Romans 8:18-25

Present Suffering and Future Glory
18 I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. 19 The creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. 20 For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope 21 that [j] the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God.

22 We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. 23 Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption, the redemption of our bodies. 24 For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what they already have? 25 But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.



Dig Deeper
A long time ago a young man became frustrated with his life. He felt that he needed to have something that he could have control over. He needed an outlet where he could turn to and spend some quiet hours, caring and nurturing something that was in his control. He went outside into his backyard, which was quite large, and picked the perfect spot to plan a fairly large garden. Before he began, though, he spent months learning about how to properly plant and care for a garden. He loved his garden and spent countless hours planning it, caring for it, weeding it, and harvesting it at just the right time. This went on for several years and his garden grew and became his pride and joy. It was well known throughout the neighborhood as the most impressive garden around. Then his life changed fairly quickly. He was given the opportunity to live in another country for three years as part of his job but he had only two weeks to put everything in order and leave. He decided to go and quickly rented out his house to someone else for the three years. This new person, though a decent enough soul, did not have the same kind of passion about the garden. The new tenant did not have the time, the love, or the expertise to take care of this sprawling garden. Three years later, when the young man returned, he found a tangled mess of weeds and the remnants of his beautiful garden. Not only had it overgrown, they had begun to use the area as a bit of a refuse dump. He could not believe what had happened to his garden. But the only solution was to roll up his sleeves and begin the long, laborious process of putting things back to the way they were supposed to be. In reality, he believed, he was the only one that could restore his garden.

The present passage comes into much clearer focus if we journey with Paul back to the garden of Eden before we try to grasp his basic point here. Adam and Eve were placed in the Garden of Eden and given the responsibility as human beings, God’s image-bearers, to tend to God’s good creation. They would only be able to do this, however, if they remained in harmony with God’s will and in relationship with him. Once they sinned, though, humanity lost something of the image and likeness of God (Gen. 5:3) and carried on the image of their fathers. Human beings, marred in sin and cut off from relationship with God and his will, were not capable of caring for God’s creation in the way that God’s sons in his image could. In the same way, Israel was given the responsibility to care not just for their spiritual state and be a light to the nations, but they were also to care for the land, they were to care for all parts of God’s creation but failed. Paul’s mindset that we need to connect to in order to sharpen the image he has given us is that mankind in slavery to sin is incapable of being proper stewards over God’s creation. As a result of man’s separation from God, God’s garden called earth has fallen into disrepair and ruin. But that’s not the end of the story. Like the young man in the opening story, God is set to return to put his creation back to its original state. It is this time, that all Christians can look forward to and anticipate.

In the previous passage, Paul declared his belief that if Christians wish to share in the glory that is Christ’s as his co-heirs, then we have to be prepared to share in his manner of life, which involves the suffering of laying down one’s life for the benefit of others. As John, the beloved apostle, put is so succinctly, “Whoever claims to live in him must live as Jesus did” (1 Jn. 2”6). It would be normal human nature, I suppose, to question that line of thinking, though, so Paul quickly answers it. Why would one choose a way of life that involves such suffering and sacrifice? It is simply due to the principle that Jesus declared so boldly during his lifetime; if someone wants to save their life they must lose but if they keep it they will lose it for eternity. The way of remaining in the realm of death can be easier and more convenient but it ends in certain death. Paul is not just saying, we should be clear, that if we suffer now God will make up it for it with a really sweet reward in the age to come. His point is that in order to participate in the age to come and have the glory revealed in us as the image bearers of God, we have to walk, suffer, and sacrifice as Jesus did. The present sufferings in Christ are the very path that will lead us to glory of the coming age.

