Bible Study 2023
Hope Overcomes Groaning
We are discussing Romans 8:18-25. We have been discussing the Holy Spirit that is dishonored in the name of evangelicalism today. The Charismatic movement grieves the Holy Spirit, even blaspheming the Holy Spirit. The unpardonable sin that Jesus addressed in Matthew was attributing to Satan the works of the Holy Spirit. Today people attribute to the Holy Spirit the works of Satan.
The attacks on the Holy Spirit, don’t come across as doctrinal. The Charismatic movement has rejected the identity of the Holy Spirit and the work of the Holy Spirit and substituted a false God. It’s a misrepresentation of God the Spirit. We’ve been trying to get a clear view of who the Holy Spirit is and what His ministry is so that we can worship Him in spirit and in truth.
So open up Romans 8. So at the end of Romans 5, we’ve been taught that salvation is by grace through faith in Christ, not by works. Romans 6 to Romans 8 talk about the benefits of the gospel. In a general sense, we could say that Romans 6 and 7 deal with the negative benefits and Romans 8 deals with the positive benefit. This is dealing with the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit.
That is which the Holy Spirit does in us, for us and with us. Election is the work of the Father, justification is the work of the Son, and sanctification is the work of the Holy Spirit. The Trinity engaged in this wondrous reality of salvation. You cannot truly worship the Holy Spirit as you should and you must, unless you understand what it is that He is doing and what makes Him worthy of worship.
And that leads us now to verse 17 where we find the last identifiable ministry of the Holy Spirit where He is guaranteeing our future eternal glory. And that is the ultimate gift of God, a salvation that is inviolable. If it depended on us in any way, we would lose it because none of us could do whatever it would take to secure to ourselves by our own merit a salvation from God.
So the only hope we have for eternal glory, is to be secured by the same God who chose us, called us, justified us, and will one day glorify us. He progressively conforms us to a righteous standard, which is modeled perfectly by Jesus. That’s what Ephesians 1:13 means when it says we’re sealed by the Spirit. Or here in verse 23, we have the first fruits of the Spirit. That’s our guarantee of future glory.
Salvation is a gift given by God before the foundation of the world, and everyone in this category of being chosen by God will be glorified for whom He predestined, He called, and whom He called, He justified, and whom He justified, He glorified. Jesus says in John 6, “All that the Father gives to Me will come to Me, and I will lose none of them, but raise them up on the last day.”
We are then indebted to the blessed Holy Spirit for regenerating us, giving us life and then for sanctifying us and securing us until the day that He Himself transforms us. We will be raised to our eternal condition by the power of the same Holy Spirit that regenerated us at our conversion. It’s a work that the Father designed and the Son validated and the Spirit effects.
Verse 17, “And since we are His children, we are His heirs. In fact, together with Christ we are heirs of God’s glory. But if we are to share his glory, we must also share his suffering.” Verse 18-19, “Yet what we suffer now is nothing compared to the glory He will reveal to us later. 19 For all creation is waiting eagerly for that future day when God will reveal who His children really are.”
Verses 20-25, “Against its will, all creation was subjected to God’s curse. But with eager hope, 21 the creation looks forward to the day when it will join God’s children in glorious freedom from death and decay. 22 For we know that all creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. 23 And we believers also groan, even though we have the Holy Spirit within us as.
“A foretaste of future glory, for we long for our bodies to be released from sin and suffering. We too, wait with eager hope for the day when God will give us our full rights as His adopted children, including the new bodies He has promised us. 24 We were given this hope when we were saved. 25 But if we look forward to something we don’t yet have, we must wait confidently.”
This is all about future glory. Verse 17, talks about being glorified with Him. Verse 18 talks about the glory that is to be revealed to us. Verse 19, the revealing of the sons of God again in glory. Verse 21, the freedom of the glory of the children of God. Verse 23 ends that we are waiting for the redemption of our body. Verse 24 and 25 talk about our hope for glory yet to come for which we eagerly wait.
So now we are talking about the Holy Spirit which secures us to future glory. Verse 23 says that this gift of the Holy Spirit is a down payment on future glory. One word jumps out at you and it’s the word “groan.” There’s a lot of groaning in this passage. Creation is groaning in this passage in verse 19. And then in verse 23 that we ourselves who have the first fruits of the Spirit, we groan.
And then in verse 26, we have the groaning of the Holy Spirit. This indicates that the creation and us and the Holy Spirit are going through certain groanings, certain agonies, until the final realization of glory. That’s the whole point of this passage. The Holy Spirit lives within us as a down payment on our future glory, and the Holy Spirit is the one who carries us to that future glory.
So here, the creation groans in verses 19 to 22, the believer groans in verses 23 to 25, and the Holy Spirit groans in verses 26 to 27. And all of this is some indication of an unfulfilled reality. Believers do not feel fulfilled. Even those blessed Holy Spirit do not experience fulfillment. Look at the groaning of creation in verse 19, “For the creation waits eagerly for the revealing of the sons of God.”
In what sense is the creation groaning? The Jews would have some understanding of this. This is about anticipation. The Jews would recognize it because there are two eras of redemptive history, the present age and the age to come. The present age was the age of sin and suffering. And the age to come was the age of the new heaven and the new earth with righteousness and holiness.
It is in Isaiah 65:17 that says, “I will create a new heavens and a new earth.” What part of creation is groaning? Holy angels are not groaning because it’s never going to get any better for them, right? What about demons? No. They’re not groaning in hope for their liberation because there is no salvation, there’s no forgiveness, there’s no better future for demons, only the Lake of Fire.
