SERIES: The Book of Romans
The Agony and the Ecstasy[i]
Introduction: One of the most distinguishing features of biblical Christianity is its philosophy of suffering. Some religions deny the reality of pain and suffering altogether, calling it an illusion. Others attribute suffering to the fact that God is finite and thus unable to eliminate it. There is a view held by some evangelicals that suffering is never God’s will and is simply the result of weak faith. Jesus and His Apostles, however, took a very balanced approach toward suffering. They acknowledged its existence, they attributed it to its proper source, they warned of its inevitability, but they also offered hope to the sufferer.
In the earliest days of the church, we are told in Acts 5:41 that “the apostles rejoiced because they had been counted worthy of suffering disgrace for the Name of Jesus Christ.” Philippians 1:29 says, “For it has been granted to you on behalf of Christ not only to believe on him, but also to suffer for him.” 1 Peter 2:20 adds, “If you suffer for doing good and you endure it, this is commendable before God. To this you were called, because Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps.”
These verses are just a taste of the many in Scripture which indicate that suffering is part and parcel of the Christian life. All of us suffer, though in different ways and in differing degrees. Some suffer physically, which at times can be excruciating, especially when it stretches out over a long period of time. But physical suffering is not the worst kind. Generally, there are medications that relieve the worst of it, and if ever it becomes unbearable our bodies are built so that we lose consciousness from the pain.
Mental suffering is a kind of suffering which medication doesn’t treat so readily. Some of you have been through deep mental anguish—perhaps due to the loss of a close friendship, the trauma of bankruptcy or a major investment gone sour, the loss of a job for no good reason, separation or divorce from a spouse, the delinquency of a child, or the suffering and death of aged parents.
Still another area of suffering that we don’t talk about much is spiritual suffering. I’m thinking, for example of the great heaviness we feel from a load of guilt that is the result of unconfessed sin in our lives. Or the oppression we feel as we watch our culture banish God from the public domain and abandon the values upon which our nation was founded and because of which it has prospered.
I don’t know what you are suffering from today, but I can be pretty sure that most of you are suffering either physically, mentally, or spiritually, and if not now, you will. How should we respond when we suffer? I fear that too many Christians have developed an ejection-seat mentality. If the suffering gets heavy, they want to pull the rip cord and zip out of the hot seat in which they find themselves.[ii] Much of our prayer life is devoted to praying that God will remove various kinds of suffering or discomfort from our lives, rather than praying that God will use the suffering to accomplish His purposes in us.
I know because I’ve been there. Some time ago at the end of a particularly stressful and disappointing day, I got a call from a church in the Colorado Rockies that was looking for a new pastor. My first reaction was, “Wow! With timing like this, it must be God’s perfect will for my life.” Then I remembered a few of my own sermons and realized that God doesn’t generally bring difficulties into our lives to train us to be escape artists, but rather to teach us patient endurance. The next day the world looked brighter.
Lest anyone question whether Paul has the right to speak on the subject of suffering, let’s read about his own experience in 2 Corinthians 11:23-28, where he compares Himself to some of His detractors:
I have worked much harder, been in prison more frequently, been flogged more severely, and been exposed to death again and again. Five times I received from the Jews the forty lashes minus one. Three times I was beaten with rods, once I was stoned, three times I was shipwrecked, I spent a night and a day in the open sea, I have been constantly on the move. I have been in danger from rivers, in danger from bandits, in danger from my own countrymen, in danger from Gentiles; in danger in the city, in danger in the country, in danger at sea, and in danger from false brothers. I have labored and toiled and have often gone without sleep; I have known hunger and thirst and have often gone without food; I have been cold and naked. Besides everything else, I face daily the pressure of my concern for all the churches.
Anyone here who can beat that for a litany of suffering? If not, then perhaps we should listen to Paul as he tries to put suffering in perspective. By the way, have you thought about why Paul even brings up the subject of suffering here in Romans 8? After all, this chapter is generally known as the greatest source in all the Bible for confidence and security in our relationship with God. Some might think it should be the absence of sufferings, not their presence, that would prove we belong to Christ. If God loves us, He should keep us from suffering. Right?
Wrong, says Paul. Such thinking is seriously flawed. Suffering in the life of a believer is actually a proof of sonship, as is the indwelling of the Spirit, the leading of the Spirit, the adoption of the Spirit, and the witness of the Spirit, as we saw last Lord’s Day. Look back at verses 16 and 17, with which we concluded our last message: “The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children. 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.”
