Rom. 8:18-25 - The eager longing of creation

The outcome of faithful suffering after the pattern of Christ will be glory: if we suffer with Christ, we will be glorified with him (8:17); the sufferings of the present time are insignificant compared to the glory that will be revealed to us (18); those who are destined to be conformed to the image of Jesus will be vindicated and glorified (29-30). In the terms of a different narrative paradigm, the suffering community of the saints will share in the glory that is given to the Son of man when he comes to the Ancient of Days to receive a kingdom.

When Paul then links this hope with the eager expectation of creation for the revealing of the sons of God, he appears to associate the glorification of the suffering community with the final liberation of creation from its slavery to decay – and presumably the final renewal of heaven and earth (8:19-23). This would project the fulfilment of hope beyond any imminent eschatological horizon, whether the destruction of Jerusalem or victory over Rome. Nothing in Paul’s argument, however, suggests that he understood the parousia and the renewal of creation to be aspects of the same eschatological event. The suffering community, in whom the Spirit of the oppressed and resurrected Jesus groans, waits for ‘adoption, the redemption of our bodies’ (23; cf. 26-27). Similarly, the whole of creation ‘groans together and is in travail together until now’, eagerly waiting for the moment when it will be set free from the slavery of decay (phthoras) to the freedom of the glory of the children of God (21). The background to this conceit is found in Isaiah’s vision of the earth or land corrupted by the sin of its inhabitants: ‘The land/earth shall be corrupted with corruption (phthorai phtharēsetai) and spoiled with spoiling’ (Is. 24:3 LXX). Creation is a participant - indeed, and unwilling participant - in the drama of divine judgment on human sinfulness.

The fact that the whole creation is said to be waiting in eager expectation not for its own transformation but for the vindication of the sons of God suggests that Paul thinks of these as separate eschatological events. Creation looks to the more immediate, foreseeable hope of the parousia when the bodies of the sons of God are redeemed, because that will be an anticipation or sign of the renewal of the whole of creation. Creation will glimpse in the glorious vindication of the suffering community something of its own eventual transformation.

The ‘brothers’ of Jesus (8:29), who have the first fruits of the Spirit, being mortal naturally share in creation’s longing for liberation from decay (8:23), but for them that hope is focused on the moment when they will be adopted as sons, when they will be vindicated and glorified with Jesus. They do not yet have this; they must wait for it with the steadfastness (hupomonēs) that is typically required in the face of persecution (cf. 4 Macc. 1:11; 9:30; 17:23; Lk. 21:19; Rom. 5:3-4; 15:4; 2 Cor. 1:6; 6:4; 2 Thess. 1:4).