds of the body”. It is this which unites them with the action of the cross that is constitutive of sonship.
         (Rom 8:13 – 14)
      3. it is in this context of tribulation and struggle that they are one in prayer with the Spirit of Jesus who moved him to pray to the Father in the Garden of Gethsemane and cry out (krazein) to God on the cross.
         (Mark 14:36;15:34)
   6. Unlike Jesus, they are those who will never endure the dereliction of God, so cry out to him, even in the midst of a world whose perishing seems to deny their sonship (Rom 8:18 – 25), as “Abba! Father!” (Rom 8:15; Gal 4:6)
   7. This is the Spirit bearing witness to or with our spirits (symmartyreo) that we are the children of God.
      (Rom 8: 16; Gal 4:6)
   8. The union which assures us that we are sons and heirs (Rom 8:17) is participation in the life of Jesus in his self-offering to the Father. This as the S/spirit of sonship permeates the action of prayer.
      (Rom 8:15a; Gal 4:6a)
   9. This is that prayer, which united with the prayer of Christ, brings in the final action of the kingdom when the whole of reality will be filled with God (Hab 2:14; Eph 1:21 –22:4:10) and sonship will be a universal reality (Rev 21:7).