Why does creation eagerly wait?

For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that will be revealed in us. The earnest expectation of the creation eagerly waits for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation itself was subjected to futility; not willingly, but because of him who subjected it in hope. For the creation itself also will be delivered from its bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groans and labors with birth pangs together until now.

I love this so much. Why does Paul bring in the creation? I sort of have the idea, I think from CS Lewis, that we don't tend to be told stuff that's not our business. Why is the futility and liberty of creation our business? Or probably a better question, what place does it have in the gospel?

Paul brings it up to show us why the sufferings of this present time are not that big of a deal. As written about before, he doesn't explain the sufferings or specifically make them redemptive (well, maybe he does, but not overtly..more about that later); instead he says, they're "not worthy to be compared with the glory which will be revealed in us" So the glory is used to put the suffering in its proper perspective, but the word "revealed" says that we aren't the objects of that glory; I mean, that the glory isn't solely for our contemplation. Instead, the audience to that glory is the rest of creation. I mean, Paul could have said, suffering now pales in comparison to the glory we'll experience later, in which we will be redeemed from all futility. That would have been enough. That would have been our gospel.

But he brings in the creation, and the strange, strange metaphor (or description) of the whole creation eagerly waiting around us, holding its breath in anticipation of our flesh being stripped away and the glory of God shining out of us. The richness and abundance of God's mercy is shown, in that God will let nothing continue in bondage to decay; he will glorify and redeem everything. Our suffering is not that important because creation is terribly important, and God in his mercy and love has chosen us not merely to be redeemed but to be his instruments of redemption.

I don't know how this works, and I fear I'm getting carried away. Are there other explanations for the fact that "the earnest expectation of the creation eagerly waits for the revealing of the sons of God"? There's one... if the creation can't be redeemed until humanity is, then of course it will "eagerly wait" for it. It doesn't necessarily mean that humanity's redemption itself frees creation from its bondage to corruption, it could just mean that the freedom of both hinges on the same event. I think that this view leads most naturally to Pastor Min's explanation of the following verse...he says that God laid the Curse as a mercy and not as a punishment. That is, he screwed up his own creation after we sinned, in order that through hardship and tragedy and such we would need to seek and call out to Him, and so could be saved. Hence, "the creation was subjected to futility by Him who subjected it in hope". I agree with this, and can't think of another explanation for that verse. So it would make sense that once humanity is redeemed, creation can go back to being non-screwed up. That's why it's waiting for us to be redeemed, and also sort of explains the "birth pangs" metaphor-- its decay and degradation are painful but productive, in that they help to bring forth new life.

There's some parts that this view doesn't explain (why use that phrase "revealed in us"? Why does it say that the creation, upon being freed, will be brought into "the glorious liberty of the children of God"?) I'm still inclined to think that the truth has some of both ideas in it... sort of like how the Fall was caused by humanity's action, even though we didn't physically go out and plant all the thorns, the redemption of creation will also somehow come "through" humanity.

Anyhow, more later.

Not worthy to be compared

For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that will be revealed in us. The earnest expectation of the creation eagerly waits for the revealing of the sons of God

I just spent like three posts on suffering, but Paul here only spends half a sentence on it before he dismisses it as not that important. This is so fascinating! I think it was Andrew in a comment was talking about how Paul is guiding his readers sort of step-by-step through the process of salvation from beginning to end, and each step gently prepares his readers for the next one. And it is gentle... he spends a lot of time elaborately establishing why we can't live according to the flesh, what the alternative, the exact role of the Holy Spirit in relation to the Father in relation to Jesus in relation to us, how exactly flesh and spirit will both be redeemed and the nature of the new life that they are redeemed into. You'd think that would have to be the last step, but no! it gets even better, better than that! to such an extent that human suffering, which most likely to his readers is one of the more important facts of their present lives, gets only an oblique mention (here, at least) as a means on the way to it.