We love the idea of being God’s children and His heirs, but we don’t necessarily like the idea that being Christ’s fellow-heir requires sharing the suffering as well as the glory that was His. But it does, and so Jesus said in the Upper Room,
If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first. If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you. Remember the words I spoke to you: “No servant is greater than his master.” If they persecuted me, they will persecute you also.” (John 15:18-20)
Martyn Lloyd-Jones writes, “If you are suffering as a Christian, and because you are a Christian, it is one of the surest proofs you can ever have of the fact that you are a child of God.”[iii]
Now in Romans 8 Paul offers us what might be called “a theology of suffering.” I have outlined this passage around a rare word that is found three times in 5 verses here, but nowhere else in the book of Romans. It is the term “groan,” and it is found in verse 22, 23, and 26. The repetition is striking and serves, I believe, to highlight three key propositions Paul desires to communicate.
1. The creation groans for liberation.
2. The believer groans for resurrection.
3. The Holy Spirit groans in intercession.
We’re going to give our attention this morning to the first two of these, with the third being our focus next Lord’s Day. So let’s read our Scripture text, Romans 8:18-27:
I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. {19} The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons 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 glorious freedom of the children of God.
{22} We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. {23} Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. {24} For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what he already has? {25} But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.
The creation groans for liberation. (19-22)
The first thing we learn about the creation is that …
This is God’s world. The universe is clearly referred to as “the creation,” which presupposes, of course, a Creator. Because Christians view the creation as God’s handiwork, they respect and value it, but they do not worship it as an end in itself. There are many in our day who come close to worshiping it. One thinks of the powerful television image of Carl Sagan on the science series “Cosmos.” Standing before a large screen on which there is a display of a segment of the night sky in its brilliant starry splendor, Sagan says in nearly mystical tones, “The cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be.” What is that, if it is not worship? The radical animal rights movement and some radical environmentalists likewise come close to worshiping the creation. They refuse to acknowledge the uniqueness of mankind as created in the image and likeness of God, nor do they accept the biblical concept that God gave him authority over the earth to fill it and subdue it.
At the same time, while a Christian refuses to worship the creation, he will respect it, and he will not abuse it by polluting, poisoning, or killing for mere sport or convenience. The plant and animal kingdoms are evidence of God’s handiwork, and we should admire them and protect them from wanton destruction.
However, a second crucial truth that we must grasp is that …
This world is not what it was created to be. In the third chapter of Genesis God said to Adam,
“Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat of it,’ cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.”
God determined it would not be fitting for fallen mankind to live in an unfallen world, and so He subjected the entire creation to the corrupting effects of the Fall of Adam. It wasn’t creation’s fault; the trees and the mountains and the animals didn’t choose this, but they were nevertheless affected by human sin. In fact, the entire material universe around us is in a groaning child-delivering period, Paul suggests in verse 22. Any honest student of history can tell you that the labor pains are growing more intense and the contractions are coming at increasingly short intervals. The evidence is all around us, some of which we refer to as “natural phenomena,” like earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, and volcanoes.
Other evidence is the result of human activity—such as over-development, the extinction of certain animal species, destruction of the rain forest, nuclear pollution, and even space pollution. In addition, there is other minor evidence of creation’s bondage to decay that we see all around us—crabgrass in the lawn, silverfish in the attic, fleas on the dog, termites in the foundation. The whole creation groans and suffers.
Paul then personifies creation by suggesting that it is standing on its tip toes waiting for the glory that will come with the consummation of history. This suggests that while it may not be what it was created to be, …
This world does have a great future. Don’t misunderstand Paul. He is not a political optimist. He is not so foolish as to suggest that any of the wars going on in his day is “the war to end all wars.” He would laugh at the notion that any nation, any League of Nations, any social system, any political party, or even any religious movement would ever be able to bring in the Kingdom of God in the sense of establishing peace on earth, good will for men.
But Paul is a biblical optimist. He believes with all his heart that one day this cosmos will be liberated by God Himself from its bondage to decay and will be brought into the glorious freedom that the children of God will at the same time enjoy. Many Bible scholars believe this will happen when Jesus returns and establishes His millennial kingdom here on earth. Then, according to Isaiah,
The wolf will live with the lamb,
the leopard will lie down with the goat,
the calf and the lion and the yearling together;
and a little child will lead them.
The cow will feed with the bear,
their young will lie down together,
and the lion will eat straw like the ox.
The infant will play near the hole of the cobra,
and the young child put his hand into the viper’s nest.
They will neither harm nor destroy
on all my holy mountain,
For the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord
as the waters cover the sea.
Poetical? Perhaps, but what a powerful picture of the redemption that God’s awesome creation is looking forward to! But while the creation groans for liberation from its bondage to decay, the believer does the same.