Just as humans suffer as a result of sin in the present age, the entire creation mirrors the incompleteness and frustration that humans experience. Paul shows, beginning in verse 19, that he is not just talking about the rescue and restoration of human beings. He has in view the entire creation. Humanity’s environment fell into disrepair and frustration as a result of mankind’s falling into sin. Humans were created, as we have seen, to take care of God’s good creation as stewards in his image. But when humans fell and were separated from God, no longer working for or representing him, the creation fell into bondage as well. It is subjected to frustration as well and is waiting eagerly for its proper caretakers, the sons of God (the TNIV incorrectly consistently changes “sons” to “children” and so loses the idea of sons being the ones who received the inheritance rights) to be revealed. Those who have been completely restored in the image of God through the glorifying work of the Spirit are the only ones capable of properly tending God’s creation. It is important to note that this subjugation of the creation is according to the will of God himself. It is no accident. Even the bondage of creation is part of God’s overall plan for his covenant family to fully and finally be revealed. The return of God’s people to their true, original purpose through the redemption brought about by Christ was accomplished in effect through the resurrection and will be accomplished fully when all who are in Christ are raised and set in authority over the world (1 Cor. 6:2).

In looking ahead to the liberation of God’s entire creation, Paul keeps two things firmly in view. One is the promise of the age to come, the new heavens and new earth (Isa. 65:17; 66:22; Rev. 21:1-5) and the other is that the new exodus can not only be seen as an Edenic restoration of humanity but that it anticipates and looks forward to the Edenic resotration of the entire cosmos. This is the time that Peter speaks of in 2 Peter when he uses very symbolic Jewish language and speaks of the time of the new heavens and earth when God’s consuming-fire-presence will fill the entire earth with his judgment, destroying the things that are opposed to his good will (2 Pet. 3:7,10). Peter confirms, in verse 15 of that passage, that he is not describing some fiery apocalyptic end to the universe but the same time of restoration and the age to come that Paul speaks of here.

It is not just the creation that groans and sighs waiting for the freedom that it will finally experience when the sons of God, restored in his image are revealed. Christians, those who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, are also pictured by Paul as groaning and sighing inwardly, eargerly awaiting our full and final adoption. Paul has already spoken in this chapter of Christians being adopted in some sense, but there is a fuller sense that will wait until the resurrection. The adoption that we receive is partial and positional until we are fully made like the Son of God himself. That will not happen until our bodies have been transformed to be like his resurrection body. In the meantime, we possess the Spirit as a pledge of what is to come and to begin that work in us even now, anticipating the final work. Because we have the Spirit within us and can take part in him in a partial sense now it actually causes the groaning and yearning for the fulfillment of the completed work. The Spirit is our bridge between the already-but-not-yet chasm in which all Christians find ourselves. We have already been saved but not yet fully. We are the sons of God but not yet fully. We have been adopted but not yet fully. The firstfruits of the Spirit begins the work of being restored to the image of God but also makes us sadly aware that our bodies have not yet been redeemed and so we have yet to sever all ties to the realm of sin and death. Christians have certainly been redeemed out of slavery just as Israel was out of Egypt, but we are still awaiting our full redemption. Until that time we are but a shadow of our future selves left to point ever so incompletely as a people to what we will be in the age to come.

Just as Abraham had resurrection faith and lived in a manner that demonstrated he was fully convinced that God would do what he promised even though he had seen no evidence of it at all, so we have seen no visible evidence of this future hope. We were saved in hope but we have yet to see it manifest itself except in the very invisible inner world of the Spirit working within us. We were saved already, Paul says, that much is true. But there is a future element of salvation that we have not yet experienced and so the proper response is to wait patiently. Yet, the precisely wrong response of God’s people would be to sit and do nothing in the world while patiently awaiting God to come back and do all of the work of restoration. He calls us to be the advance troops of that reality. We are to demonstrate what that future looks like, even if it is but a pale shadow, and call people to this sort of reconciliation between God and his entire creation. The whole world is in labor waiting for God’s creation to be re-born and it is the call of God’s people to being the work now to live as much as is possible by the values of that future age in the present. This is how we hope and wait patiently.


Devotional Thought
Do the people around you in your neighborhood, at your school, or at your job know that you live in eager but patient expectation for God’s restored creation? Do you truly live by the values of God’s age to come rather than those of the present age? If not, what would it look like for you to begin doing this fully in every area of your life?