#8. Romans 1:8-9 – Paul’s Prayer, Part 2

 Part I: Introductions

First, indeed, I am thanking my God through Jesus Christ concerning all of you, that your faith is being announced in the whole world. For God is my Witness, to Whom I am offering divine service in my spirit in the evangel of His Son, how unintermittingly I am making mention of you always in my prayers…

In the previous article, I expressed heavily the matter of faith, and the service that Paul is referencing. This next part of the study begins to clarify further the service, solidifying our structure (which I will get to at the end of this article.) The meat of this article will center on prayer: what prayer is, what Paul’s prayer is in these verses, and how it serves as a gateway to the final portion of our introduction.

To begin, the service that Paul spoke of is, personally, in his spirit. This does not mean that he is the Source of his service, but that he is able to claim ownership of it. Yet Paul continues, then expressing that it is also in the ‘evangel of His Son.’ This gives us two qualifications for ‘divine’ service – ‘in spirit’ and ‘in the evangel of His Son.’

Why, by the way, does Paul say “in the evangel of His Son?” Why doesn’t he say, “in the evangel of Him,” like he did before?

Well, part of it is grammatical; ‘God’ is the subject of the sentence (see the beginning of the verse,) so to say ‘God is my Witness, to Whom I am offering divine service in spirit in the evangel of God’ is… well, it’s clunky. It’s still edifying, I guess, but in my opinion, it would still be awkward. This statement is the first time that Paul ‘returns’ to something he’s previously established in the letter. In verses 1 and 3, Paul clarifies that the “evangel of God” concerns God’s Son. So, Paul summarizes that point, while moving into his next point, here. You will notice that each time Paul returns to a previous point in this argument, he summarizes it, while clarifying it, so that you are recalling information, while still cruising along the argument. These are helpful breathers that give us time to reflect on what we’ve learned.

With that, I’m almost ready to get into the concept of ‘prayer.’ Before we do that, though, let’s consider how often Paul prays. Paul says he unintermittingly makes mention of them always. This is not hyperbolic – nor do these two words mean the exact same thing. The word “unintermittingly” means without ceasing. The word here in Greek is adialeiptos, or “UN-THRU-LACK-AS.” This is a continual statement, referring to the string of prayers themselves. The “always,” in parallel, refers to how often they are mentioned in the prayer.

Does that sound like an unnecessary delineation? Well, don’t blame the messenger. I wouldn’t feel the need to delineate carefully like this if there weren’t so many that blatantly and intentionally added or changed words in the text to fit their own perspective, so we must establish that no, not every ‘opinion’ is valid, for if your opinion conflicts with facts in context, then the opinion should be discarded. Instead, many opt to twist the text, believing the text to mean something other than what it is written. What this means is that little grammatical details like this matter, and if I have to learn about the word ‘unintermittingly,’ then you can sure as hell bet that you’re going to read about it as well!

Okay, okay. Prayer. The word “prayer” is proseuche in koine Greek. The one thing most pastors, preachers and churchgoers don’t know is that there are three Greek elements to the word ‘prayer,’ all of which add a critical aspect to our understanding of just what prayer is. The Greek elements of proseuche is “TOWARD-WELL-HAVING.” A.E. Knoch best summarizes each of these elements in the article ‘Praise and Prayer,’ in Unsearchable Riches, Vol. 40, p. 9–

“In the language of inspiration, the idea of prayer is essentially concerned with ‘HAVING.’ To this is added the thought of good, ‘WELL-HAVE,’ that is, a wish. If this is directed ‘TOWARD’ anyone, especially the Deity, then it is ‘TOWARD-WELL-HAVING,’ prayer.”

Good wishes toward God.

This is prayer.

I know. It’s kind of weird, right? Initially, you may think, “Oh man, I’m so guilty and so wrong because all I ever do when I pray is ask for stuff! And, most of the time He doesn’t even give me what I asked? Is He just not listening? Does He just not care? And now I find that this ‘prayer’ business is just for His well-being??”

All of these questions have a reply, but in order to answer these things, we must first deal with the negative perception of yourself that comes with ‘asking for stuff all the time’ when you pray. We ask: is it really outside the boundaries of “TOWARD-WELL-HAVING” to request things of God, regardless of the request’s practicality?

