Romans 8:18-30. August 11th 2024.
The question I want to begin with this morning is: What is the mark of the children of God?
On most of your TVs there is a Christian channel called Family 7, and in there is a pastor who comes on very regularly, won’t mention his name because he hasn’t paid me to market him; and a big part of his teaching can be represented in this quote from his most famous book.
This is the mark that you are a child of God:
“If you are a businessman, God wants you to have a prosperous business. If you are a homemaker, you are anointed to bring up wonderful children in the Lord. If you are a student, God wants you to excel in all your examinations.
Whatever your vocation is, you are destined to reign in life because Jesus is Lord of your life. When you reign in life, you reign over sin, you reign over the powers of darkness, and you reign over depression, over poverty, over every curse, and over every sickness and disease. You REIGN.”
You see what he is saying. What is the mark of the children of God?
It is that you are successful now, that you are rich, wealthy, and healthy now.
What do you think? What is the mark of the children of God?
There is also a popular view, and maybe some of you hold it, that the mark of the children of God is a deep internal assurance. There is something inside you that just tells you. There is a feeling inside, an overwhelming experience of joy and peace inside.
What do you think? What is the mark of the Children of God?
Now as we have gone through Romans, you have probably picked up that this book, whatever else it’s about, it is about confidence. Confidence in Paul’s gospel, confidence in who we are because we’ve believed in Paul’s gospel, and confidence in Paul’s mission to take that gospel to the ends of the earth.
And if Romans is a book about confidence, then Romans 8 is a chapter about confidence in a book about confidence. And Romans 8 is about the confidence we can have because we have the Spirit.
So Rom. 8:15
v.15 For you did not receive a Spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the spirit of sonship. And by him we cry, “Abba, Father.” 16 The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children.
17 Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory.
Now if this is a chapter about confidence, I wonder if you noticed the surprise at the end of v.17. I wonder what it does to your confidence.
Let me read it again:
Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory.
…if indeed we share in his sufferings…
Now that’s not a small print in the verse, it’s not a throw-away line, and it’s not Paul just transitioning into his next topic.
So what does Paul really mean?
What does confidence, and the Spirit and Sonship have to do with suffering?
And that’s the question that our reading today seeks to answer.
- The sign that creation is waiting for the sons of God is its groaning (v.18-22)
v.18 I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. 19 For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children 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 freedom and glory of the children of God.
Now there is a lot going on in these verses. The most common thing people have drawn out of them is how great and wonderful our hope must be.
Not only do our present sufferings vanish into insignificance compared to it, but the whole creation is longing for it. The creation waits in eager expectation for the moment we will enter into our inheritance as children of God in glory.
And whatever else that means, it must mean that our inheritance is going to be spectacular. The whole creation is just waiting for it.
Our final song today will be about the mountains and the hills and the trees of the field clapping their hands in ecstatic joy because the moment has arrived.
You see, for most of us, when we hear of the final day of judgment, we are filled with fear.
Well, it turns out that creation is waiting eagerly for it. Because judgment day is revelation day for the children of God.
Of course, we are already children of God, but there is a day when we will be fully children of God. When sin and death will be destroyed; and we will reign with Christ in glory forevermore.
And that revelation day for the children of God is liberation day for creation. Liberation from decay and brokenness, and climate change and anything you might think of that spoils this creation.
Creation is eagerly waiting!
But the main point is not just that creation is eagerly waiting, it is how it is waiting:
v.22 We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.
What is the sign that creation is waiting for the children of God to be revealed? It is groaning! Groaning just like the pains of childbirth
I have only limited experience of childbirth. But when you see that a woman is in labour, the fact that there are labour pains, the fact that there are contractions and the contractions are increasing in frequency and in severity,
the fact the pain is getting more and more,
that is itself the evidence that the baby is on the way.
Imagine that as my wife was undergoing labour, I saw just how much pain she was in, and thought to myself: “oh goodness, this is just too awful; it’s obvious that nothing good can come from this. There is so much pain, so much despair and panic; I think I’m just going to go home and wait for the situation to resolve itself.”
It would be insane, won’t it? because the point is that the very intensity of the pain, the increasing frequency of the contractions is the sign that the future is on the way.
And Paul wants to say that the groaning of creation is just like that.
Which is quite a thought, isn’t it? The more distressing and depressing our world seems to be, the more pain and suffering there is, the more our climate raises concern, those are the signs that something better is on the way.
The sign that creation is waiting for the revelation of the sons of God is its groaning.
But what does that have to do with our question, which is, what does our Spirit-inspired confidence, our sonship have to do with suffering?
- The sign of the sons of God in waiting is their groaning (v.23-25)
v.23 Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies. 24 For in this hope we were saved….
It is not difficult to see that this is what Paul wanted to say as he picks up on the categories and vocabulary he already established in the previous paragraph to make his point.
Creation waits eagerly, we wait eagerly
Creation was waiting for the sons of god to be revealed, we are waiting for adoption to sonship
Creation wanted to see the freedom of the children of God, we are waiting for the redemption of our bodies.
Creation groans, we groan inwardly
Creation hopes, we hope.
Everything he said in the previous paragraph now finds its target. The sons of God in waiting are just like creation.
And if the sign that creation is waiting is its groaning, the sign of the sons of God in waiting is the same: groaning.
