XI The Gospel and Indebtedness
B Spiritual Deliverance
Text: 8:18-27
Introduction
The theme of adoption is not abandoned in these verses, but continued from the previous section and enlarged. Now we are specifically told that our adoption will be completed in the resurrection of our bodies, but also that the whole creation will share in that adoption liberty. The Apostle introduces another analogy here alongside of adoption, namely, child-birth. The old is giving birth to the new through the redeeming work of Jesus Christ. James Gilchrist Lawson once reminded us that, “There is a habit in this machine age of thinking that we have explained everything when we have stated its origin…Long ago Aristotle pointed out that for the full explanation of anything you must look not only at its origin, but also at its goal.” The science of our day pretends to know what man is about, but all of our speculations are built on the foundation of thinking that we know man’s origin. Because evolutionary thinking dominates, we conclude from our origin that we have no future but the one we make. This leads scientists to false conclusions, and philosophers to despair. But here in this text we see the future. It is redolent for hope for a lost world and a lost race if only we will acknowledge that Jesus Christ is the way, the truth, and the life. Once our church did an evangelistic telephone survey in our community and one of the questions we asked, with permission, was, “Do you know where you will spend eternity?” One person answered with definite conviction, “Yes, Lansdale Catholic Cemetery.” Compare that future with what Paul spreads before us here. In this passage we see everything that is coming and fills us with hope as Paul says in verse 18, I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. This goal is not achieved apart from suffering and here the Apostle calls that suffering, “groaning.” We see the cosmos or creation groaning, the church groaning and the Comforter groaning.
I The Groan of the Cosmos
The groan of the cosmos is found in verses 19-22, The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. We may mark that the whole of creation is groaning. Nothing is excepted. Everything in creation has been cursed because of Adam’s sin. I will have to go out on a limb and say that I do not believe there was any death in paradise. Radical changes were introduced into creation when God’s threat regarding the man’s sin was enacted. God had promised that if he was disobeyed the man and his mate would surely die, and they did and all creation was affected. In Isaiah 11:6 we read, The wolf will live with the lamb, the leopard will lie down with the goat, the calf and the lion and the yearling together; and a little child will lead them. Isaiah 65:25 says, The wolf and the lamb will feed together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox, but dust will be the serpent’s food. They will neither harm nor destroy on all my holy mountain,” says the Lord. These predictions of the new heavens and new earth are reminiscent of paradise where Adam named all the animals. They certainly suggest that predatory death which reigns now in the animal kingdom will disappear, and that it is a result of the fall of man into sin. The pristine and perfect creation of God has been cursed by our sin; it groans together as the Greek says, and it will not be delivered or brought to birth until we are fully delivered from sin. The German philosopher, Friedrich Wilhelm Schelling, though by no means Christian in his general approach, nevertheless wrote perceptively, “Nature, with its melancholy charm, resembles a bride who, at the very moment when she was fully attired for marriage, saw the bridegroom die. She still stands with her fresh crown and in her bridal dress, but her eyes are full of tears” The whole creation groans as in the pains of childbirth. It is, however, as Calvin remarks, the pains of birth and not of death. After sorrow comes the joy of a new existence. All of the death and disorder that now characterizes creation will disappear, and as the closing chapters of our Bibles, Revelation 21 and 22 suggest, Paradise will be restored as the new heavens and the new earth.
II The Groan of the Church
We see ourselves, the Church groaning in verses 23-25, Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the first-fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what he already has? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently. Although we are part of creation, our groaning is mentioned separately because we are different from the rest of creation. We are transcendent in our relationship to all else that God has made because we are made in God’s image and were originally placed over the rest of creation. We are, in a sense, the crown of creation as we red in Psalm 8:4-8, What is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him? You made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor. You made him ruler over the works of your hands; you put everything under his feet: all flocks and herds, and the beasts of the field, the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea, all that swim the paths of the seas. In addition to our uniqueness we have already entered into the renewal of all things through the Holy Spirit. There is a sense in which believers are now the sons of God and share in the adoption. But the full enjoyment of their blessedness as the children of God, the time when they will be recognized as sons and enter into their inheritance, is still in the future. Here Christians are like minor children; their introduction into the state of sons in the sense of adult sons entitled to their inheritance is their adoption, for which they now wait with patient but earnest desire. In Ephesians 1:13 and 14 Paul reminds us, Having believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession—to the praise of his glory. In this way we express our firm hope that the total renewal will come, and we groan because we are anxious for it to come as a mother is anxious for her baby to be born.
III The Groan of the Comforter
We are not alone in this groaning because in addition to joining all creation in this anticipation, we are joined by the Holy Spirit in verses 26 and 27, In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express. And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints in accordance with God’s will. Even in our weakest and most discouraging moments the fire of this hope is kept alive by the Spirit within us who also groans for our deliverance in resurrection glory. Just as Jesus intercedes in heaven above, so the Spirit intercedes from within us. The word translated help in verses 26 means to grasp or lay hold of something with somebody. In this context the implication of this word is especially expressive and appropriate. It represents the Spirit graciously taking on himself, as it were, a part of our sorrows to relieve us of their pressure. The Greek word for our weakness expresses the idea both of suffering and of weakness. Thus we read of Christ in Hebrews 4:15, For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses. The Son of God and the Spirit of God are both sympathizing with our struggles and helping us. What is especially precious about this is the description of the Spirit’s intercession as being with “groans that words cannot express.” There is a level of emotional fervor that lays beyond the ability of words. Groans are often mentioned in the Bible especially in the book of Psalms. The children of Israel groaned in captivity in Egypt and frequently throughout their history and we read in Psalm 102, The Lord looked down from his sanctuary on high, from heaven he viewed the earth, to hear the groans of the prisoners and release those condemned to death. People are sometimes struck silent in fear, or longing, or awe. This is telling us that the Holy Spirit has that level of passionate desire for our deliverance and His groans are perfectly understood.
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