`Sin shall not be your master’, we’ve seen! Thankyou, Father! But God has far more for us in Romans! Holiness is not merely negative (as the secular world usually thinks!), not merely an absence of sin; it’s for a wonderful purpose. The best is yet to come, says Paul, in what (for me at least) is among the Word’s most glorious sections…
`Those who are led by the Spirit are the sons of God’, writes Paul as he moves us onward (8:14, NIV as usual). `Led’ not so much in the sense of being guided, but (in context) of being empowered, controlled by the Spirit for holiness: that’s the point of the first half of chapter 8. But still, `led’ where? Because the Spirit’s leading is not merely a leading from, it is leading to!
The point of all this is our sonship and daughtership. We’re now the earthly habitations of the Spirit, and that means we’ve become something remarkable – something Paul can only describe as `God’s children’. We use this extraordinary phrase so often we miss its point. We need to stop and think: What does it mean?
First, it is relational. Mere rule-keeping religion could never accomplish this. Paul recalls the sense of servitude, and hence fear, that marks legalistic religion where there is no assurance of forgiveness and new birth (8:15); and he contrasts that with the `glorious freedom’ flowing from the confidence of having become `children of God’ (8:21). Deep within us, the Spirit cries out with our own spirits to God as our Father (or our `Daddy‘- a term for a `close’, loving God, one no legalist would dare to use! And some of us from broken families may have to work deliberately at learning to praise God through this concept. It may be profoundly healing – and very important for the health of our own children.) This itself is a sign of His life within us; we won’t truly cry out to Christ as Lord and to God as our Father except by the Spirit’s impulse within us (see 1 Cor 12:3).
But secondly, he says, as God’s children, we are His heirs: `heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ’ (8:17). Now this really is something: joint-heirs with the `heir of all things’ (Hebrews 1:2) – `that we may also share in His glory’ (8:17)! (Cranfield notes that this is a joyful rejoinder to 3:23, where we all `fall short of the glory of God’!) Our modern imaginations may give way at this point, but we need to stretch them to grasp just where we are being `led’. `How will He not, along with Christ, graciously give us all things?’ (Rom 8:32). Indeed, we are actually going to share Christ’s throne (Rev 3:21)! `No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived, what God has prepared for those who love Him’ (1 Cor 2:9). (I do believe it, Father. And I worship you. Thankyou!)
In short, says Paul, `the sufferings of this present time’ – and Paul knew plenty about these: floggings, prison, stoning, betrayal, five times the `forty lashes minus one’ – are simply `not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us!’ Indeed, he says, the very creation itself is `eagerly’ waiting for Christ’s `co-heirs’ – us! – to be revealed as its fulfilment and consummation (8:19)… The whole creation, not merely humanity. Now what is this about?
Suddenly the horizons open up, as Paul sets out for us an astonishing cosmic panorama. Since the Fall, our created world has been `subjected to frustration’ (8:20), to pointlessness and entropy. We live in a deterministic `bondage to decay’ (v21); `Things fall apart’, in Yeats’ famous words. There is no beauty that does not fade, no achievement that doesn’t crumble, no glory that can endure. Ecclesiastes records this pattern in its classic expression, mirroring the pessimistic insights of eastern religion: `Everything is meaningless. What does man gain from his labour?… The sun rises and the sun sets, and hurries back to where it rises. The wind blows to the south and turns to the north; round and round it goes, ever returning on its course. All streams flow into the sea, yet the sea is never full… All things are wearisome, more than one can say… What has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.’ Nothing new, nothing lasts, nothing gained. Since the Fall, this has been a cosmos locked into tragedy, decay and futility; cut off by human rebellion from the loving purposefulness of God.
But now God has introduced an alternative order: the possibility of grace. In what we call the `natural’ universe, you start off with something, and you end up with nothing. Where the `kingdom’ of grace comes, you start off with nothing but you end up with something glorious; light where there was darkness, joy instead of tragedy, love instead of hatred, resurrection instead of death. Cornish poet Jack Clemo calls it `God’s jazz breaking in upon the mournful music of the spheres’. The entropic law of our universe is that `the amount of disorder in a system always tends to increase’; can we imagine what a `new heavens and new earth’ could be like, where truly `grace reigns` (cf Rom 5:21)?- where instead of entropy there is ever-increasing beauty, `from glory to glory’, always moving `further up and further in’ through the creativity of God?
At any rate the entropic system is now broken; the alternative order is here; but its bridgehead is – us! `The creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay`, says Paul, `and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God‘ (8:21). We, God’s children, are `marching to a different drummer’; our hearts have been liberated from the `bondage to decay’. Clemo rephrases the gospel like this: humanly we are locked into a fate of unspeakable tragedy, but because of the cross we need not fulfil it. God’s children embody the `firstfruits’ of the new universe of grace and of the Spirit (v23), that which one day the entire harvest will be like (read James 1:18 and 1 Peter 1:23-25!); free from futility, `imperishable’: `Outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day!’ (2 Cor 4:16).
In the fullest possible sense, then, the law of the Spirit of life through Christ Jesus has set us free from the law of sin and death (Rom 8:1)! The Spirit within us now is a guarantee of the future, both for ourselves and for the whole creation. And the day will come when Christ returns, when transformation spreads out to the `redemption of our bodies’ (8:23); indeed when the glory sweeps out from its present foothold and transforms the entire cosmos (v21). It’s a vision worth thinking hard and dreaming hard about, on the bus, walking in the park, until it grips our imaginations: this is where we’re going, in the light of which we should live now…
`In this hope we were saved'(v24)! Thankyou, Lord!
And we’re shown even more glory in the next few verses of Romans! However, I want to pause for just one week to include a guest blog on something unrelated but practical, and really important, from my old IFES colleague Fred Bailey: how can we handle conflict situations? All of us face them sometimes… And we’ll bounce back to Romans 8 after that…
