Romans 8:23-25 “Hope”

Here’s my fairly literal translation of these verses:

²³but not only [them], but we ourselves, [the] very ones having the firstfruits of the Spirit, also are groaning in ourselves, ones waiting eagerly for adoption, the redemption of our body. ²⁴For we were saved in this hope, but hope being seen is not hope, for who is hoping for what he is seeing? ²⁵But, if we are hoping for what we are not seeing, we are waiting eagerly through patience.

It is interesting that here it says what we are waiting for is the “redemption of our body.” You would have thought it enough just to say “our redemption.” Why is Paul zeroing in on our body specifically? I would suggest it is because, in Romans, we’re never far away from the contrast between Adam and Christ. I am convinced, theologically speaking, that our “problem” is specifically this Adamic body we still live in. Obviously, my spirit still possesses Adam’s wickedness as well. My heart is still desperately wicked and deceitful above all things and my “natural man” still bears the image of my father the devil. Anyone who would deny these things needs to take a closer look in the mirror. It takes the indwelling of the Holy Spirit Himself to help me be a “spiritual” man. However, still, where is the problem coming from? I’m convinced it is the Adamic body which is not only a body of death itself, but somehow contaminates my spirit as well. All of this is why the Bible specifically calls our problem “our flesh.”

The basic change that needs to take place is that I need a new body. I need a body I didn’t get from Adam. That, of course, is exactly what Jesus will do. In Phil. 3:20,21, it says, “But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, who, by the power that enables Him to bring everything under His control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like His glorious body.” The same thing is taught extensively in I Cor. 15, particularly vv. 42-54, where we read, “The first man was of the dust of the earth, the second man from heaven … and just as we have borne the likeness of the earthly man, so shall we bear the likeness of the Man from heaven” (vv.47-49). That passage goes on to say, “When the perishable has put on the imperishable and the mortal immortality,” then the saying will come true, “Death has been swallowed up in victory!” (vv.53,54). At that time, it will be true that death is gone for us specifically because we’ve shed our Adamic body, this body cursed by sin, this “body of death.”

I probably need to interject here that none of this justifies mistreatment of our bodies. On the one hand, Paul says, “I beat my body and make it my slave (I Cor. 9:27),” but then speaking of ascetic rigors, he says of their “harsh treatment of the body,” they “lack any value in restraining sensual indulgence” (Col. 2:23). Speaking very specifically about our bodies, the Lord says, “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you are bought with a price. Therefore, honor God with your body” (I Cor. 6:19,20). Romans 12:1 urges us to “present your body a living sacrifice,” and back in chapter 6, we were urged to “offer the members of your body to God as instruments of righteousness” (v.13).

Somehow, although the problem specifically is my Adamic body, yet still the problem is spiritual. This physical body of bones and muscles, etc., is just a vessel in which I live and the “I” who lives in it is still the problem. This is all somewhat of a mystery and maybe beyond our understanding, but it has to fit together and finally leave us as “ones waiting eagerly for adoption, the redemption of our body.” Somehow, I cannot be free of sin and death until I shed this Adamic body, yet, until then, it remains the body I live in and the only vessel through which I can serve Jesus in this present world.

To be free of sin and death brings us to the subject of hope in v. 24. I want to say, I don’t think I’ve ever really understood hope until studying these two verses, 24 and 25. Here we learn, “We were saved in hope.” Interestingly, in Greek, this could be translated, “We were saved in hope, by hope, or to hope.” Any one of the three would be a legitimate translation and, if you peruse several different Bible versions, you will see all of those prepositions show up. There is probably some sense in which it means all three, yet I would suggest the “in” is the best translation. Throughout the Bible and very specifically in the book of Romans, it is a big deal that we are saved by faith. Here’s the deal: Faith is a matter of believing God’s promises. “Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God,” but specifically faith is that response of believing. However, what does that believing do for us? It gives us hope.

In a sense, faith and hope are two sides of the same coin, yet, there must be the faith (believing God’s promises) in order for it to be real hope. Our world is full of “hope-so’s” which have no secure basis for that hope. The only truly secure hope arises from faith in the promises of God, found clearly written in the Word of God. We were saved by faith (believing God’s promises), but that faith was a very desirable thing specifically because it gave us hope, one way or another a hope that we could be free of this world of death.

In fact, that hope is so important, Paul stays on the subject for these two whole verses, “For we were saved in hope, but hope being seen is not hope, for who is hoping for what he is seeing? But, if we are hoping for what we are not seeing, we are waiting eagerly through patience.” Here is where I would suggest it’s not saved “to hope.” What it leads to is this “waiting eagerly through patience.” Hope was not something yet to be attained after our salvation. Instead, having been saved by faith and in hope, we now have the blessed enabling to live out our lives “waiting patiently” to see our faith and hope realized.

