Awaiting Full Redemption
Notes
Transcript
We come once again to the words found in the eighth chapter of Paul’s epistle to the Romans, in the 23rd verse, where the Holy Spirit inspired him to write
And not only this, but also we ourselves, having the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, eagerly waiting for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our body.
Now, we need to remember that the apostle is explaining how it is that we who are in Christ Jesus should face suffering, whether the suffering that is common to all men and women in every age, such as disease, futility, and death, or speaking of the unique suffering we who are in Christ endure on account of our union with Him, on account of having the first fruits of the Holy Spirit.
And the apostle’s method of doing so, is for us to be reminded of the truth regarding ourselves now that we are in Christ Jesus.
This is, of course, of no use to the many people outside of Christ Jesus; they are in a woeful state with no hope of deliverance if they continue to refuse Christ, if they do not repent of their sin and turn to Him in faith; there is nothing in these verses, or in any verse of Scripture, to give such a person any hope at all. The person who has not been joined to Christ through faith, Ephesians 2:12 reminds us, is “… without Christ, alienated from the citizenship of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world.” The Bible gives no hope and not even any comfort to such a person; Jesus spoke with Nicodemus in John 3:18 of such a person, saying “…he who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.” The shocking thing is not that God doesn’t save certain people, but rather that He chooses to save anybody at all, for in our natural condition we are all wretched beyond hope, there is no part of us at all that has not been corrupted by the sin of Adam. Such a person must turn to in faith to the Lord Jesus Christ, to confess Him as Lord, to believe in their heart that God raised Him from the dead, proving He is one with the Father just as He had proclaimed in the days of His flesh.
But for those of us who have done so already, we have been indwelt by the Holy Spirit, every one of us – without exception. This is the “first fruits” of the glory to come, that we now, at the present time, have this first and leading manifestation, the very first hint of the glory which will be revealed to us in full, and on account of this, we groan within ourselves as we wait eagerly and expectantly for the glory to come, just as your mouth salivates at the thought of the coming harvest when you taste the sweet goodness of that first ripe strawberry plucked from its vine, and bite into it, savoring the taste after so long without it.
This, of course, is the essence of the first phrases in this verse, and it’s vital that we understand these things correctly.
But what we haven’t really covered is what we are waiting for, that we would rightly understand what Paul means when he writes that we are “eagerly waiting for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our body.”
Indeed, many calling themselves Christians today have a wrong focus on what we groan for, so it is vital that we take care to understand what Scripture says on the matter.
Let’s pray, and then we’ll dive in.
O Lord our God, worthy is Your Christ to take the scroll, and to open its seals, for He was slain and purchased for God with His blood His own from every tribe and tongue and people and nation. You made them to be a kingdom and priests to You, o Yahweh. Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power and riches and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and blessing! To Him who sites on the throne, and to the Lamb, be the blessing and the honor and the glory and the might forever and ever. Amen!
Now, I think that it is supremely helpful when we consider the manner and mode of how Paul deals with future events here, because it’s rather striking when you think about it. We’re somewhat used to the imagery like that of Ezekiel, who writes in chapter 1 that the “heavens were opened, and I saw visions of God”, and then describes them saying “Then I looked, and behold, a storm wind was coming from the north, a great cloud with fire flashing forth continually and a bright light all around it, and in its midst something like the gleam of glowing metal in the midst of the fire.” Or, we think of the visions of John in the book of Revelation with the visions he was commanded to write down and send to the churches.
But that’s not what happens here with Paul! No, Paul’s method here is to tell us how to face suffering in the present is for us to recognize and to know the truth regarding our future. In other words, the way we face the future is the same way we face our present – by knowing and being reminded about what is true of us, and by demonstrating how both what is true of us now, and what is true of us then, should shape and encompass how it is we ought to approach and conduct this life we have in Christ Jesus.
This is a very deliberate, pastoral method on his part! Up through verse 17, he has been anchoring us solidly in the settled facts of the gospel of Christ Jesus; that in Him there is now no condemnation, that on account of our union with Him we have been indwelt by the Holy Spirit, that having and being led by the Holy Spirit we have been adopted as sons by God and so are joint-heirs with Christ Jesus. Though these things are sure to stabilize and fix our thinking clearly, the suffering we are sure to endure attempts to toss us about and threaten to overwhelm us, so we likewise must have our eyes firmly fixed upon the hope we have in the glory which awaits all who are in Christ Jesus, so that our present afflictions don’t become either misunderstood or over-emphasized. Suffering with our feet firmly planted in the real and present grace we enjoy, with our eyes fixed forward on the future glory that awaits us, is the only way to rightly avoid bitterness in suffering on the one hand, or despising the means God uses to conform us to the image of Christ Jesus on the other!
Since it is this future state that gives us hope, then, we really do need to be clear in our minds what Paul is talking about, and he gives us the bare necessities here.
And there’s a certain rightness in helping us understand what is being said in the Authorized which adds two words to help our understanding, “to wit”, an older phrase meaning “that is to say”, or “namely”, or to bring to mind the particular current emphasis of a general statement. “…even we ourselves groan within ourselves, wait for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body.” The adoption that Paul speaks of here is specific to the events of this redemption of our body.