The reason, of course, is that his sufferings are not worthy to be compared with, and I love this phrase, "the glory which will be revealed in us." A couple things here... it's not our glory and it doesn't originate with us, but it's not the glory we will experience externally, either. It will be revealed, to the creation, in us. From being the means by which creation is cursed, we will become the vessels for the glory which will be revealed to it.

This is too exciting a topic to finish off at the end of a post!

What do we do while we're waiting to suffer?

To those who have seen
The Child, however dimly, however incredulously,
The Time Being is, in a sense, the most trying time of all.
For the innocent children who whispered so excitedly
Outside the locked door where they knew the presents to be
Grew up when it opened. Now, recollecting that moment
We can repress the joy, but the guilt remains conscious;
Remembering the stable where for once in our lives
Everything became a You and nothing was an It.
And craving the sensation but ignoring the cause,
We look round for something, no matter what, to inhibit
Our self-reflection, and the obvious thing for that purpose
Would be some great suffering. So, once we have met the Son,
We are tempted ever after to pray to the Father;
"Lead us into temptation and evil for our sake."
They will come, all right, don't worry; probably in a form
That we do not expect, and certainly with a force
More dreadful than we can imagine. In the meantime
There are bills to be paid, machines to keep in repair,
Irregular verbs to learn, the Time Being to redeem
From insignificance. The happy morning is over,
The night of agony still to come; the time is noon:
When the Spirit must practice his scales of rejoicing
Without even a hostile audience, and the Soul endure
A silence that is neither for nor against her faith
That God's Will will be done, That, in spite of her prayers,
God will cheat no one, not even the world of its triumph.

WH Auden, end of the Christmas Oratorio


Not like WH Auden has any right to be my spiritual authority, but I like this poem a lot and thought I might take a digression and figure out if its view is biblical. According to this, as I understand, we see Jesus by glimpses and briefly experience his order of things, where he and no longer we are the center and everything takes on significance in relation to Him. But we go back to our lives and the mundane world comes with us, and in day-to-day life everything loses its significance, including ourselves, and our joy at seeing Jesus becomes guilt that we weren't able to sustain that life we were invited into and that the promised joy was not really able to redeem our lives. Hence, the reason to seek suffering to inhibit our self-reflection. But this comes from "craving the sensation but ignoring the Cause." But in bringing people who are His into boring and non-significant everyday life, to praise Him and trust Him in its small productive activities, he 'redeems from insignificance' broken machines and irregular verbs themselves. Hence, God does not even cheat the World of its triumph.

I think the reason I like this so much is that if we're trying to follow Jesus we think about life at the extremes a lot. Our theology tells us how to live for Jesus if, say, someone offers to kill us if we don't deny Him, but not terribly much about how to live for him while doing statistics homework. A logical implication to this is, stop spending so much time doing statistics homework and start to get into situations where people offer to kill you. I'm thinking about when I first read Bonhoeffer's chapter "The Call to Discipleship" about how every disciple of Jesus needs to radically leave behind all their safety and livelihood so he can be the only thing that they follow or trust in. My instinct said, 1. Is that Biblical? 2. If everyone left their nets, who would catch fish to feed people? and 3. We only can leave behind our lives and follow Jesus when he calls us, and he doesn't actually call us right away or all the time. What do we do while we're waiting to suffer?

And so I guess I'm back to where I was at the end of the last post, but now I know WH Auden agrees with me :) We bring Jesus into our pointless sufferings now, our 'spirit practices his scales of rejoicing'. The greater sufferings will come, but in Jesus, not only the great sufferings will be redeemed and glorified and merged with his (because not even our greatest sufferings ever could possibly compare or even have anything to do with his; really, compared with his suffering, could even martyrdom be more redemptive than a stubbed toe, apart from his mercy which declares that it shall be?) but the little sufferings of the boring day-to-day world, because they are part of our redemption, will also be redeemed. As the poem says a bit later,

"He is the Life
Love Him in the World of the Flesh
And at your marriage, all its occasions will dance for joy"

Suffering with Jesus

The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs; heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with him, that we may also be glorified together. For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which will be revealed in us.