Well, let’s find out! In order to grasp what ‘prayer’ Paul is talking about here, we must ask ourselves a critical question: why and how on earth is Paul able to pray without ceasing?? When we consider ‘prayer’ in a religious context, we think of that moment at the beginning of the sermon, where the preacher goes, ‘Let’s bow our heads and close our eyes,’ or getting on our knees at the foot of our bed, folding our hands together, starting with ‘Dear God’ and ending with ‘Amen.’

Why do we think this? Well, initially, I found this process to be a tad… ritualistic, but in truth, this is how it was for Israel back in the day! Usually, some crisis would make Israel go, ‘Oh Lord, how we needeth Thou now!’ And God would either reveal that He’s punishing them for some transgression under law, or bless them with whatever they needed after they learned their lesson.

Moreover, you could only pray in a certain place – the temple. As an Israelite under law, you had two options: you could either go into the temple to pray, or direct your prayers toward the temple, that they may ‘reach’ God. Later in Israel (like, closer to Jesus’ crucifixion, that is,) there would be a specific time in the day that the priests would set apart, that the Hebrew under law would be able to go into the temple and pray.

All of this is… very particular. Why would God do it this way? Because Jesus had not yet been sacrificed. There was, up until Jesus’ death, a very clear, firm, and impassable barrier between man and God, called sin. I won’t speak much on ‘sin’ right now, but we will cover the term when it first appears here, and deepen our understanding of the term as we progress through Romans. For now, we must recognize that sin (not your individual sin, but sin as a whole) had kept humanity from God, and God from humanity. The only way to destroy this barrier was for God to send His sin offering, Christ, and kill sin along with His Son (2 Cor. 5:21.) He would then raise His Son, and leave sin with the death it truly deserved.

This meant that, while this barrier was still in effect, there were specific methods and manners by which Israel would have to communicate with their Elohim – their God. With sin, there were proper channels, being the temple, and other rituals (introduced in the second half of the book of Exodus, and all of Leviticus, if you’re interested,) that were necessary for a right communion with God.

We, thankfully, are living in the period of time after Christ. The barrier we are speaking of has been removed by God through the death of His Son (Rom. 8:3,) thus changing God’s dealings with man (and the whole of His creation.) This is rightly shown in Peter’s prayer in the account of Acts. Peter, instead of praying at the customary hour at the proper place, instead went to a random housetop and prayed at a completely different hour. Observe Acts 10:9–

Now, on the morrow, as they are journeying and drawing near the city, Peter went up on the housetop to pray about the sixth hour of the day.

This is vital, as it shows that Peter is severed from the rest of the city. His act of prayer at a radically different period of the day (the evening) shows that he is being prepared for the great change that God would be imposing on believers, from that point on into today.

However, there is a separate One that would pray at the most incongruent hours, typically during the dead of night. This One, of course, is Jesus. Jesus would spend nights in prayer of God (Luke 6:12-13, and yes – I say prayer of God, as the Greek text does. More on that later.) Scripture notes that right before a huge event in His ministry happened, Jesus would spend the evening or the night praying. In the Luke 6:12 verse, for example, Jesus prayed the night before calling His chosen disciples. Another instance of an all-nighter can be found in Matt. 14:23 – when He was about to announce that He had been rejected by His chosen people.

Another example would be after the miracle Jesus performed, feeding the large Israelite throng with five loaves of bread and two fishes. The Israelites, being content, were ready to proclaim Him as King. Alas, Jesus, knowing that this wasn’t His Father’s will, instead retired into the wilderness to be alone (John 6:15.) He spent the entire evening in prayer, and when He returned, He found that, of course, the Israelites were not as understanding as they claimed to be after they were initially fed, and were, amazingly, looking for signs again, as if He hadn’t just produced food out of nothing!

Of course, Jesus’ greatest conflict would begin when He was arrested by the pharisees and unjustifiably charged with breaking the Mosaic law. The night before this, Jesus prays a very telling prayer in the garden of Gethsemane – one of the most agonizing that the world will ever witness (apart from His cries on the cross, that is.) Jesus begins this prayer by saying,

My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass by from Me.