There is specificity to this future event that many people, many in churches across the world this morning, miss entirely, and I tend to agree with the suggestion made by Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones that its cause must be laid at the feet of the spiritists who have so infected churches and popular thinking with their wiles that cast our thinking of the future primarily in terms of us no longer having a body, but as an ethereal spirit traveling up to heaven. Their primary focus regarding the future is typically bound up in the rapture of the church, so much so that they often reduce the millennial kingdom or the great judgement to somewhat inconsequential, minor events for believers. Their focus is nearly entirely on the rapture, so much so that it is no wonder that our Reformed brethren so often have a distinct distrust of the doctrine as a guilt-by-association fallacy.
But we need to be clear here – Paul is very specific in his language, the thing we hope in, the thing that we are eagerly waiting for, is not the rapture of the church, as consequential as that event will be in God’s redemptive plan. The rapture of the church is likened to the home-taking of a Jewish bride, whose husband has been told by his father that everything was sufficiently ready for him to go and get his betrothed in order that they would complete the wedding. When his friends joyously get her and carry her from her father’s house to the house of her husband’s family is not the thing she looks forward to, but rather her desire is to finally be with her husband as man and wife – the rapture of the church fails to meet the intent that Paul clearly has here!
Likewise, the millennial kingdom falls short, as it, too, does not see the redemption of our bodies, but rather has the clear and pointed purpose of proving to everyone that the cry “if we had only known the truth clearly”, as if to blame God for failing to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, that this inevitable complaint is a false and void argument, to ensure that each and every person realizes with the rise and defeat of Gog and Magog that it is not information that is required, for they would see this thousand-year reign of Christ and still rebel against Him in the end, but rather it is to emphasize that a changed heart of faith is what is accepted by God. And again, it’s worth pointing out the rather peculiar language of John in Revelation 20:4, “…I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded because of their witness of Jesus” come to life and reign with him. Souls, not people with their bodies. So again, the millennial kingdom cannot be in view here when Paul is specifically referring to “the redemption of our body.”
No, what Paul is referring to here is something that is final and permanent and complete, rather than temporary and partial. The rapture and tribulation which follow it cover only 7 short years, the millennial kingdom likewise has a fixed ending; and any signs, which all too many morbidly fixate upon as they spend their days looking for signs and seasons and moons and movements rather than the day of our Lord as a thief in the night. No, we are admonished to fix our eyes upon not signs and wonders, but “upon Jesus Christ, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.” in the epistle to the Hebrews. Though we may be aware of other things, they are not to be our focus!
And what we look to, then, is the day of the Lord, and the eternal state which that Day will usher in.
It may help us here to realize with clarity that our salvation, though real and lasting in the manner Paul has been describing to us all along here in this chapter, is now at this present time partial and incomplete. We are saved in our spirit, yet our mortal bodies remain – we don’t see thousand-plus year old Christians walking around downtown Battle Creek, or stopping at the four-way stop here in Hickory Corners. In chapter 6, Paul had explained that we still have a mortal body, and that mortal body has lusts and desires that are at odds with our redeemed spirit, that we ourselves struggle within ourselves to use our members for righteousness rather than unrighteousness.
John writes in chapter 3 of his first epistle, “Beloved, now we are children of God, and it has not been manifested as yet what we will be.” We don’t know, we are given glimpses and allusions to the coming glorification of our bodies, “when He is manifested, we will be like Him” John wrote, but the corruption of sin yet remains in our flesh, we still have to put forth effort restrain it from having its way.
When Adam sinned, it was not just his spirit that was forever altered by his transgression, but his whole person was corrupted through both his rebellion and also God’s curse against him – body and spirit, parts visible and parts invisible; all of man’s faculties and parts have been defiled in the fall of man. The perfection of Genesis 1:31 ,“And God saw all that He had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day”, has been entirely and totally corrupted, in that no part or parcel has not been profoundly twisted: the mind has be darkened, the will has been corrupted, the affections became disordered, the body into which God breathed the breath of life has become weak and corrupt and mortal – it is a body of death.
Far from being neutral in the matter, the body of each one of us is from our conception a willing participant in the Fall and depravity of man, and because this remains even after salvation, we who are united to Christ Jesus are commanded and admonished to restrain our own bodies from the sin which no longer reigns and has dominion over our body, even though that sin yet still resides within our body. It has been dethroned, as it were, but not eradicated. Our restraint of our body’s sinful lusts is not because our body is neutral, but because sin is dangerous, and it is utterly and entirely on account of the undeserved grace that God has heaped upon is that sin has been broken of its mastery over us in the first place.
But we should never mistake our ability, and at times success, in restraining our body, with an actual redemption of our body. Mortifying sin is not the same as our glorification!
And so, although we who are in Christ Jesus have and possess now, in this present age, the Spirit of adoption whereby we do cry out “Abba Father”, our adoption is incomplete because our family resemblance is incomplete, our salvation, though we who are in Christ Jesus are now as saved as we ever will be, though our salvation is as secure and certain as it ever will be, our salvation in the present age will always be incomplete until the final redemption.
