Romans 8:14-17, Heirs with Christ

¹⁴ For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God [sons get the inheritance]. ¹⁵ For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!” [When we address God by the same name Jesus used, it shows evidence that the Spirit who animated Jesus has taken up residence in us.] ¹⁶ The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, [this is the NT doctrine of the of the inward witness of the Holy Spirit] ¹⁷ and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ [fellow heirs because the glory which we are to receive by grace is the glory which is his by right], provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him. [Suffering is the prelude to glory. The afflictions that wear down the “outer” man are used by the Spirit to renew the “inner” man, until we are completely formed in the image of Christ. It is not merely that the glory compensates for the suffering, but that the glory, which Paul will expound upon, actually grows out of the suffering. The vocational pathway for those who pray the “Abba-Prayer,” is the same as it was for Jesus. Paul assumes that all Christians will suffer. See Matthew 26:39ff.]

This is Wright’s translation of these verses:

¹⁴ All who are led by the spirit of God, you see, are God’s children. ¹⁵ You didn’t receive a spirit of slavery, did you, to go back again into a state of fear? But you received the spirit of sonship, in whom we call out “Abba, father!” ¹⁶ When that happens, it is the spirit itself giving supporting witness to what our own spirit is saying, that we are God’s children. ¹⁷ And if we’re children, we are also heirs: heirs of God, and fellow heirs with the Messiah, as long as we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him.]

Our present vocation as God’s children and heirs is to be the people in whom God’s spirit, bearing witness with our own spirit, prays the prayer that Jesus prayed in Gethsemane. If we are children, we are heirs. And that is why we are “debtors,” not in the sense of owing God a grudging or uncomfortable obedience, but in the sense of discovering our vocation to be God’s agents, his prayerful stewards, in the present task, within the groaning of the old creation, of witnessing to the promise of the new.

Jesus is the true son of the true God—and all Jesus’ people share that sonship. Jesus’ people are God’s adopted royal family. The sons are what they are, not simply so that they can feel good about their relationship with the father, but in order to carry out the father’s project. To rule wisely over God’s empire, which is the whole world—the inheritance he promised to Abraham. Part of what it means to be glorified is to be set in authority over God’s world.

Humans were designed and created and called to reflect the praises of creation back to God, and to reflect God’s wise rule into the world. This happens through God’s spirit dwelling in us. The indwelling divine spirit provides the assurance that we—the Messiah’s people—are indeed God’s children. The “we” is the whole messianic people, extended not just to Jews but also, in line with the original Abrahamic promise, to believing gentiles. Why are the gentiles included? Because the inheritance God gives us is no longer one strip of territory in the Middle East. The whole world is now God’s holy land—all people, all nations, Jew and Gentile working and living hand in hand. What God does in and for Israel is what God is going to do through Israel, specifically through Israel’s anointed king and his spirit-filled followers, for the whole world. The glory of worldwide rule, however, is through the hard pilgrim road of suffering. The road to life is the road of mortification, of the active putting to death of things that the body would otherwise want to do.

God calls us to be fully human in a way most of us have scarcely begun to imagine. We ourselves are to be places where heaven and earth come together, which means that, as we pray for God’s rule to become a reality “on earth as it is in heaven,” we must daily seek to live out that reality in our own recalcitrant bodies, which is why Paul writes, “If by the spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live!” (v. 13) Holiness means drawing down from God’s promised future, the life we are to live in the present. The spirit brings that ultimate future into present reality for the benefit of us and the world.