Romans
12
We’re now reached Romans 8:11 which brings glorious news: “If the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit, who lives in you.” One day God will raise our mortal bodies from the dead. I believe in the redemption of the body. One day the graves of Christians will be opened. Our brand new bodies will rise. The self-same Spirit who has quickened our own souls and who dwells within us, shall also in glorious resurrection, clothe these bodies in the robes of immortality and incorruptibility. He, who first breathed life into Adam’s clay, shall impart immortal life to our resurrected clay. What a day of rejoicing that will be!
Moffatt’s translation puts Romans 8:12-13 like this: “Well then, my brothers, we owe a duty – but it is not to the flesh! It is not to live by the flesh! If you live by the flesh, you are on the road to death; but if by the Spirit you put the actions of the body to death, you will live.”
Here’s the marvellous truth: the sons of God are led by the Spirit of God. The believers have received the Spirit of sonship or adoption which causes us to cry out, “Abba, Father.” We’re God’s children, heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ.
James Moffatt continues in Romans 8:18-19: “Present suffering, I hold, is a mere nothing compared to the glory that we are to have revealed. Even the creation waits with eager longing for the sons of God to be revealed.”
The glory to be revealed in us is the glory of likeness to Christ. “We are being transformed into His likeness with ever-increasing glory which comes from the Lord’ (2 Corinthians 3:18). “We know that when He appears, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is” (1 John 3:2).
There’s a lot of groaning going on in this fallen world. Romans 8:22 says, “We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.” One day the whole of creation will be emancipated and will share in our glory. The entire created universe is suffering because of man’s first disobedience. The groans of the universe will cease and the glory of the new heaven and new earth will burst forth in all the splendour of the divine handiwork. Corruption and decay, futility and frustration will be forever banished. Paradise lost will be paradise regained. One day creation itself will be delivered from suffering, pain and bondage.
Creation is personified as a woman in labour waiting for the birth of her child. Eugene Peterson in the Message Bible paraphrases this section of Romans 8 wonderfully. He writes, “All around us we observe a pregnant creation. The difficult times of pain throughout the world are simply birth pangs. But it’s not only around us; it’s within us. The Spirit of God is arousing us within. We’re also feeling the birth pangs. These sterile and barren bodies of ours are yearning for full deliverance. That is why waiting does not diminish us, any more than waiting diminishes a pregnant mother. We are enlarged in the waiting. We, of course, don’t see what is enlarging us. But the longer we wait, the larger we become, and the more joyful our expectancy.
We, believers, have been groaning. We have the first fruits of the Spirit (a foretaste of the glory to come) but we want so much more!” “We groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies” (Romans 8:23). We long to have immortal bodies. We don’t desire to be ghosts or angels. Our desire is to have bodies that will perfectly serve the goals of our minds and hearts. We have our new spirit. Now we want our new body! The full manifestation of what it means to be a son of God will not come until the end of the age.
In Christ, for the redeemed man, the sovereignty that Adam lost is fully restored to the children of God. All the rights and privileges of sonship are at our disposal by His grace. One day, Christian, you shall be raised a spiritual body like Christ’s resurrection body – raised imperishable, raised in glory and raised in power.
Paul writes of the same truth in 2 Corinthians 5:1-2 “Now we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands. Meanwhile we groan, longing to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling”. He goes on in verse 4 “For while we are in this tent, we groan and are burdened, because we do not wish to be unclothed but to the clothed with our heavenly dwelling, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life.”
Man’s perennial helplessness to achieve the kind of world he dreams about is a continual frustration. The human race longs to be delivered. We long to be liberated from bondage to decay and corruption. The whole universe languishes, painfully waiting for the day when the sons of God shall be revealed. The whole creation is waiting for the removal of the curse. For the earth to be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. “In keeping with His promise we are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, the home of righteousness” (2 Peter 3:13). We ourselves long to be ‘across the bridge ---- in that land where we’ll never grow old.” One day the Lord Jesus Christ will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like His glorious body” (Philippians 3:21).
In Romans 8:26 the Spirit groans. We don’t know what we ought to pray for so often, but the Holy Spirit helps us in our weakness. The Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express. There were times when Jesus, during His life on earth, offered up prayers with loud cries. When He healed the deaf and mute man in Mark 7 we read, “He looked up to heaven and with a deep sigh said to Him, “Ephphatha”” (“Be opened”). In John 11:33 when He saw people weeping outside Lazarus’s tomb, the word says ‘He was deeply moved in spirit and troubled.’
The whole of creation has been groaning to be set free, believers have been groaning for our bodies to be redeemed, the Spirit has been groaning. One day hope will become reality and groans will change to shouts of praise.
There is built in to the very cosmos a frustration in which the whole created universe joins, including the children of God. It will be resolved at Christ’s return when the sons of God are revealed to the world.