Romans 8:18-21, Future Glory Part IV

²² For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth [the curse of Eve] until now. ²³ And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly [2 Corinthians 5:2, “for in this tent we groan, longing to put on our heavenly dwelling”] as we wait eagerly for [the full or completed] adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. ²⁴ For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? ²⁵ But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience. [See 2 Corinthians 4:18—as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen.]

²⁶ Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us [our Advocate according to Jesus in John 14] with groanings too deep for words. ²⁷ And he who searches hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.

This is Wright’s translation of 8:22-27:

²² Let me explain. We know that the entire creation is groaning together, and going through labor pains together, up until the present time. ²³ Not only so: we too, we who have the first fruits of the Spirit’s life within us, are groaning within ourselves, as we eagerly await our adoption, the redemption of our body. ²⁴ We were saved, you see, in hope. But hope isn’t hope if you can see it! Who hopes for what they can see? ²⁵ But if we hope for what we don’t see, we wait for it eagerly—but also patiently. ²⁶ In the same way, too, the Spirit comes alongside and helps us in our weakness. We don’t know what to pray for as we ought to; but that same Spirit pleads on our behalf, with groanings too deep for words. ²⁷ And the Searcher of Hearts know what the Spirit is thinking, because the Spirit pleads for God’s people according to God’s will.

We now, according to Wright, come to one of the strangest and perhaps darkest moments in the chapter. But remember that Paul insists that we get to the glory by passing through the valley of suffering. The suffering here is personal and intimate. Paul isn’t talking about just getting through difficult times. We need to stand in prayer where the world is in pain so that God’s own Spirit may be present and intercede in the then and now. This is one of the most revolutionary and innovative moments in the whole letter. Paul fills out his Trinitarian theology of new creation and his pastoral understanding of the depths of the Christian heart, and joins them together. The Spirit comes to dwell in the midst of the world in the persons of Jesus’ faithful followers; but the world is in great pain. The Spirit inhabits that pain, and calls out to the Father from his darkest depths, by means of God’s people being in prayer, Spirit-inspired prayer.

God’s plan is not to rescue humans from creation, to go and be with him somewhere else, but to come in person to dwell with his image-bearing creatures, so that together he and they may bring his rescuing, ordering wisdom to bear upon the world—“on earth as it is in heaven!” God himself comes into his world, into the hearts and lives of puzzled and frightened believers who don’t know what to pray for as they ought, so that precisely in their prayer of unknowing, their prayer from within the darkness of their own lives and of the world around them, God himself will be at work, interceding from within his creation.

Like Jesus in Gethsemane, where he prayed the Abba-prayer that Paul invokes in verse 15, God’s suffering people ask in perplexity whether there might not be another way. Like Jesus on the cross, God’s people feel as though they have been forsaken entirely. Paul seems to be radically applying the theology of the cross to the work of the Spirit in the Church. This passage is a kind of Spirit-equivalent to Jesus’ terrible cry, “My God, my God, why did you abandon me?”

How can we believe in an all-powerful and all-loving God in the face of the terrible evil and suffering in the world, especially in the horrors of the flooding of the Guadalupe River in Hunt? Faced with the same phenomena in his day, Paul works it out. Start with the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God who grieves over the pain of the world and the failings of his own people, the God who in the end reveals himself in and as the crucified Messiah, the God who then sends the Spirit into the hearts of his people so that God himself may, in and through his people, stand at the heart of the pain of the world so that the world may be healed—then the whole question looks different.

Wright suggests that these verses contextualize the present work of lament which anticipates the future promised work of the redemption of all creation. Paul, by echoing Israel’s lament, places the Church in the present time in a similar position. Romans 8:22-27 goes from one extreme to the other: from the broad sweep of the whole created order in verse 22 to the most intimate and painful longings of the human heart in verses 26 and 27. Even God the Holy Spirit has no words for what is going on, no words at least that we can understand.

We are to stand in prayer at the heart of a world in pain. This vocation will come for us whether we’re ready or not. This passage is all about being co-glorified with the Messiah—which sounds wonderful, until we recall that, for Jesus, glorification meant being betrayed, denied, vilified, whipped raw and hung up to die. Standing at the place of pain isn’t just something nasty to get through; it is a vital part of the means by which God is working out, in the present time, his glorious rescuing purposes for his world. Learning to lament is a non-negotiable part of becoming the people through whom God is accomplishing his saving plan for the whole creation.

As we look back at the Old Testament, we see that God created the category of Messiahship, of the anointed king, so that he may himself come and be the anointed king of Israel, doing in person the work of judgment and mercy for which the ideal king would be equipped. Just as we can look back at the formation of that messianic portrait as a role designed for God’s own use, so the call to be people of lament at the place where the world is in pain is itself a vocation designed for God’s own use, in the person of his Spirit, dwelling and groaning in the hearts of God’s people. As the people of the crucified Messiah, we are called—in the Messiah’s Spirit—to share the pain of the world.

When Jesus breathed his Spirit on his followers, he said, “As the Father sent me, so I send you.” And where had the Father sent him? To the place where the world was in direst pain, so that he could take it upon himself. Our vocation, by the Spirit, places us, right now, where the world is in pain.

Faced with the world in chaos, and the church in a muddle, God doesn’t just stand to one side and say, “I wish you people could get your act together!” The mystery of Trinitarian theology is the mystery of prayer, that God the Spirit comes to that place of pain so that our griefs, sorrows, and loves are taken up into the grief, sorrow and love of God. That is what it means, in verse 17, to suffer with the Messiah so that we may be glorified with him.