GOD'S GREAT NEWS for MAN'S GREAT PROBLEM - Romans 1-8

Eager Waiting

Being a father has been one of the great joys of my life. And one of my greatest joys as a father comes every time one of our children turns five. On the fifth birthday, my child and I get up well before dawn, we drive to the airport, and we take an early morning flight to Disneyland. We arrive at the gates of the Magic Kingdom at 10:00 AM when they open, and we ride as many rides as we can squeeze into one calendar day. We also have a grand lunch with the dessert of the child's choice. I buy one present for that birthday child, something like a satin princess cap with a flowing scarf, or a stuffed gorilla, or an umbrella with a name embroidered on it, or a princess doll. I also buy the most gigantic sucker you have ever seen: one of those swirly suckers of multi-colored candy spiraled around a huge stick. And we always buy gifts for the others members of the family. It is a day of pure celebration: father and child. It is a celebration marking a rite of passage, the day our child comes of age and prepares to start leaving the home to enter the world of school.

But over the years I have learned that one of the most enjoyable aspects of the whole event is the child's keen anticipation of the celebration. Each time I have returned from Disneyland and we have reminisced about the great day with the other children, I have looked at the next one in line and said something like, "Now Esther ... you are next! In sixteen and a half months, it will be your turn to go! I wonder what your favorite ride will be ... or what you will choose for dessert ... or what you will choose for your favorite present?" And the eyes of that next-in-line child sparkle and dance with the joy of anticipation.

Yet the waiting is not easy. To a child of three and a half, sixteen months is about the same as forever. There are still all the skinned knees to be endured, the trees that must be climbed, the beds that must be made, the baths that have to be taken, the shots to bemoan, the medicines that must be swallowed, the stories to be heard, all the childhood fantasies to imagine, the games to be played, and the prayers to be prayed. All of life still needs to be lived and lived well during the months of waiting for the joy of the coming celebration. And at various intervals during those months of waiting, the subject of Disneyland will come up, and their eyes will dazzle anew with the burst of new hope, and heightened anticipation as the day grows ever nearer.

This has become a parable to me. My heavenly Father has planned for me a grand celebration on the day when I come of age: on the day when I am resurrected with Him and take on my eternal body, when I am revealed as a son of God. That day will turn into an eternal celebration. But for now, I must wait, and wait through the pain and suffering of life in this world. But my waiting need not be onerous: it can be an eager waiting, a waiting where my eyes sparkle in anticipation of the absolutely certain glory reserved for me in my Father's eternal Kingdom. Today we will speak of waiting ... eager waiting ... through the painful now to the coming glory and celebration.

Paul's Poetry of Eager Waiting

At various times throughout my life, I have asked the Lord to give me a Biblical vision for how to survive a difficult season. The Lord has always met me in this prayer, providing the Biblical metaphor that focuses my mind on enduring the hardship without losing hope in the future He has planned for me. If we want a Biblical vision for surviving life in this world, with all its difficulties, rejections, and miseries, then this passage is for us. It is one of the most poetic passages Paul ever wrote. Here he galvanizes us to hope with a "defiant nevertheless" in the face of the harshness of life in this world. He sharpens our focus with poetic image after poetic image, designed to rivet our minds on the coming glory that we may not lose hope in the present suffering.

This poetic passage can be broken down into three main sections. In the summary overview verse for the entire passage, vs. 18, Paul presents before us the poetic image of a set of scales: in one cup he has laid the weighty sufferings of our lives in this world, but in the other cup he places the weightier glory which is our destiny in the age to come. It is a poetic image of great force, reminding us of what is eternally important. Then Paul sets before us two examples of eager waiting: the creation itself and the adopted sons of God. In vs. 19-22, the whole of God's creation eagerly awaits its redemption on that day when the sons of God are finally revealed. In vs. 23-25, we ourselves are God's adopted sons whose adoption has been legally ratified, but not yet consummated at the celebration party where our Father introduces us to the universe as His adopted sons. We are awaiting a celebration that will boggle the minds of angels and men; the day when our bodies are resurrected and we become in bodily form who we already are in spiritual form: royal princes and princesses in God's family. The key phrase repeated three times in this passage, in vs. 19, 23 and 25 is this: wait eagerly. How can we wait eagerly in a life of pain and suffering?

