It seems “birthing” new, whole parts of us hurts, much as creation is pained until we become God’s sons and daughters. What is God saving in you now? That question may be the same as a doctor asking, “Tell me where it hurts.”
This truth describes much of life! Let’s scour the verses to see what God hints at. These verses are thick, and … mystical.
Before I get too mystical, trust this. Some say they have a way to God’s glory sans suffering. They lie. See the truth in these verses. Let’s map them. The Greek words are highlighted identically with the English words.
Romans 8:17 and if children, heirs also, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him
sumpascho; sum & pasch; suffer with. (One Word!)
in order that we may also be glorified with Him.
sundoxazo; sun & oxazo; to join in approving, hence to glorify together. Again (One Word!)
18For I consider that the sufferings
pathema; from pascho; that which befalls one, a suffering, a passion.
We get our word for paschal suffering or the “Passion” of Christ.
of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is
doxa; opinion (always good), hence praise, honor, glory.
God’s opinion is the truest and best opinion of us. His is the most glorious of us.
With the glory that is to be revealed to us.
apokalupto; from apo & kalupto; to uncover, reveal.
(Apocalypse, Revelation)
19For the anxious longing of the creation waits eagerly for the revealing of God’s daughters and sons.
apokaradokia; from apo & kara (the head) & dokeo; strained expectancy, earnest longing.
We have thoughts about the way things should be.
apokalupsis; from apo & kalupto; to uncover, reveal.
(Apocalypse, Revelation)
22For we know that the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now.
sustenazo; from sun & stenazo; to groan together. . (One Word!)
sunodino; from sun & odino; to be in travail or suffer childbirth pains together. . (One Word!)
23And not only this, but also we ourselves, having the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting eagerly for our adoption as sons,
stenazo; to groan within oneself, to complain, deep sigh, grief.
the redemption of our body.
apolutrosis; to release on payment of ransom; redemption.
This is not the Body, the church. It is me: my flesh. It is my lusts, my angers, my humor, my soul.
Now, read them again.
Romans 8:17 We are heirs. We suffer with Him
that we may also be glorified with Him.
18For I consider that the sufferings
we endure now are nothing compared with the glory that is
to be revealed to us.
19For the creation’s anxious longing waits eagerly for us to be revealed as God’s children!
22We know the whole creation groans and suffers childbirth pains together until now.
23We also, having the Spirit’s fruits in us we groan within ourselves,
waiting eagerly for our adoption as sons and daughters
— the redemption of our body.
First, these verses show God as Father (Abba). They show our status as His children is unshakable.
Now, from these thick, rich words, explore some depths. A warning: this one may finish fuzzy. Why? I don’t know these depths. I am one swimming over the Marianas Trench. I can say, “Tall waves!” when the powerful reality is I am seven miles above the ocean floor!
Start here: we suffer. Paul takes it for granted: you suffer. So see two parts of suffering. (Part One) Life comes with suffering attached. Ours is a fallen world. Alcoholic parents, anger, abusive people, depravity, gossip, divorce, cancer, dying children, dying friends, dying parents, war, bigotry, sexual damages, dementia, child exploitation, porn, money troubles, anxiety, anorexia, allergies, cheating spouses, depression, new diseases teaching me their initials as they kill someone close, and accidental anything — all come as part of life. Can you possibly be untouched? Life comes with suffering. We live in a fallen world. Any Christian message not dealing honestly with suffering is faux, fraud, a lie, a scam.
Any preacher saying God only gives the good drives a Mercedes. Any message shouting all sickness comes from unconfessed sin is nuts. Easy religion sells. Beware of who says “There is no suffering!” Yes, liars are bold, but see who is listening! Hear their listeners! They’re angry, broken, questioning, and suffering. Paul wades saying, “Suffering surrounds us!” We live in a fallen world.
That is not all to this broken Paul with visions and spells befalling him. It is not all he wants you to see on suffering. (Part Two of Suffering) Paul suffers for Christ. He catalogues his sufferings a couple of times, beaten, cold, stoned, cast adrift and in peril. He suffered for Christ.
A warning. If you won’t embrace your suffering and trust God in it: if you won’t choose to suffer for the Lord — then the rest of Romans Chapter Eight belongs to someone else. This is hard. I repeat. Paul builds the rest of this chapter on embracing this world’s suffering and trusting God in it, if you won’t suffer for Him any sacrifice or discomfort — then the rest of this chapter belongs to those trusting Christ here.
What is built on this suffering and trusting?
You want intercession beyond words (26)? You want all things working for good (28)? Like being more than conquerors (37)? DO YOU LOVE that nothing can separate us from God’s love (38-9)? All these follow suffering. You can’t reach the heights and bypass suffering. Life brings suffering and God is in the middle of it. You won’t follow Christ and NEVER suffer! Jesus costs some fights … others hurt you. Christ costs you gossip. Others hate that you don’t gossip. He costs you anger. Others see you as weak, and it all hurts!
You can’t reach the great stuff bypassing suffering. See suffering sown among these great promises! Great stuff is out there in Christ. None comes before some suffering.
We don’t like it. We disagree. Be careful. With whom do you then agree? “Buy this car, and drive happily ever after!” “Wear these clothes, and be cool!” “Use this skin care so your face looks happy!” “If the going gets tough, the tough go shopping!” Did you miss Jesus’ holes in His hands? Paul has welts on his back.