The believer groans for resurrection. (18, 23-25)
Let’s read 22 & 23 again:
We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.
I think we need to begin here with the fact that as believers …
We will suffer. Jesus said in John 16:33, “In this world you will have trouble.” One of the common ways in which believers have suffered down through the centuries is through …
1. Persecution. The early ministers of the Gospel began to suffer for the Gospel as soon as they began to obey Christ’s Great Commission. Peter and John were jailed. Stephen was killed. Paul himself was imprisoned, beaten, shipwrecked, starved, threatened, and exposed to the elements. And what was true of these early preachers soon became true of their followers as well. They were ridiculed, hated, abused, and eventually martyred for their faith in great numbers. Even today there are many parts of the world where Christians are being kidnaped, tortured and killed. In fact, there are probably more countries where Christians are being persecuted than countries where they are free to worship.
Not all suffering, however, is in the form of persecution for our faith. Some is for purification.
2. Purification. This is suffering allowed by our heavenly Father for no other reason than to produce growth and holiness in our lives. This is what the author of Hebrews was talking about when he wrote in reference to Jesus, “In bringing many sons to glory, it was fitting that God, for whom and through whom everything exists, should make the author of their salvation perfect through suffering.” (Heb. 2:10). Jesus was always morally perfect, but in addition He grew into a perfection or wholeness of experience and trust in God through such things as poverty, temptation, misunderstanding, loneliness, abuse, and betrayal.
God uses similar kinds of suffering to perfect us. Even in the rare times and places in Christian history when persecution is not common, as for us in the U.S. today, there are still the disappointments, deaths, deprivations, and disasters common to all human beings in a fallen and extremely sinful world, and these are used by God to purify us and bring us to spiritual maturity.
The Bible often uses the word picture of refining precious metal to describe the process of suffering for purification. God is a skilled refiner, heating the ore in the crucible until the dross rises to the surface, where it may be scraped off. The refiner knows the metal is ready when he can see his face reflected in the glimmering molten surface. In the same way, God purifies us until He can see the face of Jesus Christ in His people. One of our great hymns puts it beautifully:
When through fiery trials thy pathway shall lie,
my grace all-sufficient shall be thy supply;
The flame shall not hurt thee, I only design
Thy dross to consume and thy gold to refine.
A third kind of suffering which we experience is, in my estimation, absent from Paul’s mind here in Romans 8, but I mention it because we sometimes get it confused with the others.
3. Chastisement. This is suffering because of sin and disobedience in our lives. This is avoidable suffering, and there is no glory in such suffering. “How is it to your credit,” Peter asks, “if you receive beating for doing wrong and endure it?” It’s not. I fear that a lot of Christians get angry at God for suffering which they clearly bring upon themselves—either through mistreatment of their bodies or abuse of relationships or some other violation of His revealed will.
We will suffer, the Bible says, through persecution and purification, and even through chastisement. But to put our suffering into perspective Paul indicates, secondly, that …
Our suffering is insignificant compared to our future glory. Let’s read again verse 18: “I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us.” In another of his epistles, 2 Corinthians 4:17-18 Paul writes joyfully, “For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.”
1. It is insignificant in respect to intensity. When Paul calls our present sufferings “light troubles,” I don’t think he’s trying to minimize the fact that when we hurt, we really hurt. Suffering can be so severe that we scream out with pain; one can even lose consciousness.
But, says Paul, the intensity of our sufferings is not worth comparing with the intensity of the glory we will someday experience. Paul should know. He suffered as much as anyone has ever suffered. But he also had a vision of heaven’s glory, having been “caught up to the third heaven.” (2 Corinthians 12:2) In his opinion the former is not to be compared to the latter.
In verse 22 Paul appeals to the pains of childbirth as an analogy. Labor pains are terrible, and no woman would choose to endure them were it possible to experience the glorious result—a newborn baby—any other way. It is not. But the glory of holding that child is so great that I have actually heard women who have not yet gone home from the hospital say to their husbands, “When can we have another one?” Labor pains are not light and momentary except when compared with the result.
2. It is insignificant in respect to its duration. Paul calls them “present sufferings” in verse 18 and “momentary” in 2 Corinthians 4. Very few people suffer their entire lives. For most of us suffering is a relatively brief portion of our existence. And our existence is very brief when compared to our nation. And our nation is very young in comparison to western civilization. And western civilization is but a small portion of human history. And human history is just a speck in the history of the cosmos. And the cosmos is itself still in time, while God is eternal. We need a long view when it comes to evaluating suffering.
The fourth and last truth I want us to consider is this:
Our suffering will be followed by the redemption of our bodies. And for that we wait eagerly, confidently, and patiently.