Our Future Glory Outweighs Our Current Suffering - 8:18

Paul begins to give us his Biblical vision for eager waiting in this world in vs. 18: "For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed in us." The key to understanding the poetic image Paul draws for us here is grasping the term "I consider." It means "to weigh, to consider, to reckon." It refers to a sets of accounts balanced against each other, or a set of scales set to weigh one commodity against another. In vs. 18, Paul sets up a set of scales, balancing them perfectly on the thin line between here and eternity. Paul has considered deeply the suffering of this life and the glory of the life to come on these scales.

In the cup on the left, on this side of eternity, Paul has loaded the cup full of our sufferings with Christ. We learned in vs. 17 that we are forever with Christ and Christ is always with us, both in the sufferings of our present lives and in the glories we shall experience with him. Paul illustrates this for us in this image of the set of scales in vs. 18. In the cup on the left, on the "here and now" side of eternity, Paul fills the cup full of our sufferings with Christ.

But what do the sufferings in that cup look like? That cup is full of rejection. Jesus Christ came to His own, but His received Him not: He was a man of sorrows, rejected of men. They rejected Him, then they killed Him. Likewise, all of us who identify ourselves with Jesus Christ enroll in the school of rejection. Friends and family may ridicule us for our choice of faith; the media will scorn us and call us "poor, uneducated and easily led;" we will be branded mean-spirited by denying the evil spirit of the age; we will be discriminated against; and we may well see the day when we are physically abused and beaten the way Paul was throughout his life, as he so graphically described in II Cor. 11:24-28. We don't know exactly how the rejection will come to each one of us: but rejection will certainly come. And rejection hurts us terribly, because we all so want to be affirmed.

But not only is that cup full of rejection, it is full of the grief and sorrows brought on us by our own sins and the sins of others committed against us. Any physical or sexual abuse we might have experienced as children is heaped in that cup; the nasty words spoken about us or even to our faces and the hurt those words caused fill that cup; the pain we have inflicted on others through our selfishness, the harsh words spoken to our mates or to our children, those words we wish we could reel back in the minute they flew out of our mouths, also fill the cup. That cup seethes and froths with all our griefs and sorrows.

And it boils with all the agony of the physical pain of living in this world. The suffering of living in a fallen world full of cancers, heart attacks, chemotherapies, depressions ... all physical hurt comes into that cup. That cup is full to the brim with the weight of the sorrow we each feel in this world. That cup is heavy indeed.

What are your personal sorrows? What about the terrible weight of financial pressures? What about the sorrow of lost dreams changed to nightmares? What about the pain of broken relationships that have ended in divorce, break-ups, or calloused co-existence for the sake of the children? What about the pain of being misunderstood? What about the hurt of false accusations? Every tear we have cried falls into Paul's cup; every groan we have groaned is echoed there; every sigh falls softly into its hollowness. Think about all the pain of your life gathered together and compressed into that cup. Think how heavy that little cup would be!! With a mighty thud, it crashes down onto the table underneath, hurling the empty cup on the other side heavenward.

But from the heavens comes something to fill the cup on the right. That little cup on the right is slowly filled with the glory of God to be revealed inside us for all eternity. Paul says the cup is filled with "the glory that is to be revealed in us."

Just what is this glory? It is the shekinah glory of God filling the tabernacle in Ex. 40:34-38. It is the brilliant glory of God slowly removed from the temple in the dark days of Ezekiel 10. It is the glory of God's Spirit living inside us, shining out the character and beauty of God right now through the brokenness of these earthen vessels we call bodies. John Stott defines this glory as "the outward shining of the inward being of God." He shines through us like brilliant shafts of light, bursting through the cracks and crevices in the broken crockery of our lives. But that is the glory as it now is in the lives of the believers. Paul speaks of a coming glory, the "glory that is to be revealed in us" in the age to come.

