Romans 8:18-25 Pentecost 8a
July 6, 2008 Pastor Charlie Vannieuwenhoven
Dear friends in our Savior,
Freedom doesn’t mean problem-free. We live in a free country. We enjoy many freedoms as citizens of America. We have the freedom to exercise the religion of our choice. We have the freedom to bear arms and to vote and to elect the leaders of our own choosing. We have the freedom to pursue life, liberty and happiness in the way that we want. But having these freedoms doesn’t mean there won’t be problems in life. How often people forget this! Courts have to settle cases when the rights of one interfere with the rights of another. Many take freedom to mean the license to do whatever they want regardless of the effects on others. People often have higher expectations of freedom that what the reality usually is. We are citizens of a great country, but not a perfect one.
Paul addresses a similar thought in our text and addresses a problem that all Christians wrestle with: even though we have been set free from our bondage to sin and death and have been made children of God and citizens of his kingdom, we still experience many problems on this earth. If we are God’s children, why do we still have so many problems? If God loves us so much, why does he still allow such painful and difficult times to come into our lives? Why does it seem that Christians suffer as much as—if not at times, more than—unbelievers around us? We can answer that very simply: while we are free from sin in our conscience and before God, we still live in a world that bears the effects of sin and we still feel the effects of sin in our lives. Yet this does not mean God has left us or that he doesn’t love us. Though we face these difficulties of life, God with his promises provides strength and encouragement as he gives us something much better to look forward to in the next life. He may not answer the specific questions we have for each situation we face, but he does remind us what is waiting for us. God strengthens us as he encourages us today, Wait with Eager Patience.
Romans 8:18-25 (NIV) 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 sons 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 the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom 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 as sons, 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 he already has? 25 But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.
I. The Reality of Suffering.
So how do we wait eagerly yet patiently when we have to face some very difficult things in life? It starts by knowing what to expect. Often, our disappointments come because our expectations are wrong. If your team is expected to get to the championship game but doesn’t, you are disappointed. If they aren’t expected to win a game and get close to the championship and don’t win, you are just happy they did ok. But often your emotions are tied to your expectations. When it comes to sufferings and problem, God tells us that we should expect that suffering is going to be a part of living in a creation affected by sin. Paul takes it for granted that sufferings will be part of our lives. He doesn’t debate the issue or even refute it. We are to expect that there will be sufferings.
When Adam and Eve sinned, everything was brought under sin and its effects. This is why Paul tells us that creation groans in troubles and is eagerly waiting for a time when these problems will be taken away. When God pronounced his judgment after the first sin, he cursed the ground along with man in Genesis 3. Nature also has been corrupted by sin. Trees die. Wood decays. Metals rust and material rots away. They have been corrupted by sin. We see the effects of sin in the upheavals of nature that have become so prevalent in the last few years. We’ve seen a lot of tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes, flooding, tsunamis, fire, storms, lightening. Even creation feels the effects of sin. People might think, “Wouldn’t God’s creation be a better and more painless place to live? If God created it, shouldn’t it be better for us?” Yet creation is affected by sin. Like Christians, it too is waiting for a future age of glory. Since it is affected by sin, we should expect that there will problems and troubles that come with nature.
Paul says that we too are groaning. Even those for whom Jesus died experience the suffering and sorrows of life. This is part of living as sinful people in a world affected by sin. To Adam and Eve, God proclaimed that they would face suffering. With painful toil would they now take care of the ground. With pain would Eve now give birth to children. And this has continued. Our bodies are affected by sin. They wear out after a while. They are susceptible to diseases, cancers, things not working right and death. Things that are affected by sin wear out, rot and decay and eventually die. Our bodies are no different. And with those bodily problems come emotional and relational issues. Relationships start to wear as friction develops causing family and marital problems. We suffer problems with neighbors, losses of jobs, and troubles with finances.