This “patient waiting” is probably worthy of entire study of its own. However, it is no doubt “a pearl of great price” to understand that, in a sense, that is what I’m doing here. In the context, we are groaning, along with the entire material Creation, suffering in this world of death. As Paul said elsewhere, “I would rather depart and be with Christ!” However, we’re still here. Heaven is our home, eternal life is our hope, yet we go on living in this world of death. That seriously calls for patience!

I like what Julian of Norwich said back in about 1300 AD. She suggested it is as if the Lord was to sit down with us and say something like, “You are now My child and I have a wonderful eternity of endless happiness prepared for you. However, I need for you to stay here in this world of pain and suffering and death for just a little longer. I want to save many other people just like you, but, in order for that to happen, I need you to go on living in this world. In this world, you will suffer just like they do, but you will be different because you will suffer in hope. Your faith will give you a hope and a love I can put on display for all the world to see and be drawn to. Your hope and love even in your suffering will open their hearts to this salvation I want to give them.” “Knowing that,” He asks, “Would you be willing to stay here … for Me? Would you be willing to go on suffering just a little longer, just like them, to help Me reach some?”

As He would look deeply into our eyes, awaiting our response, what do you find your heart saying? Is it not, “Of course, Lord, I would do anything for You. Yes, go ahead, use me as You see fit, only may Your grace be sufficient for me. May Your strength be made perfect in my weakness. Give me day by day the patience to live in this faith and hope I got from You to start with. Help me to fear no evil, ‘for Thou art with me.’”

Yes, I’m groaning. It is VERY painful living in this world, in a hundred million different ways, but I groan in hope, because of faith, and to a patience I can only hope and pray the Lord will use to draw others into this same hope!

Romans 8:23-25 “Firstfruits”

Here’s my fairly literal translation of these verses:

²³but not only [them], but we ourselves, [the] very ones having the firstfruits of the Spirit, also are groaning in ourselves, ones waiting eagerly for adoption, the redemption of our body. ²⁴For we were saved in this hope, but hope being seen is not hope, for who is hoping for what he is seeing? ²⁵But, if we are hoping for what we are not seeing, we are waiting eagerly through patience.

I believe this passage answers another question that has baffled me for years. Back commenting on the end of chapter 7, I said,

“What my basic question comes down to is that I am surprised the Holy Spirit’s indwelling doesn’t do more good that it seems to. This very indwelling is at least a partial fulfilment of the New Covenant promise, ‘I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh, and I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees…’ (Ezek. 36:26,27) … So the Messiah did come. He did win the victory over sin and death. He did send the Holy Spirit on the Day of Pentecost and now believers are indwelt by the Holy Spirit … What I don’t understand is why it doesn’t seem to do any more good than it does or has done … You’d think Christians in general would be noticeably more godly people … Why doesn’t it seem to make much difference if we in this dispensation are literally indwelt by the very Holy Spirit of God? Why is there still such a minimal level of general spiritual maturity amongst us believers? … Well, I’ll just have to wade into chapter 8 and see what I find!”

 I’ve never noticed that here in Romans 8:23, what is says we have been given is the “firstfruits of the Spirit.” Firstfruits. There is the answer to my questions. I’m so excited. All of a sudden a LOT of things make sense to me. My head feels like a pot boiling over. I will try to record what I believe I’m seeing

Practically speaking, my basic question is, “Why hasn’t Spirit-indwelt Christianity done any better than ancient Israel?” However, theologically it goes back to the New Covenant promises of the Old Testament. As quoted above, Ezekiel recorded, “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh, and I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees…” People today, almost universally, would teach that this passage applies directly to us and that we are, in fact, under the New Covenant. I would like to believe that, but, as Jeremiah said, “’The time is coming,’ declares the Lord, ‘when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah…’” (31:31).

Notice, the New Covenant is with “the house of Israel and the house of Judah.” That has not happened. It won’t happen until the end of Daniel’s “Seventy Weeks.” Yet, in Acts 2, on the Day of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit was poured out, and Peter said, “This is what was spoken by the prophet Joel: ‘In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people’ …” What Peter seems to be saying is that, in fact, on that day the New Covenant promises were being fulfilled. That is exactly what people today teach – but, what bothers me is that it was the Church, not Israel, being blessed that day.

Once again notice, what does Romans 8:23 say we’ve been given? The firstfruits of the Spirit. Aha! No wonder it all happened on the Day of Pentecost – the celebration of firstfruits! The very idea of the celebration was not of a full harvest but the firstfruits of it. However, the celebration is a celebration specifically because the firstfruits represent the hope of a full harvest. Those first bushels of wheat or ears of corn are part of the harvest, but only part. The full harvest is yet to come. Then again, it is not something different from the firstfruits – just MORE of it! So, there in Acts 2, what Peter is saying is not necessarily that this is a full and final fulfilment of the New Covenant promises, but it is the firstfruits of that fulfilment – not different in kind, but in fullness.