What will that coming glory be like? It is the same glory of God, but housed not in decaying earthen bodies, but in resurrected bodies perfectly designed by God to be eternal recepticals of His glory. The divine treasure of His glory will shine through our resurrected heavenly bodies with complete and brilliant beauty and light, like light shining through perfectly clear crystal. What Paul is referring to here is our graduation as believers, from a cracked earthenware vessel in a dying world to a resurrection body made to bear aloft the shinging glory of God's light for all eternity. And that light that will not abate with time. This is why there is no night in the new heavens and new earth in Rev. 22: the light of God's glory will shine forth in absolute clarity in and through each believer's resurrection body, forever and ever. There will be no night because every inhabitant of the new heaven will be a perfect light-bearer of the shining glory of God's perfect light. Our resurrection body will allow the glory of God inside to shine in its complete radiance, unfettered forever.

Thus, in the cup on the right, there is a brilliant light shining, and its weight grows greater because it is eternal. For every dark moment of pain on the left, the eternal light shines before, through and after it. All the compressed pain on the left side is more than outweighed by the eternal glory on the right side, the life of Christ in us forever. As the left cup crashed to the table, sending the right cup heavenward, so the right cup is filled with the eternal glory of God Himself, and the sheer incalculable weight of eternity crushes the finite weight of human pain compressed into a few short years. The right cup crashes downward. The eternal glory to be invested in our perfect resurrection bodies far outshines and outweighs the combined weight of all our suffering moments in this world.

May we ever have these scales before our minds, that our hearts do not get weighed down too much with our earthly burdens that we forget the glories of our heavenly destiny. The glory of God in us will render us as kings and queens in the heavenly realms, reigning with Christ forever as we suffered with Christ in this life. We can wait through the suffering of the now because the dawn of eternal glory is only a few dark moments away!

Waiting Eagerly: The Example of Creation - 8:19-22

To illustrate this principle of waiting with eagerness for our glorious future, Paul gives us two examples: the creation, and the adopted sons of God. First, he sets before us the example of creation in vs. 19-22.

In vs. 19, Paul tells us "For the anxious longing of the creation waits eagerly for the revealing of the sons of God." The term "anxious longing" actually means "concentrated expectation." It is used to describe a man scanning the horizon with his neck craned forward, and his hand covering his eyes, looking intently for the sons of God who are to be revealed. Paul takes the messianic hope of the Jews, their hope for the restoration of creation to its pre-Fall condition, and he takes it one step further: he personifies the whole of God's creation as watcher, eagerly looking for the revelation of the sons of God.

In this verse, Paul is drawing another stirring poetic picture for us. He borrows once again from the imagery of Roman adoption in this verse. The final step of adoption was the gala celebration party thrown in honor of the adopted son, at which the adopted son would be formally announced as a full-fledged son. Like in Ben Hur, the son is brought before the adoring crowd, is revealed as an adopted son and legal inheritor of the estate, is given the signet ring, and is applauded uproariously. That gala celebration will one day be thrown for us. And in the adoring crowd before us will stand the entire creation of God, a creation that has groaned for millenia to see the day when the sons of God would be revealed. What a picture this adoption is: we see in it a loving Father who publicly demonstrates how much He wants the adopted child; we see the Holy Spirit of God as indwelling witness confirming the adoption, witnessing with our spirit that we are children of God; and adoption foreshadows a coming day of celebration when we who are adopted sons will be revealed before the watching eyes of the entire universe created by God. What a party that will be!! Whole galaxies and whole species and whole ecosystems will be celebrating our position as princes and princesses in the family of God. Paul's imagery of adoption is powerful imagery indeed.

That is the coming celebration the entire created universe longs to attend. But for now, creation is subjected to futility, and it must continue to endure its long waiting. Paul says in vs. 20, 21 "For the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will, but because of Him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God." Here Paul ties together the past agony of the creation as a result of the fall, the present waiting and hope of the creation, and the future freedom the creation will enjoy with the children of God in glory. Creation is an example to us, from its past, to its present, to its future.

Creation was subjected to the terrible futility introduced into the world in Gen. 3, at the time of the Fall. In Gen. 3:17-19, all of creation was cursed to be enslaved to futility: the ground was cursed to produce weeds, and to provide endless graves for dying humanity. Some observers have even said that all the world is little more than one large graveyard: containing the bones and bodies of endless generations of plant, animal and human life, in layer upon layer. The creation that was originally made to birth life has been forced to swallow the dead. Creation groans under the weight of the futility of death and dying, the mind-numbing circle of life and death, from the cradle to the grave.