1. We wait eagerly. Verse 23 says, “Not only so, but we ourselves groan inwardly as we wait eagerly.” Creation groans—we groan. Creation waits eagerly—we wait eagerly.
Are you a groaner? When you’re sick do you groan so that everyone knows you’re sick? When you’re undergoing deep mental anguish, do you groan or whimper? I guess most of us do. And that’s O.K. if our groaning is our way of saying, “Someday, someday I will exchange this pain for peace, this hurt for hallelujahs, this suffering for satisfaction, and this groan for glory.”
Our groans should not be groans under as much as groans for. We should be waiting eagerly for the culmination of our adoption, when our bodies will be redeemed, as our souls have been. I grant that it is not easy for those who are young and vigorous to focus much on eternity. Young people have a tendency to think they are immortal and indestructible. But as we get older, and the inevitability of the body’s deterioration hits us with increasing reality, and our contemporaries begin to die of cancer and heart attacks, we become more interested, even eager, for that day when we will be transformed in the likeness of Christ’s glorious resurrection body. We not only wait eagerly, …
2. We wait confidently. The word that expresses that confidence is the term “hope,” found five times here in verses 24 and 25. In English “hope” often implies wishful thinking, fantasy, an overactive imagination. But in the Bible it means “a settled confidence.” Yet, we must acknowledge that hope deals with the future, not the past or present, and it is in the realm of faith, not fact. Verse 24 states the obvious: “Hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what he already has?”
Teenage girls used to have what was called a “hope chest,” where they would collect special items for setting up house when Mr. Right came along. But what would you guys think if your wife came home someday with a cedar chest and announced it was her “hope chest?” I imagine you’d be quite concerned—you’d be wondering what she was hoping for since she’s already got you. Well … that’s a good question!
God has, in His wisdom, allowed some of the reality of our redemption to be reserved for the future with the intent that we would never become too settled in this world. Rather he wants us to be on our tiptoes, awaiting the glory of His presence, but with confidence. He’s even given us a down payment–the Holy Spirit, called the First Fruits.
3. We wait patiently. Verse 25: “But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.” Biblical patience is not passivity. It is an active, though patient waiting. It expresses itself in vigorous service for Christ even while we wait for his appearing.
Points to Ponder:
1. We should not be surprised when suffering occurs. This world is not a perfect place. We live in a fallen environment. Your plans will misfire, you will often fail, others will destroy what you have spent long years and much toil to accomplish. There are plenty of nut cases and evil people out there, wreaking havoc or worse in people’s lives. And this is true even if you are a Christian and even if you are living for Jesus. That’s just how it is.
2. We should not place our ultimate hope in any human solutions to this world’s condition. It’s not going to get better any time soon. One of President Clinton’s personal Secret Service agents just recently left Washington, D.C. because of the rat race and the pressure, and he sought out peace and tranquility—in the F.B.I. office in Oklahoma City. He died in the bombing of the Federal building where he had just begun to work last month. There is no escape from trouble in this world.
This does not mean that we shouldn’t devote ourselves to praying for our leaders, to holding evil in check, or to meeting the needs of the poor. We must. But if you think there is a formula or a political party or a social system that will change this world fundamentally for the better, you’re dreaming.
3. We should keep our eyes on Jesus. Where else can you look? All others are disappointing. Only He is worthy of your trust. When Jesus gave us the promise no one wants, namely that “in this world you will have trouble,” He followed it up immediately with an exhortation and a victorious affirmation, which all of us need, “But take heart! I have overcome the world.” He has promised to return in His glory, and when He does, we will see Him and become like Him (I John 3:2). Then the creation too will become what God originally intended it to become.
A chorus we used to sing when I was a kid had this phrase in it: “with eternity’s values in view.” That’s the point of this passage. We desperately need the “perspective of eternity,” in order to see our suffering for what it is—a brief, minor inconvenience on the road to glory. H. G. Wells once said, “Man who began in a cave behind a windbreak, will end in the disease-soaked ruins of a slum.” Paul totally disagrees. The groan, he says, will be followed by glory, the agony by ecstasy. Praise God!
DATE: April 30, 1995
Tags:
Suffering
Creation
Groaning
Persecution
Chastisement
Redemption
[i] I borrowed this title from the last chapter in Ray C. Stedman’s book, Expository Studies in Romans 1-8, From Guilt to Glory, Vol. 1.
[ii] Ray C. Stedman, Expository Studies in Romans 1-8, From Guilt to Glory, Vol. 1, 242.
[iii] D. M. Lloyd-Jones, Romans: An Exposition of Chapter 8:5-17, The Sons of God, 433.