(Genesis 3:17-19, Isaiah 43:16-21; Romans 8:18-30)
In the wilderness. In this between. As Christians we live in tension, for we are still in this world, but we do not belong here. We have given our allegiance, our obedience, our whole lives to a king we have never seen and cannot see; we have become part of a reality that is at odds with the reality of the world we see. We are surrounded by the present, but we belong to the future; we are out of phase with time and this world.
And in that, we suffer. We suffer because this world suffers, because evil and cruelty run like a thin red line through every human heart, snarling our communities and cutting across our lives. There are none innocent and none who are not victims, none who are not oppressors and none who do not bleed; and if we follow Christ we suffer more, and will suffer more, because he calls us to stand down all our worldly defenses and lay down all our worldly weapons. We are to resist the world, but we do not fight it on its terms; and sometimes that means we get hit hard.
If we focus on our sufferings and our trials, if we set our minds and our hearts on the things of this world, then we will be miserable; we’ll see everything in life through the lens of our anxiety, pain, and disappointment. If our hope is for this life and the rewards of this world, then our souls will always be in pawn to our circumstances, our lives driven by things outside our control. Our only paths to happiness will be to try to avoid suffering and conflict and any trials that might be too great for us, or else to attempt to dominate and control everyone around us in an effort to squash any threats before they get too close; but either way, we end up spending all our energy in ultimately fruitless efforts to prevent bad things from happening, and thus unable to pursue what is good.
As Christians, while we’re called to live in the present, we are not to live for the present. Our lives have a goal and a purpose which goes beyond this time, and indeed beyond this life altogether; we are called to live toward the future, in the light of the future, and to see all our circumstances—struggles and opportunities, pleasures and sufferings alike—in that light. Our sorrows, our groanings and our pains are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us, which is already ours in Christ Jesus; they are temporary, they will end, but his glory is eternal for he is eternal.
For now, our pains and struggles serve to remind us that we are not who we were created to be; and as we see the groaning of the natural world around us, both in the violence we do to it and in the violence it does to itself—the weather we’ve been having lately is an excellent example of that—we see clearly that the world as a whole is not how it ought to be. The frustration and pain of the created world, and the frustration and pain we experience as part of this world—if we face them honestly—drive us to recognize that we need a better hope than the election of another politician, even one with really cool posters, or the passage of another bill. We need a hope that goes beyond what we can see; we need more than to be fixed up a bit, we need to be made new.
The challenge is that hope doesn’t make things easier. Indeed, knowing that we have this hope, having the Holy Spirit at work in our hearts, drives us to groan, because we have the first fruits of his work, and we long for the whole harvest, for the fulfillment and the full experience of our salvation; what we have already makes us yearn for what we have not yet known, and it increases our frustration at how short of that we fall, again and again. We hope for what we do not see, and this is hard, but this is also what makes our hope worthwhile; for as Paul says in 2 Corinthians 4, what is seen is passing away, it will end in dust and ash and a puff of smoke, but what we cannot see is eternal. Thus we know that our hope is worthwhile, and thus we are able to hold on and not lose heart.
To be sure, in our own strength it would be too much for us to hold on, no matter our motivation; but we aren’t left to do anything in our own strength, for the Spirit of God comes to our aid and gives us strength in our weakness. And note what strength Paul has in mind: “for we don’t know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit prays for us, even though we cannot hear his prayers.”
If we would live in the hope of God and the power of the Spirit, we must live in prayer and by prayer, so that the eyes of our heart can be opened to see what the eyes of the flesh cannot see; but this leaves us wondering what to pray. Worse, it leaves us wondering: if we pray wrong, does that mean we’ll miss out? Does our prayer depend on us being smart enough to figure out ahead of time what God’s thinking?
If that were so, it would pitch us right back into living by law, and of a particularly sadistic sort—for God to answer our prayers, we would first have to read his mind; but that isn’t how it works, because we do not pray on our own: the Spirit of God prays with us, and on our behalf. However uncertain our prayers may be, however prone we may be to pray for the wrong thing, however imperfect our understanding and our knowledge of God’s will, the Holy Spirit is always praying too, with us and for us, and always in perfect accord with the will of the Father.
This is good news; but it might not always seem like good news. Doesn’t that mean that the Spirit’s prayers for us will sometimes contradict our prayers? Very likely, yes; but honestly, that’s part of the blessing. I appreciate Luther’s take on this: “It is not a bad but a very good sign if the opposite of what we pray for appears to happen. Just as it is not a good sign if our prayers result in the fulfillment of all we ask for. This is so because the counsel and will of God far excel our counsel and will.” He’s exaggerating—Luther did that every once in a while—but he’s doing it to make a point: we can trust what God is doing even when he gives us the opposite of what we want, because he knows infinitely better than we do what is best for us.
Thus we have this ringing declaration in verse 28: those whom God has called as his own, to his purpose—which is to say, those who love him—have the assurance that in everything that happens, God is at work for our good. When he gives us when we ask for, or when he doesn’t, God is at work for our good. In joyful days, in times of great success, in seasons of failure and pain and trial, God is at work for our good. Even in our greatest sins—the sins from which he does not simply deliver us, but which he leaves as struggles in our lives—even there, God is at work for our good. That doesn’t mean it’s good if we sin—should we continue to sin that grace may abound? Not on your life!—but it does mean that not even our sins defeat God’s work in us. Of course, as Douglas Moo put it, “many things we suffer will contribute to our ‘good’ only by refining our faith and strengthening our hope.” Even so, we will be glad of all of it in the end.
God’s choice of his people is unstoppable, and it will end inevitably in glory. Some would take the word “foreknew” in verse 29 and argue that this just means God foresaw those who would choose to love him, and thus that everything that follows is his response to our action; but that doesn’t work—this word is much stronger than that. God knew us, not just what we would do, from before the beginning of time—he knew us, and he chose us, and he predestined us to be saved, to be transformed, to be made like Christ and to share in his glory.
And the rest follows like an avalanche: those whom he predestined, he called, and those whom he called, he justified, and those whom he justified, he glorified. Period. It is already done, it is all already done. God has acted, and that’s all there is to it; no one can stop his work, nothing can interrupt it—his plan is in motion, and its success is inevitable. Suffering along the way? Yes. Sorrow and grief? To be sure. Failure? We know it all too well. But are any of them permanent, any of them final? No. God allows them in his time and works through them in our lives for our growth; they’re growing pains, nothing more. We are in the wilderness, but this is not our final destination; we don’t make a home here, we look forward to the home that lies ahead. In Christ, we have the sure and certain hope of glory waiting for us, just over Jordan. The Holy Spirit is leading us there, and the Father is standing with open arms. Just keep your eyes on him and your feet on the road; he’s faithful—you’ll get there.