Well, is he talking about believers? No, he’s not talking about believers because there’s a distinction made between the creation and believers. Please notice, the creation is distinct from the sons of God. Is it the unbelievers? No, because unbelievers are not hoping in Christ, they’re not hoping for heaven. They are determined sinners. They are willing to feed their own corruption.
What is left is non-rational creation, animate and inanimate. So what you have here is a personification of creation, the material heavens, the material earth, and everything that’s in them, heaven and all the bodies that are in it, earth, water, land, grass, flowers, animals, bugs, fish, rivers, streams, everything that is in the animate and inanimate. It’s personified in a sort of poetic fashion.
So this is a kind of expectancy. Expecting the revealing of the sons of God. That would be at the end of all human history, the end of the Millennial kingdom, the establishment of the new heavens and the new earth. In verse 21, it’s put this way, “The freedom of the glory of the children of God.” When all the children of God are glorified in heaven, there will be a new heaven and a new earth.
Why? Verse 20 says, because the creation was subjected to futility. All creation originally was good, right? When God created in Genesis 1:31, it was very good, remember? But it was no longer what it should be, what it could be. The fall of man happened in past time in history at which the creation went from being perfect to being purposeless and futile. It was subjected to death, decay and destruction.
When Adam and Eve sinned, a deadly plague came on them. A plague that was so infectious that no human being who ever walks on this planet will escape it. The plague was not only in the people, but the plague dominated their environment. That was not the result of some evolutionary fluke according to the evolutionists. The things are the way they are because God cursed this entire creation.
Environmentalists aren’t going to reverse that. Eliminating carbon footprints is not going to do it. Getting rid of fossil fuels isn’t going to do it. We’re on the way down from perfection. That is biblical because when man sinned, he was punished by not being allowed to enjoy purity because he chose sin and not even being allowed to enjoy the benefits of a perfect environment.
Isaiah 24:4 says, “The earth mourns and withers, the world fades, the exalted of the people of the earth, they fade away. The earth is polluted by its inhabitants. They transgress laws, violate statutes, and broke the everlasting covenant. Therefore, a curse devours the earth and those who live in it are held guilty. Therefore, the inhabitants of the earth are burned and few men are left.”
God protects through the work of the Holy Spirit. God is still doing that, by living in us, and it’s the Holy Spirit who sanctifies us in the midst of this corrupt world. How is this going to happen? Psalm 102:25 says, “You founded the earth and the heavens are the work of Your hands. Even they will perish, but You endure. All of them will wear out like clothing; you’ll change them but You are the same.”
In the last three chapters of Revelation, you have the new creation in perfection and righteousness because you have glorified humanity. And in between is the sad, long history of sin and corruption. The two are linked. What happened to man in the Garden happened to the creation. What happens to man in glory will happen to the creation as well. So all creation groans, waiting for that to happen.
Verse 22 sums it up. “The whole creation groans, because all of it is cursed, and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now.” It has a positive result. Childbirth pain basically is the kind of pain that anticipates something wonderful, something blessed, and that’s the kind of pain that the creation feels. You don’t need to protect the creation. But you have to understand, this is a cursed creation.
Secondly, believers groan for glory in verse 23, “We ourselves groan within ourselves waiting eagerly for our adoption as sons, namely the redemption of our body.” Paul says in Romans 7:24, “O wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from the body of this death?” 2 Corinthians 5:4 says, “In this tent we groan, desiring not to be unclothed but to be clothed upon with our new body.”
What are we waiting for? Verse 23, says, “Our adoption as sons.” Yes, we have been adopted but we don’t have our inheritance yet. And what is our inheritance connected to? End of verse 23, the redemption of our body. 1 Peter 1:3-4 says, “We have an inheritance that fades not away, reserved in heaven for us, not received until the glorious freedom of the children of God.” So we groan.
We groan for the day when this mortal shall put on immortality, when death shall be swallowed up with life, right? We can’t wait to go from grace to glory. Are we going to make it? Verse 23 says, yes we are because we have already the first fruits of the Holy Spirit. He is the first installment. The Holy Spirit is the first fruits of the full crop that God has prepared for His people.
And the older you get, the more you groan, right? You groan more because you can do less. You groan more because you have more to groan about. Not only personally in your own body, but things are going on around you that make you groan. And we all live in hope, but that hope burns brighter as we grow older and experience more of living in a corrupt and fallen world.
I’m not trying to fix the world. I’m just waiting for the day when the Lord puts it to an end and creates a new heaven and a new earth. Verse 24: “In hope we have been saved, but hope that is seen is not hope, for who hopes for what he already sees?” In other words, we’re saved by faith, but we’re saved in hope, right? Because our salvation is not full yet. So we live in hope for what we don’t see.
What keeps our perseverance strong? What keeps our hope bright? It’s the ministry of the Spirit of God in us, the first fruit deposit of the Holy Spirit. He is the one leading us, He is the one confirming our adoption, the Spirit of adoption by which we cry, “Abba, Father.” He holds us, secures us, and causes us to have a persevering hope with which we wait for the second return of Christ.
In verses 26 and 27, the Holy Spirit groans. But I’m going to save that for next time because it leads into all things working together for good which is a familiar verse, verse 28. It is wonderful to look at the ministry of the Holy Spirit in our lives. Salvation includes faith which looks back to the finished work of Christ, and it includes hope, which looks forward to the unfinished work of Christ. Let us pray.