Obviously, the book of Romans has been filled with the “You will, but not yet.” We are adopted, yet we wait for our adoption. We are redeemed, yet we wait for our redemption. We are saved and heaven is our home, yet we’re still here in this broken world. What I’m seeing in this term “firstfruits” is that somehow the full ministry of the Holy Spirit is itself another “You will, but not yet.” We are indwelt, yet what we currently have are only the firstfruits of His ministry to us.

That answers my question theologically of what exactly happened on the Day of Pentecost if it wasn’t the full outpouring of the Holy Spirit, as prophesied in Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Joel. Jesus’ enactment of the New Covenant “with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah” is something different and still yet future. What happened on the Day of Pentecost was an outpouring of the Holy Spirit, but only the firstfruits.

That also answers my question why it hasn’t done more good than it has. Once again, you would think people indwelt by the Holy Spirit, even with the continuing struggle with the flesh, would do observably better than the people of Israel. Yet I can’t see much improvement from them to us. We have had some truly great Christians, but then they had David and Daniel and Moses. It simply is not totally fulfilled yet what God promised, “I will put My law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God and they will be My people. No longer will a man teach his neighbor, or a man his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ because they will all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest” (Jer. 31:34).

 Now we can also better understand the language in Eph. 1:13,14: “… When you believed, you were marked in Him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God's possession—to the praise of His glory.” We have received the Holy Spirit. He is a seal of our salvation, and then He’s described as a “a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance.” Once again, we see the “you will, but not yet.” He is called there a deposit – once again the promise of something much, much more.

This helps so much. For myself, this answers a lot of questions I’ve been pondering for literally years.

Romans 8. Wow. What a chapter!

 

Romans 8:23-25 “Groaning and Joy”

Here’s my fairly literal translation of these verses:

²³but not only [them], but we ourselves, [the] very ones having the first fruits of the Spirit, also are groaning in ourselves, ones waiting eagerly for adoption, the redemption of our body. ²⁴For we were saved in this hope, but hope being seen is not hope, for who is hoping for what he is seeing? ²⁵But, if we are hoping for what we are not seeing, we are waiting eagerly through patience.

When I started on this study through Romans 8, I was quite sure it would be filled with amazing, encouraging, enlightening truth. Wow. Have I not been disappointed! I feel like I could write for weeks all the things I see even in just these three verses. I really enjoy doing this – writing out what I’ve learned after studying through a passage – but that is especially true when it seems I could write a volume on every verse! Nothing less than the Spirit of God could have inspired such encouraging truth!

Where do I begin? As Maria said, “Let’s begin at the very beginning – it’s a very good place to start!” In vv. 19-22, we learned how the very Creation itself groans and suffers under the Curse of sin. Now Paul says, “But not only them, but we ourselves … groan inwardly …” We who are born again, who have seen Jesus and known His love, you would think we would now enjoy a wonderful reprieve from the miseries of this world. I’m a Christian, now I’m “happy all the day!” – right? That certainly hasn’t been my experience, and it isn’t what we find in this passage.

The Creation groans, and so do we. But notice a significant difference – we groan inwardly. Note that the believer’s groaning is something more than a cry of pain or a sob of loss. We do suffer and express those “outward” groans just like other people and just like the rest of Creation, but there is something different. We groan “inwardly.”

Here is what I want to suggest: This is the same suffering that was spoken of in verse 17, where we saw “sharing in the sufferings of Christ.” As I said there and I’ll say again, most writers make those sufferings refer to the persecutions we might suffer on behalf of Christ. However, to do so robs us of the very help and encouragement the Lord intends. The sufferings of Christ include everything He suffered those 33 years living among us, as one of us. Just like Jesus, the born-again person finds themselves grieved not so much by the pain itself, but by the heartache of knowing how wrong it all is.

All day every day, we know in our hearts that all of this is so very wrong. Peoples’ cruelty to each other is so wrong. It’s so wrong when very talented, intelligent people waste it all just to see the bottom of a shot glass. It’s so wrong to see our friends and loved ones be sick even with a cold, or far worse to die. It’s so wrong that our government is filled with such crooks and liars, that companies care nothing for people, but only for their precious pennies. It‘s so wrong that children suffer hunger. It’s just all so wrong, it makes me groan – but not so much outwardly as inwardly. Then there is the dark side in me. I don’t like in so many ways who I have been. I don’t like what I know I’m capable of. Again, it all would make me groan, but not so much outside (like all my aching joints), but inside.

