Scripture Daily

Context No. 240 of 4322 · Romans

Context · Reflection

Romans 8:16-25: in context

16The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are children of God; 17and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with him, that we may also be glorified with him. 18For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which will be revealed toward us. 19For the creation waits with eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. 20For the creation was subjected to vanity, not of its own will, but because of him who subjected it, in hope 21that the creation itself also will be delivered from the bondage of decay into the liberty of the glory of the children of God. 22For we know that the whole creation groans and travails in pain together until now. 23Not only so, but ourselves also, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for adoption, the redemption of our body. 24For we were saved in hope, but hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for that which he sees? 25But if we hope for that which we don’t see, we wait for it with patience.

Romans 8 is the summit of Paul's longest and most carefully built letter, and in this passage he opens the lens as wide as it goes. He starts with the believer, adopted as a child of God and made an heir along with Christ, and adds a hard condition: this inheritance comes to those who suffer with him, so that the glory arrives through the suffering rather than around it. The present pain, he says, does not even weigh against the glory that is coming.

Then he does something startling. He says it is not only people who are waiting. The whole created world was subjected to frustration and decay, not by its own choice, and it waits with its neck craned for the children of God to be revealed. Creation groans, Paul says, like a woman in labor. And we groan with it. Even those who already have the first taste of the Spirit groan inwardly, waiting for adoption to be completed, which he defines not as escape from the body but as the redemption of the body. The hope is not to leave the world behind but to see it, and us, remade.

The image he chooses for all this groaning is birth, not death. Labor pains are loud and they are real, and they mean something is being born, not that something is ending. In hope we were saved, he says, and hope you can already see is not hope at all. What groaning in me have I read as the end of something, when it might be the labor before something is born?

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