What does it mean that we are joint heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with him? I had this conversation with a few people over the past couple days. What is the function of that suffering? Is it something we seek out, in order that we can be like Christ and become closer to him? If we live pretty easy lives without a lot of suffering, in which self-denial also doesn't play that big a part, does this mean that we won't be glorified with him and aren't joint heirs? And what does it mean to "suffer with Christ"? Is it to undergo the same sort of suffering he went through (ie, being despised and rejected while loving the world) for his sake? If we want to be glorified with him, is this passage a mandate to seek out that kind of suffering? Or, is it bringing him into the fairly pointless sufferings that we have already? If I stub my toe but praise Jesus anyhow and ask him to help me bear the pain, am I suffering with Jesus?

I feel like both are true. One thing that I'm pretty sure of (mostly because Bonhoeffer says so, but I think it's warranted by the text) is that the suffering itself isn't of any intrinsic value. Paul says that "our current sufferings aren't worthy to be compared with the glory which will be revealed in us." I don't think he would have phrased it like this if it was; I think he would have said, "our present sufferings are actually very precious because they make us more like Jesus" or something like that. The phrasing indicates that they have value and weight but it's all on the negative side. Also, say Paul was talking about his own suffering. That was done all for the sake of Jesus and was undertaken willingly. But he didn't undertake or try to suffer, he undertook to follow Jesus' great commission and to bring Gentiles into the kingdom. Suffering happened along the way.

So, I think that the important thing here is Jesus. We are mandated to follow him, and this probably automatically means that we won't have terribly easy lives. (Does it? In America right now?) If we follow him, it means following him into suffering, and the more that we rely on him, the more that he is our only hope and all we have, the more we identify ourselves in him and can die to our old selves and be glorified with Jesus. My personal opinion, which I'm not sure is in the Bible anywhere, is trusting in and loving Jesus through our own pointless suffering is redemptive in that it is good practice in clinging to Jesus and following him into suffering for his sake.

Heirs of God.. another view

The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs; heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with him, that we may also be glorified together.

I was talking with a friend yesterday who has a completely different idea about what 'heirs of God' means, so I thought I should come back to it. In his view,"heirs of God" means, "heirs of the promise," as in, the covenant that God made with Abraham, that they would be his people and he would be their God. The fact that for an heir to come into his inheritance someone has to die is no issue here, because in fact we came into our inheritance (the possibility of eternal life and relationship with God)when Christ died on the cross.

I like this, but I like my first idea too, and I can't figure out which makes more sense. If Christ died, and so we came into our inheritance, how are we joint heirs with him? Because he rose again and in him we are raised, and so became the first born of many brothers. That actually makes a lot of sense. Such an interesting thing that God, wishing to adopt his creations as children, took the form of one of them to participate in their lives, so that they could, by following him, participate in his life. Something pleases me very much about the idea that he is both the ...uhhh...testator?... and the heir, and that he died so that the inheritance might be given, and raised to life so he might inherit it and that through identifying themselves with him, everyone else can inherit it! I love that in every way the story is hemmed in by love and goodness; nothing bad is accepted. The inheritance is given and received, death isn't permanent, the family is together and even more family is brought in.

This leads nicely to the "if indeed we suffer with him, that we might also be glorified together." I connect this completely to the idea of following Jesus. He died to bring us into our inheritance and was raised to life to show us how to receive it. Not sure how this makes sense with the rest of Romans 8, but I'll follow through on the idea. We want to be glorified together, to become joint heirs with him. There's a lot of stuff that has to go on, that we don't really know about, can't effect and can't understand. But that's all right because he knows and we just need to follow him. This following involves suffering, and we need to follow him into it-- ie, we need to be with him, even when to do so involves suffering.

This isn't, of course, the only way that that could be read. One thing that I don't understand very well... is it suffering that Jesus is undergoing or underwent (ie, semi-homeless, despised, rejected, death on the cross, heart breaks for the lost etc) that we should seek out and embrace and try to share, in order to be more like him? Do we seek out suffering for the sake of Jesus? Or is it our own suffering, that we will undergo regardless because of our own sin and a fallen world,that we need to invite him into. Ie, when I suffer, I will suffer with Jesus rather than without him.

