Romans 8:18-25 - Hope Beyond Comparison

When was the last time you tried to think about infinity? It’s sort of a crazy thing but I remember doing it quite a bit as a kid.  I remember getting into ridiculous debates with friends about who was the smartest or fastest or could eat the most of whatever.  We’d start with “normal” numbers then someone would be a goofball and say a million or billion and someone else would say “infinity!” and then someone else would say “infinity +1”.  

What if I told you that those silly childhood arguments were a good way to think about the glory of God?   We’re in Romans 8:18-25, the part of the letter where Paul talks about our hope for the future.

Transcript

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When was the last time that you tried to think about infinity? I know it's kind of a crazy thing, but I remember doing it quite a bit, especially when I was a kid. I remember we would get into these ridiculous debates as children about like who was the fastest or the smartest or the strongest, or who could eat the most of whatever was around at the time. And we'd start off with like normal numbers, and then somebody would venture off into like, oh, I could do a thousand, or somebody else would say a million, and somebody else would say a billion, and then somebody would be like, I could do that infinity. And we'd be like, whoa. And then the quiet kid would say, I could do that infinity plus one. What? It's just ridiculous, right? But but what if I told you that those silly childhood arguments were actually a pretty good way to think about the glory of God? On that happy note, welcome to Meet Me in the Word. I am genuinely glad that you've joined me today. We're in Romans chapter 8, verses 18 through 25. It's the part of the letter where Paul challenges his readers to think about the glory of God, amongst other things. While you're turning your copy of the Word to Romans chapter 8, I just wanted to take a moment to say thank you to the many of you who tune in, either listening or watching. You do that regularly. It's appreciated. It makes uh makes it feel like this is worthwhile for me to keep on doing. Thank you also to the many of you who support in other kinds of ways, either through prayer or financial support. Uh, that is super appreciated. By the way, if you want to be a part of you know that kind of uh support, links are included in every show's description so you can help yourself to that. All right, enough of that. Before we do anything else, let's pray. Jesus, thank you for this really good day. God, we're we're grateful to have the the breath of life in our lungs. We're grateful to have this opportunity to to connect with you and in kind of a way with each other as well. But Lord, more than anything, we're here to meet with you. Would you meet with us? Amen. All right, Romans chapter eight, verses eighteen through twenty five. Paul writes, I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed, for the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God. 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 are the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly, as we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies. For in this we hope we are for in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what they already have? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently. Let's go ahead and pause and listen to God uh as you probably already know. You can pause this if you'd if you'd like, if that helps you to have a better moment with the Lord, and then we'll jump in together. Okie doke, let's uh let's take a look at this passage. It's uh it's classic Paul writing. He's uh he's just caught up, I feel like, almost constantly in his own wonder and amazement, just about the Lord in general. And then you can you can tell that he's somebody who's been trained in the scriptures, you know, even before he came to Christ, he he he learned, he was a Pharisee, so he's familiar with all that's there, and then his encounter with Jesus just completely transformed the way that he viewed uh all of that. And he's just sharing this incredible hope, uh, continuing on here in Romans chapter 8, and it's just the really, really neat stuff. But he expands this idea. We'll start with kind of that that foundational thought uh that I think sets up everything else here in verse 18. He says, I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. And and this is kind of you know what I was thinking about in regards to that whole fun like infinity conversation. However bad this present time might feel, and like I'm not in your space right now, I don't know what life is like for you, but we do all experience suffering of some variety or another. We all go through hardship, we go through discouragement, we go through sometimes outright persecution, sometimes we struggle to put food on the table, sometimes we have other kinds of struggles. But whatever this present time is, Paul is saying like the goodness that comes later, the glory, right? The glory of God. He he says it it's not gonna be like equal. So like if you're if your expectation is like, man, I'm going through this right now, but uh, you know, some people use the word karma and they just mean, you know, some kind of retribution, and you usually they mean it in a in a negative way, right? Like if you're a jerk, then it's gonna come back and and get you that way. Paul says that's not how this works. Don't expect something that's equal, right, in in scale or in volume to the to the challenges or the suffering that you're experiencing now. No, don't think about it that way at all. In fact, the it will exceed it to the point that comparison won't really make sense. And just like when we try to think about, you know, an infinite number, and the second you stop thinking about it, you've failed, right? Like there's that kind of a feeling to it. In a similar kind of a way, that's what the coming glory of God will be for us, right? Our present sufferings are significant. He's not saying that they're not, he's just saying, look, it compared to what's coming, to the goodness and the glory of God that will be revealed in us, there's there's just no comparison. And I think that that truth, that idea is really important for us to hang on to as we do life in general. I think it can help us with perseverance. Ooh, it's thundering outside. I don't know if you can hear that on this or not. Um, but it's it's kind of fun. We don't get tons of that here uh where we live. All right, so there's there's that that's there, and then I want to expand, just like Paul does here, into the the next few verses. So kind of looking at 18 through 21, even though we just talked about 18, but you know, especially 19 through 21, sort of as a as a group of verses here together, uh Paul Paul says, you know what, let's let's actually look at creation, and uh, and that's a good way for us to understand this in fullness, not just as a metaphor, but as included in the process and as a recognition of what's taking place. And it's interesting to me because I wouldn't, like when I think about creation, when I think about the earth, I think about you know those aspects like from a scriptural perspective, I wouldn't think, oh yeah, we should look at Romans. Like it's just it's not really a central theme of it, but he's actually already talked about it. In chapter one, he's talked about the witness of creation, that that as we think about what it means to follow God and and you know, we can't claim ignorance. Why? Because creation itself testifies. So it serves