To go to the beginning of the series on Romans, click here...
Suffering (vs. 17, 18) -
Three kinds of suffering -
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Physical (bodily) - not to be discounted. Though all men suffer to one degree or another, yet historically for Christians many have experienced more physical suffering than the average person (Paul was a good example).
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Suffering of the soul (mental suffering) - This can include all sorts of mental illness. Even for those “mentally healthy”, we still struggle with insecurities, worries and cares of this life, difficult interactions with other people. Those who follow Christ are not immune to these (though we can escape much of this by taking all to Christ!).
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Spiritual suffering - All human beings share in 1 and 2. However, there is a special kind of inward suffering that those who have been born again must suffer. An awareness of spiritual things brings with it suffering. We may agonize over our unsaved loved ones, as we unceasingly bring them to the Lord in prayer. We see a fallen world around us that others don’t see, and it brings suffering to our spirit. Especially, we have an innate desire to worship as we know that we should, to have the intimate relationship with Christ that we long for...and yet our own flesh so often gets in the way. (The groanings of vs. 23)
“... the
sufferings and the glory belong together indissolubly. They did in
the experience of Christ; they do in the experience of his people
also (17). It is only after we ‘have suffered a little while’
that we will enter God’s ‘eternal glory in Christ’, to which he
has called us. So the sufferings and the glory are married; they
cannot be divorced. They are welded; they cannot be broken apart.”
John Stott
There is no
comparison between the sufferings that we endure and the glory which
follows.
Moreover, the
‘sufferings’ include not only the opposition of the world, but
all our human frailty as well, both physical and moral, which is due
to our provisional, half-saved condition. The ‘glory’,
however, is the unutterable splendour of God, eternal, immortal and
incorruptible. One day it will be revealed (18). This
end-time disclosure will be made ‘to us’ (RSV), because we will
see it, and in us (NIV), because we will share in it and be changed
by it. It is also ‘in store for us’ (REB), although the precise
nature of ‘what we will be has not yet been made known’.
2 Cor. 3:16-18
‘Suffering’
and ‘glory’ are inseparable, since suffering is the way to glory
(see verse 17), but they are not comparable. They need to be no
contrasted, not compared. In (2 Corinithians) Paul has evaluated them
in terms of their ‘weight’. Our present troubles, he declared,
are ‘light and momentary’, but the glory to come is ‘eternal’
and ‘far outweighs them all’. The magnificence of God’s
revealed glory will greatly surpass the unpleasantness of our
sufferings.
Vs. 19-22
“Creation” appears in each verse
Vs. 19
The word for
‘eager expectation’ (NASB “anxious longing”) means ‘to wait
with the head raised, and the eye fixed on that point of the horizon
from which the expected object is to come’. It depicts somebody
standing ‘on tiptoe’ (JBP) or ‘stretching the neck, craning
forward’ in order to be able to see. And what the
creation is looking for is the revelation of God’s children, that
is, the disclosure of their identity on the one hand and their
investiture (ordained) with glory on the other. This will be the
signal for the renewal of the whole creation.
Vs. 20
…(Paul) sums up
the result of God’s curse by the one word translated, frustration
(“futility” NASB). It means ‘emptiness, futility,
purposelessness, transitoriness’ (BAGD). The basic idea is
emptiness, whether of purpose or of result. I. It is the
word chosen by the LXX translators for ‘Vanity of vanities!… All
is vanity’,100 which NIV finely renders ‘Meaningless!
Meaningless!… Utterly meaningless!’ As C. J. Vaughan comments,
‘the whole Book of Ecclesiastes is a commentary upon this verse’.
For it expresses the existential absurdity of a life lived ‘under
the sun’, imprisoned in time and space, with no ultimate reference
point to either God or eternity.
Vs. 21
Negatively,
creation will be liberated from its bondage to decay (21b). (The word
translated decay NASB corruption) seems to denote not only that the
universe is running down (as we would say), but that nature is also
enslaved, locked into an unending cycle, so that conception, birth
and growth are relentlessly followed by decline, decay, death and
decomposition….So futility, bondage, decay and pain are
the words the apostle uses to indicate that creation is out of joint
because it is under judgment. It still works, for the
mechanisms of nature are fine-tuned and delicately balanced. And much
of it is breathtakingly beautiful, revealing the Creator’s hand.
But it is also in bondage to disintegration and frustration. In the
end, however, it will be ‘freed from the shackles of mortality’
(REB), ‘rescued from the tyranny of change and decay’ (JBP).
Vs. 22
Now he adds that
meanwhile, in the present, even while it is eagerly awaiting the
final revelation (19), the creation is groaning in pain. Its groans
are not meaningless, however, or symptoms of despair. On
the contrary, they are like the pains of childbirth, for they provide
assurance of the coming emergence of a new order. ...Jesus
himself used the same expression in his own apocalyptic discourse. He
spoke of false teachers, wars, famines and earthquakes as ‘the
beginning of birth-pains’ (NIV) or ‘the first birth-pangs of the
new age’ (REB), that is, preliminary signs of his coming.
(Matt. 24:7-8)
The universe is
not going to be destroyed, but rather liberated, transformed and
suffused with the glory of God.
Vs. 23
First fruits of the Spirit = down
payment. Eph. 1:14 tells us the Spirit was given to us as a “pledge
of our inheritance.”
2nd “groaning of Romans 8. We long
for our eternal inheritance.
2 Cor. 5:1-5
Vs. 4 of “How Sweet the Name of Jesus
Sounds” (John Newton)
Weak is the
effort of our heart,
And cold our
warmest thought;
But when we see
Thee as Thou art,
We’ll praise
Thee as we ought,
That day our adoption will be
finalized...our salvation will be complete...our redemption will be
fulfilled.
Vs. 24-25
Hope is the “eager expectation” of
the child of God who awaits the full salvation that we have not yet
received.
“...we wait
for it patiently, that is, for the fulfilment of our hope. For we are
confident in God’s promises that the firstfruits will be followed
by the harvest, bondage by freedom, decay by incorruption, and labour
pains by the birth of the new world. This whole section is a notable
example of what it means to be living ‘in between times’, between
present difficulty and future destiny, between the already and the
not yet, between sufferings and glory. ‘We were saved in hope’
brings them together. And in this tension the correct Christian
posture is that of waiting, waiting ‘eagerly’ (23, cf. 19) with
keen expectation, and waiting ‘patiently’ (25), steadfast in the
endurance of our trials (hypomonē). We are to wait neither so
eagerly that we lose our patience, nor so patiently that we lose our
expectation, but eagerly and patiently together.
Phillips
In my opinion
whatever we may have to go through now is less than nothing compared
with the magnificent future God has planned for us. The whole
creation is on tiptoe to see the wonderful sight of the sons of God
coming into their own. The world of creation cannot as yet see
reality, not because it chooses to be blind, but because in God’s
purpose it has been so limited—yet it has been given hope. And the
hope is that in the end the whole of created life will be rescued
from the tyranny of change and decay, and have its share in that
magnificent liberty which can only belong to the children of God!
It is plain to
anyone with eyes to see that at the present time all created life
groans in a sort of universal travail. And it is plain, too, that we
who have a foretaste of the Spirit are in a state of painful tension,
while we wait for that redemption of our bodies which will mean that
at last we have realised our full sonship in him. We were saved by
this hope, but in our moments of impatience let us remember that hope
always means waiting for something that we haven’t yet got. But if
we hope for something we cannot see, then we must settle down to wait
for it in patience. -
