But just as we lack the ability to redeem ourselves, we also lack the ability to redeem the groaning creation. Paul uses the closest and most obvious example of creation’s redemption—our own bodies (v. 23). A quick glance in the bathroom mirror works as proof enough that our gravity-laden bodies await the final day of redemption, marked on the divine calendar. We endure these last days and groan for that final, last day—the end-time curtain call, turning groans to glory.

“A massive weakness permeates our lives and everything about them.”

Before March of 2008, my prayer life was, unknown to me at the time, a bit garbled. My prayers ran through familiar, rote choreography and the mock-pious tone I had repeated for years, sending out praises and requests. Some sort of prayer-like self-therapy attached itself to my genuine appeals to God, creating a weighty, internal mixed bag of emotions and thoughts. I looked more like a prayer tourist than a prayer warrior.

“In prayer we are ignorant not just of the right way to pray, but of what to pray for. And that is true not just some of the time, but all of the time.”

Listening Intently to Romans 8 

The voice in the audio clip below belongs to Rev. Dr. Richard B. Gaffin, Jr., who began teaching at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia during the Johnson administration and faithfully continued for the next half-century. A brief note on Dr. Gaffin: if there were baseball cards for theologians, his would be worth a lot. He has written books that, to this day, have worldwide influence. He has taught and walked the Westminster halls with some of your favorite authors—Wayne Grudem, Tim Keller, Kevin Vanhoozer, Paul Tripp—while also faithfully serving as an elder at his small OPC church.

On a March morning in 2008, out of the over 11,000 mornings in which Gaffin had taught class up to that point, he chose to speak in chapel to students, staff, and faculty about prayer. I sat in the auditorium that day and soon realized, to my own embarrassment, I hadn’t listened intently enough to what Paul had said about prayer in Romans 8, and my ambling prayer life reflected that lack of attention. By the time Dr. Gaffin closed his 25-minute message, I walked out praying differently. Since that time I’ve listened to his message countless times—on lonely flights, on a jog, as a bachelor, married, in a sweet time of life, in a spiritual drought—and each time I’ve been filled with gratitude for it in different ways for different reasons.

Within Romans 8, verse 28 typically receives marquee status—in verse-a-day calendars, wall-art quotes, and Christian-leaning sympathy cards—for obvious reasons. The words carry an optimistic ring, elastically applicable to either the grinding humdrum or the cascading drama of the Christian life. But as comforting as verse 28 can be, its familiarity can cause us to miss the chapter’s full impact when we skim too quickly over its opener. So Gaffin slowed down the exegetical tempo, showing watchmaker-precision in working through the chapter’s fine details.

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