Waiting Patiently for Our Completed Salvation
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 have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what he already has? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently. Romans 8:22-25
We are caught in the tension between what God has started by giving us His Spirit and what He will consummate in our final redemption. The indwelling Spirit gives us joy (Galatians 5:22) and the coming glory gives us hope (5:2) but the life in between gives us pain.
Paul makes five great assertions in the passage before us. We have already touched on the first two:
(1) ‘we … have the first fruits of the Spirit’ (8:23a)
(2) ‘we … groan inwardly’ (8:23b)
(3) ‘we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies’ (8:23c)
Just as the groaning creation waits eagerly for God’s sons to be revealed, so we groaning Christians wait eagerly for our adoption as sons and the redemption of our body. We have already been adopted by God (8:15) and the Spirit already assures us that we are His children (8:16) but there is an even deeper child-Father relationship to come when we are fully ‘revealed’ as His children (8:19) and ‘conformed to the likeness of His Son’ (8:29). Our spirits are already alive (8:10) but one day the Spirit will also give life to our bodies (8:11) so they become ‘like his glorious body’ (Philippians 3:21).
(4) ‘in this hope we were saved’ (8:24a)
‘We were saved’ is aorist tense pointing to a past, completed action – our conversion. We have been delivered from the guilt of our sin and from God’s just judgement on our sin. But our salvation is not yet complete. The final vestiges of sin in our human personality haven’t yet been eradicated and our body hasn’t yet been redeemed. But we were saved ‘in hope’ of our total liberation (8:24a), as the creation was subjected to frustration ‘in … hope’ of being set free from it (8:20). This hope looks to the future, to things not yet seen. For ‘hope that is seen, (that’s already been realised in our experience), is no hope at all. Who hopes for what he already has? (8:24b). Instead ‘we hope for what we do not yet have’ (8:25)
(5) ‘we wait for it patiently’ (8:25b)
We wait for the fulfilment of our hope, confident in God’s promise that the firstfruits will be followed by the harvest, bondage by freedom, decay by incorruption and labour pains by birth of the new world. We wait ‘eagerly’ (8:23) with expectation but also patiently. We don’t wait so eagerly that we lose our patience or so patiently that we lose our expectation.
So Paul has given us five realistic truths:
(1) ‘we … have the first fruits of the Spirit’ (8:23a)
(2) ‘we … groan inwardly’ (8:23b)
(3) ‘we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies’ (8:23c)
(4) ‘in this hope we were saved’ (8:24a)
(5) ‘we wait for it patiently’ (8:25b)