Herein I believe I learn something I have never understood before! For years, I’ve felt like one thing I seriously have lacked as a Christian was joy. I could look at the list of the fruits of the Spirit and say, yes, the Lord has definitely helped me in each one, but then joy has seemed elusive. I certainly have much to be joyful about, and yet, there has still always been this sort of underlying displeasure with life. There’s sort of a minor chord always playing somewhere deep in my soul. Realizing that, I’ve specifically prayed the Lord would help me to learn real Holy Spirit joy.

Here’s what I think. It’s not so much that I lack joy. It’s this “groaning” we see in Romans 8. How could a born-again believer live in this world and not groan? Now that I am a child of God, I long for the perfect peace of His kingdom. My soul longs for that world where there will be “no more death or mourning or crying or pain.” “Oh, that I had the wings of a dove…” “Too long have I dwelt in the tents of Meshech. I am a man of peace, but they are for war…” The Bible itself would tell me I do not belong in this world of death. Again, this takes us back to verse 17 and suffering with Jesus. He was “a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.” Why was that? The same reason you and I are people of sorrows and acquainted with grief. We live in this world of death. Everyday we have to live dying, in one sense right along with the rest of this broken, fallen world. The difference between us and them is that we do not belong here. This world is not my home

Think about what Paul says in II Corinthians: “For we know that if the tent that is our earthly home is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For in this tent we groan, longing to put on our heavenly dwelling, … For while we are still in this tent, we groan, being burdened—not that we would be unclothed, but that we would be further clothed, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. He who has prepared us for this very thing is God, who has given us the Spirit as a guarantee” (5:1-5).

Notice here, it is the Lord Himself who says we groan. He even says why. It is this reality that you and I do not belong here. Here again is reality. I wish we all could just skip along “happy, happy, happy all the day long.” In heaven we will. Not here. How can we? Jesus didn’t. Who ever threw a party in a morgue? This is a world of sin and the wages of sin is death. Just like Jesus, to live in this world is to be grieved by the death that surrounds us. Then, unlike Jesus, we even have to groan over the death that still reigns in us.

All of this may sound dark and morose, but I find it gloriously liberating. I realize I have been mistaking that Holy Spirit groaning as a lack of joy. It isn’t that at all. It’s reality. I do have joy, and I have plenty of it! I have a wonderful Lord who only seems grow sweeter and sweeter with each passing day. I have my wonderful wife and family, a really great job the Lord gave me, and a future in heaven to boot! I do have joy. But I also groan. That’s just reality.

Here are two quotes I ran across:

Someone wrote: “The higher a nature rises, it increases in tenderness and sympathy, and while it has to maintain a conflict with evil, the heart must be the home of many great griefs…The grace of God in the heart, since it so reveals God to the soul, so brings down heaven to earth, that the possessor of it can say that his sufferings are not worthy to be compared with the glory that shall be revealed in him. This grace is the root both of the sufferings and the glory. If the two things were really opposed, then some comparison might be made; but this is not the case. Suffering is the first-fruit of grace, glory the last. The one is the fruit of grace in time, the other its fruit in eternity. To have the grace of God in the heart is to have a principle of life there that must come into bitterest conflict with evil. Jesus Christ must needs suffer to enter into His glory. As He was, so are we in this world. We have to “fill up that which is behind of the sufferings of Christ.” Dwelling in the believer Christ has still to meet the temptations of the devil and the contradictions of sinners.”

J. Vaughan said: “A man untaught might say, ‘surely those who gather firstfruits at least will have an immunity from sorrow?’ St. Paul said, ‘We which have the firstfruits of the Spirit groan within ourselves.’ I do not find that the Church has less suffering than the world without, only I find it more ‘inward.’ This ‘inward groaning,’ what is it, and whence? As soon as a man really receives one of the ‘firstfruits’ of the Holy Ghost, immediately a very great change takes place in that soul. But how with the body? Is it altered? Some little degree of physical refinement may grow out of the spiritual change; but in the main the body is the same. It prompts the same desires, it leads on to the same sins. Sometimes it inflames us, sometimes it drags us. And so it will be to death, the changed soul in the unchanged body, the redeemed in the unredeemed. Now here is all the conflict. Of all our misery this is the painful element, the inability of the body to carry out the higher aspirations of the soul. Other things may bring the sigh, the tear, but this brings the groan, ‘When shall I be holy? When will the contest cease?’ ‘O wretched man that I am,’ etc.”

Thank you once again, Lord, for showing me these things. Your truth is always so simple! And it’s never what I would have thought it might be. “For wisdom's profit is better than silver, and her gain is better than fine gold. She is more precious than rubies; And nothing you can wish for compares with her” (Prov. 3:14,15).