What?? Are you telling me that Jesus actually requests, in prayer (the ‘TOWARD-WELL-HAVING’ of God,) for the crucifixion to pass Him by? The Savior of the world actually asks His Father to skip this part!

This tells us a wealth of information. First: if we are ever to pray properly, with thanksgiving, as our apostle does, then let us not think ourselves above Jesus, as able to pray better than He. Jesus Himself asks for things in prayer, that He knew wouldn’t really come true. Luke’s account even makes it clear that Jesus was sweating blood (Luke 22:44.) And, what’s more, is that Jesus didn’t just ask for this possibility once, but three times (Matt. 26:39, 42, 44!)

So, why would Jesus pray this? Well, I’d think it obvious; who wants to be brutally tortured and murdered for a crime they clearly did not commit? Jesus was there in the likeness of sin’s flesh (Rom. 8:3, that is, just like our flesh.) When we know we’re about to go through something horrible that we feel we don’t deserve, do we not pray to God in anguish? Jesus undoubtedly held these same feelings in the garden.

Yet there is one critical statement that separates Jesus from the rest of the bunch, and it’s this. In truth, I did not share the entirety of Jesus’ prayer, here. The rest of His prayer is found in the rest of the verse:

My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass by from Me. However, not as I will, but as Thou!

Though He knew what He wanted in that moment, He understood that His Father’s will not only reigns supreme, but also loving. He knows that, even if He doesn’t enjoy the experience in the moment, that there will be an immeasurable benefit that He will enjoy for the rest of time, and beyond. Jesus knew that it was God’s will that drove His life, and His desires and, even in fear, He did not disagree with it.

We have considered the fact that Peter bucked the trend of prayer in a temple. So did Jesus. And, of course, we see that Paul most definitely isn’t going into temples in order to pray – his prayers (like Jesus’ prayers) are not contingent on whether or not you are at a proper location, for the barrier of sin has been removed.

This takes us back to Romans 1:9. In Romans 1:9, we read of prayer. We read of Paul’s prayer. It’s a rare, but insightful look into Paul’s psyche. He is the only one in Scripture to both state that he prays unintermittingly, and the only one to exhort others to pray unintermittingly (no, Jesus never uses the word ‘unintermittingly’ in telling others to pray; unintermittingly and always are two different terms, as we’ve discussed.)

So, how does Paul pray without ceasing? Well, let’s understand that neither Paul, Jesus, nor Peter or James, or any writer in Scripture, declares that ‘prayer is speaking things with your mouth.’ It is illogical to presume that you cannot ‘TOWARD-WELL-HAVING’ apart from speaking. You do not have to force your thoughts into the right words and conform our lips, tongue, teeth, and lungs into the right configuration in order to expel air that praises God in order for you to achieve ‘praying.’ What would happen if you did this, but then didn’t have the right word? Do you risk confusing God, the One Who made you to not have the right words in that moment? I didn’t think so.

What if you didn’t go to all that effort, and instead think your prayer to God? That is already easier than actually speaking the prayer, but I’ll take it a step further. The prayer is to occur in spirit of the believer today. We know this because ‘offering divine service’ is directly followed up by prayer, and the manner by which this is imparted is ‘in spirit in the evangel of His Son.’ It is in your spirit that prayer is manifested.

Is your tongue your spirit? Is your act your spirit? Is your thought your spirit? The answer to each of these questions is ‘no.’ If your tongue, or an action, or your thoughts equivalents to your ‘spirit,’ then your tongue, or act, or thought would be called spirit instead. But they’re not. They’re three separate, distinct nouns with their own meaning apart from spirit.

The spirit is the power that propels the movement of our bodies. Your disposition as a believer is later said to be ‘in spirit’ (Rom. 8:9.) It follows that, if your default disposition is ‘in spirit,’ and ‘prayer’ is, by nature, something that praises God in spirit, then your spirit, as a believer, is perpetually praying. Your spirit perpetually gives thanks to, makes requests of, and glorifies God at all times, in spirit.

We certainly have more to discuss, but I’ll save it for the next article, where we will deal with a few more objections.

- GerudoKing