And groaning is not merely suffering. Everybody suffers.
The pain in childbirth is probably similar to some other pain, though the mothers here might of course not agree.
The crying in the maternity ward can easily be similar to the crying in an oncology ward.
And so it’s not just suffering that is the sign that we are the children of God in waiting. It is that we groan.
And groaning is Paul’s way of describing suffering with hope.
The Christian desire for the day when Jesus will return, when this rubbish, decaying, broken, old world will be made new, and these decaying, broken, old bodies will be transformed.
The sign that we are the sons of God is not that we are successful, and wealthy and healthy now; it is that though we still suffer, we suffer with hope. We groan.
Which makes sense if you think of THE Son of God. Our older brother, the Lord Jesus.
V.15 tells us that by the Spirit of sonship which we have received, we cry Abba Father. But where in the Bible does Jesus, our older brother, cry Abba Father? Only once in Mark 14.
And Jesus is not at this moment marching in victory and success and wealth; neither does he have a deep internal assurance, an overwhelming feeling of the love of God deep in his heart.
No, he is on his knees, he is sweating great drops of blood, and is feeling alone and deserted even by God himself.
You see Jesus cries Abba Father as he contemplates the horror of the suffering before him and he groans with the hope that beyond it there is a resurrection.
Heb. 12:2 For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.
The sign of the sons of God in waiting is their groaning.
Now I said Romans 8 is about confidence, but maybe you don’t feel very confident after everything I said.
Maybe you are wondering, am I groaning enough? Am I even suffering enough?
What if we are not groaning enough? what if we have stopped groaning?
- But the Spirit is groaning on our behalf (v.26-27)
26 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.
Now, in light of what we have said, the word weakness here must mean falling short. When we fail, when don’t measure up
Which is consistent with how Paul has used that word previously
So Rom. 5:6, when we were still weak, Christ died for the ungodly.
Clearly “weak” here means sinners, when we didn’t measure up, when we were still failures
The Spirit helps us in our weakness: when we fail, when don’t groan as we should.
But how?
The Spirit himself intercedes FOR US with groans that words cannot express.
In other words, because we are failures at groaning, our prayers are not always what they should be.
We are weak people. We get distracted: by savings in the bank, by a good job, by a good healthcare system, by living in a relatively safe country, by a nice summer holiday by the sea.
And we forget about our brokenness, and the brokenness of the world around us, and we stop to groan, we stop to long for heaven.
And the absolutely mind-blowing thing is, that the Spirit, when we don’t groan, when we don’t groan enough, he just doesn’t wake us up like Jesus kept waking his disciples who were asleep while he was groaning. No doubt the Spirit also does that—quickening our spirits and strengthening us to go on, but even much more, when we are weak, the Spirit, he groans on our behalf.
It’s an incredible thought.
John Murray, a Scottish theologian says that the children of God have two divine intercessors, Christ in the court of heaven, and the Holy Spirit in the theatre of their own hearts.
It’s an astonishingly wonderful truth.
And yet it only gets better
v. 27 And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for God’s people in accordance with the will of God.
“he who searches our hearts,” who is that? It’s not the Spirit because it says he knows the mind of the Spirit. So who is he?
I googled ‘he who searches the heart” and guess what came up:
Jer. 17:10 I the Lord search the heart
and examine the mind,
to reward each person according to their conduct,
according to what their deeds deserve.
He who searches heart is God as judge—rewarding each person according to what they have done.
So imagine with me for a moment. Imagine he who searches our hearts, comes with his spotlight and searches your heart so that he can reward you according to what he finds. I wonder what you think how that willl go? What will he find in your heart?
This is what I think. He will find a bit of the love of God and love for neighbor, he will find a bit of groaning and bit of longing for the new creation, but for the most part, and maybe even now as I speak, what he will find is that the love has grown cold. That the groaning has stopped. You’re distracted, you are tired, you are asleep.
It would be a disaster! Another Gethsemane disaster.
And yet the good news of v.27 is that when he who searches our hearts shines a spotlight on your heart to see what’s there, what he finds is the spirit groaning on your behalf. Doing what you should be doing, but you are weak.
It’s a crazy thought. It’s an absolutely wonderful truth. Just very encouraging!
Which therefore means
- We can be confident of our inheritance as sons of God (v.28-30)
28 And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. 29 For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters.
Now these are wonderful verses which I’m sure many of you like, and the important thing I want us to see is that they flow directly from the last paragraph.
If the Spirit helps us in our weakness, then there is really no reason to doubt that God will make us heirs, co-heirs with Christ, the glorified sons of God.
v.28 AND WE KNOW!
…that in ALL THINGS God works for the good of those who love him,
What is the good of those who love him?
v.29 to be conformed to the image of his son.
And what is the image of his son in Rom. 8: glorified, reigning forevermore!
And that is undoubtedly our fate if we trust in Christ
v.30, Those predestined are called; those called are justified; those justified are glorified. No one falls off along the way!
If you belong to Jesus, you can be confident you will get home. You will be glorified with Jesus.
What is the mark of the sons of God? It is not that there will be no suffering. It is that we suffer in hope. And when we are weak, when we fail, the Spirit suffers in hope for us.
And so we can be in no doubt, the glory is ours. We are the sons of God in waiting.
How extravagantly wonderful