Paul says suffering happens…can it compare to the coming glory? Hmm. We go to doctors like other patients, but we don’t tell them, “If my suffering passes into death’s portal into heaven, that will be glorious!” More doctors would be shaken and come to Christ.
Popular theology turns and twists everything. I am not out to guilt you, but this is true. We assume quietly, “God never intended me to suffer.” The result? More born-again Christians divorce in America than atheists!
Do you hunger for God’s opinion of you? Do you thirst for God’s great opinion of your kids, of you to be true? Do you believe God’s opinion of (glory in) you is more real than your feelings about you? Paul thunders, “Glory is truer in you!” Hold out for God’s opinion! Endure suffering beautifully, gloriously my child! Why?
Glory is revealed to & in us. That word revealed is the mysterious, convoluted word for Apocalypse and Revelation! John’s Revelation is off the charts deep and mysterious. He sees beings covered in eyes, winged beasts, horrors ride up from hell, unimaginable cities of beauty descend from heaven, and a wounded-in-love Lamb! Mystical. Magical. Wondrous.
Suffering men, women and children across this globe serve God and see healings, miracles, visions, and hope, and more suffering. This painful, crazy mystery is building to an Apocalypse — a revealing of God. We hunger to know the Apocalypse of eternity and Paul screams, “Big deal. It’s coming. YOU are the major mystery! Who will you become?!”
(22) God hears seal pups groan to death for fur. God hears species extinguished. Do you hear creation groan for us? God hears millions of rainforest acres groan with a melting Antarctic. They suffer under our subjection. Creation sighs and suffers awaiting our being birthed. They trust their Creator to make it worthwhile as we are revealed as sons and daughters.
Hear the groans of children dying early. They are now birthed as God’s daughters and sons. On dying their glory is finished in Father’s face. Children start, suffer, and leave us. Jesus wept. Either they die and their glory is completed before Christ, Who suffered for them or we’re a joke. Do you believe their glory lies beyond their suffering? Do you trust Christ enough to suffer through to His revealing what is truest, most glorious of you?
Why is suffering so important? Why is it so important to us as Christians? Look at 22 & 23.
We make choices in suffering. Suffering is neutral. Some men lose wives, rail at God, and discard their faith. Other men bury a wife and draw close to God. Some die of cancer testifying of the Lord. Others grow angry at God over disease and leave Him.
Don’t miss this. All Creation suffers along with us, birthing us!
The ideas are indissoluble. Groans together with, and endures birth pains together with cannot be reduced. “With” is built into “groan” and into “birth pains”. No whale chose to be hunted, but suffers in its Creator. A rhino killed for its horn so a rich Japanese businessman powders and drinks it … groans. They groan with us… as parts of the creation. See the irony? We are attached to them as well. We groan at some level as they suffer.
Do you see the view from here? We’re on top of the world here, in Paul’s letter. Seriously, this is a pinnacle. All creation, all that became through I Am, all that is spoken by the Word of God, Jesus, is for this single purpose: birthing God’s daughters and sons. This is the climax!
My wife’s exertion as she burst blood vessels in her eyes and sobbed: her trembling as she regrouped, sweated and her face burned red tell me we are birthed in pain: in another’s pain.
I see three painful truths. 1) Did you arrive where you are in Christ, costing other souls much pain? Did you thank them for what they endured for you? We are self-absorbed, but can grow to see their pain, and thank God for them, and thank them for Christ in them.
2) We make lousy midwives. We allay others’ pain, when God intends the pain to birth a new thing new in her. We prescribe for each other, substitute ourselves for the Comforter, and preclude what God was birthing in them. Hear God. Suffering and pain’s demise are promised only in heaven. Down here, suffering and pain may be God’s midwives at the birthing of a child of the Living God.
3) Why so much pain? I’m attached to dead things in me, and He must tear them from my living soul!
God is, in verse 23, redeeming even our bodies. I saw one man’s addiction to pornography transform into his burning passion to tell others of the Lord. It hurt. Oh, he suffered, but God birthed something eternal that has saved others. Don’t sin as a Gnostic thinking God saves my soul, but the body is a loss. God is buying back even your body’s most painful parts!
How precise is He in redeeming? 8:1 tells us He does not condemn us. In 8:3 He condemns sin in us. That means the Physician’s scalpel cuts only necrosis. It assures us that His laser comes for cancer cells only. It assures that arthroscopy snakes in me for necrotic horrors only.
Everest climbers say the height is dizzying, the air too thin and dry and hurts, the sun too bright, the cold too piercing to stay. Maybe suffering is too wonderful for them to miss, as they express awe, ineffable wonder from the roof of the world. This chapter, these verses form the roof of our world. How much will you endure to see the view from up there?
The Bible warns that others will not want you to be birthed, or to help birth others. (John’s Apocalypse, the 12th chapter).
BLESSING FOR YOU: If you cry out to Him in pain. Look out from that height to be astounded at how high He brought you in your suffering. If you exclaim how beautiful it is, be not surprised if He smiles to say, “That beauty is nothing compared to what I’ve done in you, My child,” as He hands you a mirror. Go in that great grace. Amen.
Another Traveler 