But creation nourishes a seed of hope. In vs. 21, creation is personified as a slave to corruption who hopes for its coming freedom with the sons of God in their coming glory. Creation groans, yet it hopes for a freedom it knows is certainly coming. In this, creation reminds me of the hopeful character of Jim in the novel Huckleberry Finn. Jim is a slave, running away to find freedom in the north. As Jim and Huck float down the Mississippi by night, Jim sets his hopes on Cairo, that town in Illinois marking the entrance of the Ohio river into the Mississippi. When they reach Cairo, they begin their journey to the free lands of the north. All his life, freedom has been boiled down into that one word: Cairo! Like Jim on the raft floating down the river on an epic journey, so creation floats down the river of time, setting its sights on its own Cairo: the day of the coming glory of the children of God.

In vs. 22, Paul personifies creation in one last way: as a birthing mother, groaning through her birth pangs, in transition labor, about to birth a child of joy. He tells us, "For we know that the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now." Creation groaning under the pangs of childbirth is a powerful poetic image. It reminds me of our first birth experience, when Paden was born. The best words to describe the days and finally the hours and minutes preceding her arrival are ANTICIPATION and PAIN. I recall how we waited in great expectation for nine months, starting in Ireland, continuing as we visited the inadequate medical facilities there and decided to return to have the baby in California. I remember praying and puzzling for weeks about what it would be like to be a father. The anticipation heightened all the more as we went to our increasingly regular doctor's appointments, as we did the ultrasound, as we took our Lamaze breathing classes, and as we bought baby things.

Then as the due date of May 15 finally came, we were entirely ready. But for six agonizing days until May 21st, we waited. Nothing happened. Finally, just after midnight on May 22, Blythe's water broke after about six hours of initial labor. Immediately her body went into intense labor. I helped her to the car, and we raced up to the hospital, with Blythe in transition labor, the most intense stage of labor. We arrived at the hospital, and throughout the rest of the night, we experienced five long hours of painful labor, with heavy contractions coming every two to three minutes. Blythe held my hand throughout the whole process. The next day my hand was scarred with the little half moons caused by her fingernails cutting into my hand when her pain was so intense. Finally, just as the morning sun was coming up, our little daughter was born, and her eyes looked up to greet the rising sun. At the moment of birth, something amazing happened. Blythe's voice became so gentle and sweet, welcoming that new baby into the world. Within minutes of watching those wiggly little arms, and looking into Paden's incredible eyes that have contained the wisdom of the ages, Blythe told me that she had basically forgotten the pain and suffering. The new had come, and the old suffering and groaning was a thing of the past. We have now had 11 years with Paden, and we look forward to an eternity together. In lights of the years together and the joy in knowing this child and all our children, do we remember the pain of the nine months of waiting and the birth process? It is a passing memory ... but the relationship is eternal. That is why we need to wait eagerly while the relationship unfolds.

Thus, in vs. 19-22, Paul has personified creation in three ways: the eagerly waiting celebrant attending the grand celebration of God's adopted sons; the slave under the tyrannical master of corruption, yearning for freedom; and here in vs. 22 as the birthing mother. Each of these personifications graphically portray for us a person waiting intently for something of incredible significance to happen, something so significant that their life changes fundamentally, forever.