Heirs of God

The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs-- heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with him that we may also be glorified together.

I keep coming back to this idea of, what does it mean that we are children of God? Paul goes into three parts of it. First, anyone who is led by the spirit of God is called a son of God (so strange to write that; it's easier to think of us being co-heirs with Jesus than to think of us sharing his title!) But, being led by the Spirit suggests a little bit both of obedience (compliance to external motivation) and maybe inward likeness (response to internal motivation). Second, we feel to God not fear, but trust and love, like a son for a father. Our relationship is defined now in terms of being as well as doing.

But this third part is strange. After having established that we are children of God and what that means, he brings in two legal forms-- there are two witnesses that know that we are children, and if we are children, we are heirs. What does it mean-- in the order of the universe, I guess, for what other law could he be appealing to?-- that we are children? Children inherit their fathers' property. If the father is God, what does this even mean? My understanding of "inherit" is that after a father dies, his property rightfully belongs to his children (or whomever his heirs are). I guess the implication is, someone to take care of the father's property, in whom the life of the father is somehow present. This makes more sense-- because why would you use the word "heir" in connection with God, who cannot die? And that is pretty incredible... the idea that as God's children we will be taking care of his property jointly with Jesus, the one who created and sustains everything (!)

One thing occurs to me now though. How is this different from the situation now? God gave his creation to people to take care of; people who were "made in his own image." It sounds like from the beginning, God intended everyone to be his children in the sense I've been talking about. But later on, especially in Jesus' parables, the role of people to creation is more of servants taking care of the master's property while he is away on a long trip but will come back. There's no question at all of ownership. Even in the parable of the talents, when he gives the servant ten more talents at the end, the servant's still a servant and the ten talents are still "given" to the servant as capital, the master's property and intended to make more money for the master. But the whole point of being an heir is to become an owner.

We, along with Jesus, will become the legitimate authority! As servants and stewards, we could protect and take care of. As heirs and owners, we can, perhaps, design and create and order. Perhaps it is this that the long, painful process of glorification is preparing us for... to become like Jesus, and to become good owners, to direct and design and order things well. That is why we need to become like God in wisdom, character and perfect goodness, so that we can create good things.

But then, joining in the suffering of Jesus is also necessary....

Spirit of Adoption

For you did not receive the spirit of bondage again to fear, but you received the spirit of adoption, by which we cry out "Abba, Father!" The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs-- heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him that we may also be glorified together

So our relationship with God has been defined as the intimate, loving and friendly one of a parent and a young child. And I tend to think of it in a bit of a physical way too-- as his Spirit lives in us and it is his life we are participating in, then we're also children in the sense of sharing something of the same life, and in resembling. But how on earth does this translate into our real, experiential life?

From what Paul is saying, and I think that experience bears it out, it's something that just happens. We don't have to and can't convince ourselves that we are God's children and should love Him; rather, the Spirit that we receive is the spirit of adoption, and the more he works in our minds and hearts the more naturally we turn to God crying out "abba!" Even though from this passage right here it sounds like sort of an all-or-nothing one-time thing, I think that it is a process. I think that its opposite, the spirit of bondage again to fear, is a sort of new legalism. Having introduced us to the idea of new life in Christ (by the Spirit, put to death the deeds of the body and be resurrected into Christ's life) it's necessary for him to describe that life a little bit. No, this new life isn't like the old where there's a set of rules you need to be afraid of breaking-- that's just more slavery. No, when you are in the new life, it is like a parent-child relationship. And the more the Spirit works in you and changes you, the more you will know God as a child knows his father (rather than like a slave knows his master). But I think that it takes a lot of time and learning and the Spirit working in us for us to really believe that.

And the interesting thing is how it says, the Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are children of God. Because I tend to think of the Spirit and our spirits sort of being at war, and that the process of glorification or whatever it's called is our spirit slowly being squashed. But that is not true. Anyhow, more on that later.