Now when we read at the end of Romans 5,
Now the Law came in so that the transgression would increase, but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more, so that, as sin reigned in death, even so grace would reign through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.
…so long as sin remains at all, we cannot truly say that “grace abounds more than sin”. So long as corruption and depravity remain, the design of Satan to ruin and spoil God’s “very good” totality of all He had made remains, Satan appears to have won his battle against the Most High God. For God to display His triumph, the sin and the corruption and the curse must all be put right. God will not permit sin to have the final word over any part of His creation! God as not simply speaking of an innocence when He called all that He had made “very good”, but it was ordered and it was harmonious both within all of its parts, and in whole, and in its relationship with God. If sin were to be left to ruin more than grace restores. then we can hardly consider grace to have matched sin, let alone outstrip sin as this “super abounding” language would suggest.
It’s not that the body is bad and must be disposed – to suggest such a thing is to deny the clear teach of Scripture says everywhere. Rather, our bodies must be remade so that they are like unto Christ’s body, rather than Adam’s body. Our spiritual family resemblance must be paired with a physical family resemblance.
So John, in his epistle, writes
Beloved, now we are children of God, and it has not been manifested as yet what we will be. We know that when He is manifested, we will be like Him, because we will see Him just as He is.
For Christ has been raised from the dead, not as an incorporeal spirit, but as a full man, a man who has substance that Thomas could put his hand into, who could walk and talk with disciples on the road to Emmaus, who could cook fish over a charcoal fire at the shore, or appear among them and eat a piece of broiled fish another time.
No, if Christ is raised from the dead in such a manner, Paul writes in 1 Corinthians chapter 15, so too must we be raised from the dead.
But now Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep. For since by a man came death, by a man also came the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive.
So, it is to Christ’s return that we must look, it is when we will see Him and we will be like Him that we wait, and that must of necessity include a glorified body! And for the moment, for this age, we experience this tension between what our what our souls know is the inevitable result, and the very real difference we experience in this present age!
It is this event that even creation longs for – notice this clearly in verse 19,
For the anxious longing of the creation eagerly waits for the revealing of the sons of God.
Just as John talked in terms of manifesting, Paul uses the term revealing, both speak of the same thing; something that is true but the curtain has not been fully pulled back for us to see and understand it; neither of them point to an elimination or even a replacement, but a profound modification which can only be accomplished supernaturally by God, who creates life from even death.
So what are the implications for us? What exhortation and admonition does…
And not only this, but also we ourselves, having the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, eagerly waiting for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our body.
…bring to us?
First, let us be clear that our own focus must not even be on death, even though Paul describes it as far better in Philippians 1, that death is still an enemy which Christ must overcome, that our hope is not in death, for that that is yet still an enemy to be defeated; rather our hope looks beyond death to our full and final redemption. Death alone does nothing to reduce the curse, it is itself part of the curse and the very sentence of condemnation, a condemnation we who are in Christ Jesus no longer have any part of. So we who are in Christ Jesus do and should be grieved at death, it is right to do so, but unlike those outside of Christ who will only experience an eternal condemnation, those who are in Christ yet have hope, we grieve but not in the hopelessness the world grieves. No, our hope lies solidly and plainly in the finished completion of super-abounding grace!
And so, we have a present responsibility even now, to place our bodies under subjection, to restrain their sinful desires and lusts, that when we would have confidence and not shrink away from Him in shame at His coming, as 1 John 2 admonishes us. When we are “eagerly waiting”, this isn’t resignation that we may pass our time doing other things that hold our interest as we wait idly for God to “do the next thing”, like we would scrolled through facebook on our phone while in the waiting room of a doctor’s office, no! To eagerly wait, is a posture of active participation in patience, in which our hope of the future redemption of our body causes us to obediently endure our current suffering in submission to God’s timing. We submissively subject our longing to God’s will in this matter. It is active obedience governed by hope and trust, until God Himself finishes what He has begun, rather than wresting the reigns away from Him like a petulant, unruly child.
Because our body remains a fallen instrument, it must be restrained; because our union with Christ Jesus is real, our body can be restrained; and because the redemption of even our bodies is promised, we have great and powerful hope, giving us endurance in the present age.
Let us pray.
Discussion Questions
Discussion Questions
Why does Paul describe the believer’s hope in Romans 8:23 specifically as “the redemption of our body,” rather than simply deliverance from suffering or death? What does this teach us about how completely God intends to reverse the effects of the Fall?
How does understanding our salvation as secure yet incomplete shape the way we endure ongoing weakness, sin, and bodily decay in this present age? What dangers arise if we forget either side of that tension?
Why is it important to distinguish between mortifying sin now and the future glorification of our bodies? How does confusing the two distort either Christian obedience or Christian hope?
Question for Reflection Throughout the Week
When you think about the future you are “eagerly waiting for,” are you most comforted by the idea of rest from struggle, or by the promise of being fully conformed—body and soul—to Christ?
How does that expectation shape the way you live in your body today?