Now, why does Paul digress and tell us about creation's waiting and hoping? Why does he personify creation in three different ways as a person eagerly awaiting something, having to endure pain and suffering during the waiting? Why does Paul tell us this? I think there are three reasons. First, Paul has already cited creation as a witness to the gospel of God in Rom. 1:20, and here Paul tells us again that creation itself bears witness to the truth of the gospel, because creation waits for the great news to be consummated just like we believers wait for it. Second, Paul has already noted the human propensity to worship the creation rather than the Creator, in Rom. 1:25. By telling us that ALL creation awaits the revelation of the sons of God, creation fits into the future fortunes of the sons of God in its proper place: tied to redeemed humanity, but beneath the adopted sons' primary position under the Father. Thus, the picture of the future Paul paints here is with God as the exalted Father expressing full joy in presenting His newly adopted sons to a throng of excited onlookers. The focus is on the adopting Father and the newly adopted sons ... creation is an eager attendee, but creation is just an onlooker, not one of the stars of the show. Creation will never be in a place to subvert either the glory of God or the glory of man in right relationship with God. This is a stirring rebuff to the entire cult of Mother Earth and the "environmental worship" of our day. Third, and finally, Paul tells us all this in order to use creation as an analog for our painful but hopeful waiting as Christians dealing with the difficult groaning of the "now" while we wait for the glorious "not yet."

Waiting Eagerly: The Example of Adopted Sons - 8:23-25

Paul now speaks specifically to the believers, the adopted sons who groan under suffering and persecution while they await their coming date with glory. He transitions from the creation to the adopted sons of God in vs. 23: "And not only this, but also we ourselves, having the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our body." Paul tells us plainly that we adopted sons are legally adopted, but we are in a strange waiting period, before the gala celebration when we are finally revealed by our Father as His adopted sons.

The Spirit of God gave Paul great wisdom in choosing this analogy of Roman adoption, because adoption had been on the forefront of the Roman political scene for at least seven years. Seven years before Paul wrote Romans, something of great historical import took place in Rome. The Emperor in 50 AD was Claudius I, and during that year Claudius adopted a young man into his family. The young man who was adopted changed his name to Nero upon his adoption. Claudius adopted Nero in order to identify Nero as his heir, effectively proclaiming him as the next Emperor by virtue of his adoption. Everyone in Rome would have been aware of this momentous occasion, this adoption into the royal family. In 54 AD, just three years before Paul wrote these words we have been studying, Claudius died and Nero ascended the highest throne the world had ever known. What a stirring set of events for Paul to build an analogy from in writing to a group of Roman Christians: as Nero's adoption led to the inner circle of earth's ruling family at the time, so a Christian's adoption as an adult son leads to the inner circle of heaven's eternally ruling family. But even with Nero's earthly adoption, there had been a period of almost four years of waiting in relative obscurity before the full effects of his adoption were realized when he ascended the throne and was crowned as Emperor. Likewise with our adoption as Christians into God's family, there is a waiting period between the legalized adoption and the full realization of the effects of that adoption upon our eternal destiny.

The strange mixture that is the Christian life in this world is powerfully portrayed in vs. 23: we have the first fruits of the Spirit, yet we have a life of groaning. The first fruits of the Spirit are the fruit of the Spirit, invested inside us right now: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. We have Christ's life and Christ's character living within us. We have the treasure of the ages deposited in our humble bodies. But there is something else deposited within these bodies: residual sin. It is the sin and the weakness of our flesh that brings us pain, causing our groaning.

We groan in our daily struggle against the flesh: against our human self-effort apart from God that causes us to run into our own well-laid plans without prayer and without Christ, the end of which is always disaster. We groan because this flesh never gets any better, and somehow we expect it to. We groan because our relationships, for which we have such great hopes and expectations, never live up to their full potential this side of heaven. We groan because there is much about God and life that is very mysterious to us, because we live by faith in promises from the word of God, but we hope in that which we cannot see. We groan because our world is becoming so evil and so deluded that we find ourselves in the last days, when what is evil is called good (killing babies is called "free choice," and widespread sexual promiscuity is called "safe sex" when a condom is used), and what is good is called evil (marriage is derided as an archaic and limiting arrangement, and disciplining one's children with a timely spank is starting to be called child abuse). We groan because we have inside us all the full blessings of the divine life of God Himself, but our bodies are doomed to die. There is a huge disparity between the light of God in us and the fallible human vessel of that light. We groan because we live in the "now," and the further we walk with Christ the more we taste of the "not yet." But the groaning is only one side of our experience here on earth as Christians ... we are about to glimpse the hopeful and eager waiting in the latter half of this verse and in vs. 24, 25. Paul says that as we groan, we are also "waiting eagerly [for our] adoption as adult sons."