as a witness, and he's you know, shared that idea uh eight chapters ago, and then now it's coming back into play. But it's not just about it being a witness to us, it's evidence of the fall, right? It's evidence of the fall, but then creation itself needs to be, I guess, included in all of this. And it not just needs to be, it is included in God's plans for ultimate salvation. So he's he's pointing out here how it too has experienced the effects of our sin. When he says things here, like in verse 20, the creation was subjected to frustration not by its own choice, by the will of the one who subjected it. And who's the will of the one, who's the one, right, who subjected it? Well, you can kind of talk about it in in maybe two different ways. One is it's us, right? You can kind of point back to Adam and Eve and say, well, because of their choice, then sin entered and death entered and decay entered, all that is there. But then there's also an aspect of like, well, the Lord did it in a in a certain kind of a way when when the fall took place. So we we just see that, you know, the creation, the plant life, the what's that, yeah, the flora and the fauna, right, of the of the world around us. Uh, you know, they didn't have that same moral choice that we as humans have, right? So there's there's this objection there that's not uh not their own, and that there's a frustration that's there. Um and and then there's this hope, though, that comes in in verse 21. The creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay. I think that's such a fascinating phrase. It'll be brought into the freedom and the glory of the children of God. So there's this idea here that that through us, not that we're causing it, but through our own redemption story, through our redemption because of what Christ has done, it's not just us that experience uh experience or will experience renewal. The world around us will be renewed. And that's part of this incredible hope that we have that that in the fullness of our salvation, uh, then there's a ripple effect. Just like in the fall, there was a ripple effect, right? You can see it like that. Uh, the fall of man caused problems for the earth, and then the redemption of man will include the redemption or the the renewal of the earth. And that's just kind of a fun thing to think about, that that that's part of God's redemption story for us. And that kind of thinking, that kind of interchange here with the scriptures, leads me to this idea that um uh in I don't know how if you've heard this before, but it's the idea of already and not yet. It's the idea that we are already saved by God. We've been saved in this present time. I'm looking now into verses 22 through the end of our our little time to get today, 22 through 25. Um we have this hope. Verse 24 says, in this hope we were saved. And so we're experiencing some of that right now, right? Like we're we're anticipating um the goodness of God. If if you're a follower of Jesus, if you've confessed him, then like if you think about those first um several verses of chapter eight, you're like, oh, the Spirit of God is in me, I'm his, I get to call him Father as a result of that. All of that stuff is true. Like, that's for right now, right here. Like we've been set free from from the craziness that's expressed in in chapter seven. Like, and that's so good. It's an amazing freedom for us. But we also recognize that while in that sense the kingdom of God is already here, like it's in us, and Jesus talks about this actually quite a bit. But there's more to come. There's this glory that's that's awaiting us, and that's the hope that's there. So there's just this neat thing that as we read about the the creation itself, and and I know I'm kind of bouncing around here inside of this little pocket, but if you look at verse 22, it's like the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Then it says not only so, but we ourselves who are the first fruits of the spirit grown inwardly. So there's this ache, this anticipation for creation, it's this collective groan. For us, it's more like this like sigh, like this deep, like, oh, like this is we we know we can see it, we're tasting it, but we know that there's more. We know that that I think even inherently in life, we recognize that that things don't function in the way that they were intended to, right? Like, and I'm not, by the way, when I'm talking about this stuff, I'm not just talking about like weeds, you know, I'm not just talking about that sort of thing. I'm talking about this idea that that we've been placed into this beautiful place that this earth, this planet that God has has given to us as a as our home. And and yet there's decay. We see that frustration. So there's this yearning, this hope for this redemption that will take place as a result, again, of that redemption that will happen uh in us through the person of Christ. So we wait for that patiently, it says there in verse 25. And uh that word for patiently, I noticed that the uh the NASB, which tries to move us into something closer to like a more word-for-word understanding, actually uses the word uh like we we persevere. There's perseverance in in the waiting. And both ways, by the way, patience and perseverance, they're they're connected with that word that's there. But I like that idea of like of almost like patient perseverance. We're not we're not giving up, we're not losing hope. We just recognize that that there's something that's better. And and by Paul's own writing, it's incomparably better than what we're experiencing now. And I just think that's super cool. All right, I want to just leave you with two thoughts. The first is kind of a a statement, and the second is a question, just to kind of reflect on, as uh as we all kind of had about uh the rest of our day. The first one is is just an acknowledgement. It's the renewal that you've experienced through Christ is a glimpse of what's to come. So all of the goodness that has happened in you, that's just a glimpse. The heaven is better. That's what I'm driving at here. Uh, I hope that encourages you, that the good things that have happened, that times what, infinity, maybe. Uh, and then just uh this is a food for thought as we think about uh about creation and kind of our role in it. And I'm acknowledging here that there is in our world today, there is a I'm gonna describe it as a humanistic view of the world that that doesn't acknowledge the presence of God or at least minimizes the presence of God. And and that worldview, that way of looking at life, is pretty distressing, uh, especially when we look at what's happening in the world today. But as a Jesus follower, and I'm not a scientist, I'm not, and by the way, here I'm not trying to like push you into thinking about things one way or another, but I wanted to just leave us with this thought, like my part, am I promoting decay or renewal? And ultimately this is in the hands of Christ. And so we recognize all of that, like renewal comes through him. But I do have a choice, just just from a relationship with God perspective, like do I do I want to participate more in the in the things like the frustration of creation, or where I do have agency of my own, where I can make my own choice? Do I want to promote things that renew life? Just something for you to think about as you carry about your day. Let's pray. Jesus, thank you for your goodness and your kindness to us. God, we love you, and we uh we want to follow you, and and we're anticipating, we're anticipating the the fullness of glory that will come in the end. God be with us now. Amen.