This is the reality of life in a sinful world. Sorrows are our frequent companions sufferings are part of our lives. God never promised life would be easy. We groan under these sufferings, maybe even grumble and complain to God that he is unfair. We feel that we deserve more and better. And all this because we also forget or want to forget the reality that we are sinners. We don’t like to face the fact that sinners deserve only wrath and punishment from God. That’s so hard to swallow because then we’d have to admit the same thing about ourselves.
But let’s look at these sufferings from a different perspective. The problems that we face serve to remind us of our sinfulness and our need for a Savior. They drive us to Jesus and remind us of the need we have for what he has to offer. We are daily reminded of the need we have for redemption. And that redemption came in Jesus Christ. This God shares with us in his word. Christ overcame these physical afflictions and temptations and faced death in our place. He has conquered the devil, given us the perfection that we need to overcome this world and our sinful flesh, and guaranteed us a place in heaven. Our problems and troubles that we face here bring us closer to Jesus as we look eagerly forward to the redemption that he will bring to us on the last day.
II. Certainty of Hope.
We can expect that until the day that this final redemption comes there will be suffering that we have to face. But our hope comes from knowing what we can expect when this life is over. Our problems not only remind us of the final redemption in Christ Jesus, but it leads us to eagerly look forward to that redemption when Jesus comes again. While God does not promise to take our sufferings away on this earth, he does promise to support and provide strength for the child of God as he suffers. And God gives us this support by giving us hope.
Understand what hope is: hope looks forward to something better. It is not a wish or a dream. When you hope for something, you are waiting for something that is different and better than what you have right now. This is what God promises for his children in heaven. Heaven is what we look forward to when this life is over. In our text, Paul talks about it in different ways. He talks about the “glory revealed in us,” the “glorious freedom of the children of God,” “waiting for the adoption of sons and redemption of the bodies.” These all point to the glory of God that will be revealed in God’s children when Jesus comes to take them to heaven. The picture that Paul uses here to show how exciting this is and how eagerly we look forward to has the same concept as a child at a parade. The child is straining its neck to see a parade coming down the street. They are excited. They are eager. They know they are going to see something awesome. And so they wait patiently, but eagerly straining to see it come. They hope for the parade. They don’t see it yet or have it in front of them. But they know it is coming.
We are looking forward to the time that we will fully look like God’s children when our mortal bodies are changed to be like him. This is the glory that is waiting us. This includes the resurrection of the body, a new and perfect body and eternal life in God’s presence, free from all sin, death, sorrow and trouble. This is what we will look like then. But right now, we don’t always look like God’s children. At this point in time, the objective observer cannot from the condition and circumstances of one’s life, be sure who the children of God are. Look at it this way: if you would see a ragged, dirty person eating bean soup in a run down shack and you were told that person was a billionaire, you would ask why he didn’t look like one now. With the sufferings we face we don’t always look or feel like God’s children. But we are. And one day will all be saved. The glory of God will be revealed and we will be seen as God’s children. Looking at my life doesn’t tell me I’m saved. Listening to God’s promise in Scripture tells me I’m saved and gives me something to look forward to. This is faith and hope. This is what Paul is saying as he concludes our text, “24 For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what he already has? 25 But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.
Since we don’t always experience what we think God’s children should experience, our salvation is a matter of hope. In this world, it would often seem that God has forgotten us. But we have a certain promise that at the end of time we will be revealed as God’s children. This is what we eagerly look forward to. Our challenge is to wait eagerly but patiently endure the present sufferings that we face each day with the firm confidence that these troubles are small compared to the glory that will be revealed in us. The length of time that our sufferings are with us pale in comparison to the eternity that we will have with Jesus. There is light at the end of the tunnel. There will be a time that our troubles will be over and we will have a life without worry or problem. We just have to wait until heaven. Understanding that what we will have in heaven is so much better than what we have here is what gives us the strength to carry on and the patience to endure. This is what allows us to see the problems that we face as opportunities for us to draw us closer to God and his love for us displayed in Jesus our Savior. Just because we are free in Christ does not mean that we are problem free—not yet at least. We face the reality of our sufferings by relying on the certainty of our hope. And with that, we wait with eager patience. Amen.