Creation in the Past, Creation in the Future and Creation Now
I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons 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 glorious freedom 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. Romans 8:18-22
Paul has moved from the present ministry of the God’s Spirit to the future glory of God’s children. He first touches on the suffering and glory of God’s creation (8:19-22) and then the sufferings and glory of God’s children (8:23-27).
Paul makes three statements about the creation, relating to its past, future and present. First, the creation was subjected to frustration’ (8:20b). God’s judgement fell on the natural order after Adam’s disobedience. The ground now produced ‘thorns and thistles’ so that Adam and his descendants could only grow food from it by ‘painful toil’ until death claimed them. The result of God’s curse was ‘frustration,’ meaning emptiness, futility, and purposelessness. Paul adds ‘the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope’ (8:20). God, being both Judge and Savior, saw a future hope for the world He cursed.
The second statement about the creation but now looking to the future is ‘the creation itself will be liberated’ (8:21a). God has promised that one day it will experience a new beginning, a ‘liberation.’ Negatively, creation will be ‘liberated from its bondage to decay’ (8:21). Conception, birth and growth are relentlessly followed by decline, decay, death and decomposition. Positively, creation will be ‘liberated … into the glorious freedom of the children of God’ (8:21c), literally: ‘into the freedom of their glory.’ God’s creation will share in the glory of God’s children, which is itself the glory of Christ (8:17,18). Jesus Himself spoke of this ‘new birth’ of the world that is coming (Matthew 19:28), Peter of the ‘restoration’ of all things (Acts 3:19,21), Paul elsewhere of the reconciliation of all things (Ephesians 1:10; Colossians 1:20) and John of the new heavens and earth in which God will dwell with His people (Revelation 21,22).
The third statement about the creation and now looking into the present is ‘the whole creation has been groaning … right up to the present time’ (8:22). Paul has already noted that the creation was ‘subjected to frustration’ in the past (8:20) and ‘will be liberated’ in the future (8:21). But while awaiting the final revelation the creation is ‘groaning’ in pain. This groaning is like ‘the pains of childbirth’ because they provide an assurance of a new order, a new birth, a new life. In Jewish apocalyptical literature Israel’s current sufferings were frequently called “the woes of the Messiah” or “birth pangs of the messianic age.” They were seen as the painful prelude to the victorious arrival of the Messiah. Jesus Himself spoke of false teachers, wars, famines and earthquakes as ‘the beginning of birth-pangs’ (Matthew 24:8; Mark 13:8).
There is both a continuity and discontinuity between present sufferings and future glory. Since the groanings are labour pains, they look forward to the coming new order. The creation’s subjection to frustration was ‘in hope’ (8;20). The bondage of decay will give place to the freedom of glory (8:21). The pains of labour will be followed by the joys of birth (8:22). The universe is going to be liberated, transformed and infused with the glory of God.