At the end of vs. 23, Paul refers explicitly to the image of Roman adoption we have been studying. Let's review: we are waiting for a celebration before all beings in the universe in which God our Father publicly introduces and recognizes us by name, proclaiming us to be HIS SONS, with whom He is well pleased, HIS SONS who are full heirs, HIS SONS who bear His great and magnificent name, HIS SONS who sit in the inner circle of His family, HIS SONS whom He loves and delights in forever. May we wait cheerfully for so great a day! Benjamin Franklin waited cheerfully for this day, if we judge by the epitaph he wrote for himself:

The Body
of
Benjamin Franklin
Printer
(Like the cover of an old book
Its contents torn out
And stript of its lettering and gilding)
Lies here, food for worms.
But the work shall be not be lost
For it will (as he believed) appear once more
In a new and more elegant edition
Revised and corrected
by
The Author.

What an epitaph: he didn't focus on the passing things of this life, like so many epitaphs do, but on the glories of his resurrection life to come. That is the same shift in focus Paul gives us in vs. 24, 25: "For in hope we have been saved, but hope that is seen is not hope; for why does one also hope for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, with perseverance we wait eagerly for it."

The term "hope" appears five times in these two verses. If you recall, "hope" in the NT is a certain, sure expectation of God's saving acts. It is not a "maybe," it is a certainty. In this context, the hope is a certain, sure expectation of God's future redemption of our bodies on the day of resurrection.

But by definition, this hope must have as its substance something that is not seen. Its substance rests on a promise, not an observable fact. We don't hope for what we can see, otherwise that is not hope at all: it is only sensory perception, and any animal is capable of that. Rather, the hope Paul speaks of is an unseen certainty. It is not seen, but it is certain. Our God is not seen, but His word is certain and sure, the only foundation of solid rock. Our God's promise that He will redeem our bodies and present us in grand celebration as His adopted sons is an unseen certainty: no doubt about it.

So, how should we then live in a world of pain and suffering? Paul boils it all down for us in the last phrase of this passage: "with perseverance we wait eagerly for it." We are called by God to a life of waiting. It is not to be whiny waiting, or sighing waiting, or gloomy waiting, or frustrated waiting, but eager waiting. And eager waiting reveals itself in our lives through perseverance. We take this journey eagerly because our destination is more glorious than any of us can ever imagine. As the spiritual says: This train is bound for glory, this train ... and we are on it!!

Conclusion: Waiting Eagerly ... With Perseverance

Let me conclude with a final story about a man in this century who is an icon of eager waiting and a paragon of perseverance. Winston Churchill failed sixth grade. He suffered numerous political setbacks and defeats through sixty years. He was given to fits of depression where he described his illness as that "black dog" that often dogged his steps. After most men would have retired into the shadows of regret, Churchill at age 60 and 61 was growling about the boldness of Hitler when most Englishmen were practicing appeasement. Finally, after a lifetime of eagerly waiting for his day to dawn, Churchill became Prime Minister at age 62, in England's darkest hour. During the years of the war, Winston Churchill became perhaps England's greatest native son.

What I love about Churchill was his brilliant skill with words, both as a writer and an orator. His radio broadcasts were brilliant. My favorite speech he delivered at his alma mater. When it came his turn in the program, Churchill rose dramatically and growled ten words: "Never give up. Never give up. Never, never give up!"

Our God has far greater things in store for us than the fame and glory destiny reserved for Winston Churchill in the years of World War II. We are princes and princesses in the royal family of the High King of Heaven, and a coming out party is being prepared for us the likes of which the world cannot even imagine. Angels long to see it. Every part of creation, from the stars in heaven to the jewels in the earth, from the birds in the sky to the fish in the sea, from the towering mountains to the atoms in a grain of sand, every single particle, groans in hopeful anticipation of the glory to be revealed in us. We groan too, but our present sufferings are as nothing when weighed on the scales against the coming glory of God to be revealed in our eternal resurrection bodies. My children's eyes sparkle in eager waiting for their birthday trip to the Magic Kingdom. May our eyes sparkle in keen anticipation of the unseen certainty of our coming day of glory: the day when we are revealed as royal sons and daughters in our Father's Eternal Kingdom!

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