Romans 8:12-25

This text is used for the Lectionary Year A on July 23, 2017.

A friend of mine recently adopted a baby. For years she and her husband have been interviewing with agencies, putting together books to describe themselves to prospective mothers, and praying that they might be selected. They want to open their home and hearts to a child in need and extend their family. In other words, they want to become family for a child who otherwise might not have one. Adoption is an extraordinary gift – both for the child and for the new parents.

In this mid-section of Romans 8 Paul transitions to this kind of “family” language, from a human life lived primarily for itself (“flesh”) to the gift of a new relationship to God (“Spirit”) and the household of faith. Paul begins in vs. 12 by addressing his readers as “brothers” (later translations add “and sisters”) and quickly moves to the language of adoption, calling those who are led by the Spirit “children of God.” Then he goes further, even referencing God by the intimate Aramaic word “Abba.” This is one of the words Jesus used in addressing God, which can be translated as “Dad” (Mark 14:36). Note the contrast here between living according to the flesh, which leads to isolation and death, with a life lived according to the Spirit, which leads to our adoption as children of God and becoming joint heirs with Christ. Humans cannot escape being indebted (vs. 12) – all of us serve some type of master. We are either beholden to the “flesh” (our own selfish desires and rebellion against God), or we are indebted to the God who invites us to deny ourselves and take up our cross and follow Him– with the promise of forgiveness and adoption as His children.

There is an eschatological tension in these verses. When you read ahead to vs. 23, you hear that our adoption by God is something for which we wait, yet in vs. 15 those who are led by the Spirit of God have already received adoption, so much so that they are already calling God “Abba.” What do we make of this? One way to describe it is that we live on the knife-edge of the present between the “already” and the “not yet.”  We live in the “between times.” In one sense our adoption as children of God has taken place through the salvific work of Jesus and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in our lives, and yet we know that we are still subject to sin, decay, and death. Paul is making it clear that being a Christian does not provide protection from suffering and life’s adversities.

Paul is writing during a time of persecution for the early Christians: Stephen has been martyred, James has been beheaded, and Nero’s persecutions are imminent. Christians will suffer at the hands of a world dominated by “flesh,” (rebellion against God) because they no longer belong to that realm. Earlier in chapter 5 of this letter, Paul has already linked suffering and hope: “we boast in our sufferings knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us.” Through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, we have a foretaste of the things to come: of the glory to be revealed. Currently, we see through a “glass darkly,” but then we shall see face to face (I Cor. 13:12). What God has planned for those who love him far surpasses our grandest dreams. We hope not in what we see or currently are experiencing, but we hope for what we cannot see. This is why patient endurance is required and why God gives us the Spirit’s help, bearing witness with our spirit confirming that we are children of God and joint heirs with Christ.

The promise of final redemption, though, is not just a personal hope for individual believers. Paul makes it clear in verses 19-23 that all of creation is groaning for deliverance, as if in the middle of childbirth. The ultimate hope is for the redemption of all of creation, not just human beings. If we think back to the Genesis stories, we remember that Adam and Eve’s rebellion affected the earth itself. In Genesis 3:17-18 the ground is cursed in that it will no longer spontaneously produce food, but rather thorns and thistles. Creation itself suffers for the disobedience of humanity. How often do we know this to be true today? Pollution of air and water, exploitation of natural resources, global warming that is having a devastating impact on species and coastlines far and wide. God’s good earth has been violated again and again by human greed and wastefulness. Incorporated into his message of hope, then, is Paul’s assurance that God will ultimately restore His violated creation to its original goodness. Hope for redemption of all creation has begun (the “already”) through the salvific work of Jesus and the indwelling of the Spirit, but it is also beyond our reach in the present (the “not yet”). For now, we live in this tension, as adopted children of God, with hopeful and patient expectation.

 

 

Rev. Susan Pendleton Jones
Sr. Fellow, Institute for Faith and Learning
Baylor University
susan_jones@baylor.edu

 

 

 

Tags: adoption, restoration, creation, hope, redemption

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