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In the name of Jesus, Amen.
Dear Saints of God, we consider today the Epistle lesson from Romans chapter 8, the words of God through the Apostle Paul, talking about our suffering as Christians. It is, and here’s a way into the text, at least. This is the text that I will use when I get the question from the confirmands: Pastor, why do animals have to die?
Now, that’s, I think, seems a little bit silly question at first, but then the more you think about it, the more it makes sense, right? It wasn’t like the animals were there behind Adam and Eve, and when Eve ate the fruit, and then Adam ate the fruit, and then they passed it along to the horse, and the hippopotamus, and all the animals also ate the fruit so that they would also have to die. No, they didn’t do any such thing. They did not sin. They did not disobey God’s commandment. In fact, I don’t even think they had a command from God to disobey. So then why do they have to die? Why can’t it just be people, Adam and Eve and the descendants of Adam and Eve that die? That’s a good question.
I think Paul is addressing that question in this text. It seems like he’s a little bit off topic, at least at first glance, because here we are in Romans chapter 8, which is a pinnacle chapter in the scriptures. It’s so beautiful, and there are so many things that culminate and come together in this chapter. I heard one person describe Romans chapter 8 as like you’ve been hiking up a mountain and you’ve gotten to the top; you’re at the peak and you see all the vistas and it’s so beautiful.
Romans 8 is full of comfort, it’s full of wisdom, it’s full of God’s kindness. The spirit of God, which we had a couple of verses already, who’s praying and groaning for us, and now we’re His children, we’re adopted into His family. It’s full of gospel, full of God’s kindness, and it seems like Paul wanders off the track just a little bit to catch the corruption of creation. But in this, he’s answering this question.
He says, if you look at verse 19, “For creation waits with eager longing.” And here he’s talking about, well, he’s not talking about Adam and Eve, although maybe he’s talking about our earthly bodies. He’s talking about the animals. He’s talking about plants. He’s talking about the earth. He’s talking about the sun and the moon and the stars and all the things that the Lord created in the six days of creation.
Creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. In other words, the corruption of creation and the reason why the animals die, why the trees fall over, and why there are storms and disasters and stars that explode and all this kind of stuff is because creation itself is waiting for the day of the resurrection of all flesh.
For, and here’s the punchline of this particular section, verse 20: “For creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.”
For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together. Now, here’s what I think happened. This is a little bit my opinion, but I think it’s informed from the text. But if you have a different opinion on what I’m about to say, in fact, I would really like to hear it. I think it’d be helpful for me.
But here’s what I think happened. I think when Adam and Eve fell, Adam and Eve, who had been given dominion over the whole creation, who had been given dominion over all the earth, over all the beasts of the field, over the birds of the sky, and over the fish of the sea, and even Adam and Eve who God created the sun and the moon and the stars to serve them in their life.
When Adam and Eve fell, the Lord looked at this and He said, “Now this is not right that Adam and Eve have to die but that everything else gets to keep living.” So the Lord took the curse that Adam and Eve brought on themselves and applied it to everything that Adam and Eve had dominion over. So the animals, even though they did not sin like Adam and Eve sinned, they did not break God’s law like Adam and Eve broke God’s law. Even though those things did not happen, the Lord now subjects the creation, not willingly—in other words, creation didn’t choose this—but God subjects creation to futility, waiting for the resurrection of the children of God.
Now, this means that everything under the dominion of Adam and Eve was also placed under the curse of death, under the curse of corruption, and that the suffering that Adam and Eve brought into the world by their own disobedience is not just shared with us through original sin, those who are descendants of Adam and Eve, but it’s also shared with the entirety of creation, with the entirety of the created world.
Now, this reminds us, and here we’re getting a little bit closer to what Paul is doing with this text, because this reminds us that we also suffer, that we also die, that we also are afflicted in this life, and we might ask the same question that the children ask about the animals, about ourselves. The question goes like this: Pastor, if we’re forgiven of our sins, why do we still have to die?
We know that we die because we’re sinners. Death is not the result of disease. Death is not the result of corruption. Death is not the result of the bad choices that you make. You and I are dying because we’re sinners. If you eat of it, dying, you will die. The wages of sin is death. Sin shows up in our own lives as dying. But then the question is, if our sins are forgiven, then why do we still have to die?
If Christ died in our place, then why don’t we get to live forever? If Jesus is taking away the curse of Adam and Eve, then why do we still live this life of suffering? And this is Paul’s answer: that much like the animals and all the rest of creation that were subjected to futility and corruption in the expectation of the resurrection, so now we suffer in this life in the expectation of glory. Let me explain a little bit more.
Paul explains it this way in verse 17, which is one verse before your reading, but it kind of sets the pace for what’s going on, and it’s even hard to see in the English because Paul does something that’s really interesting in the Greek, and you can’t really translate it. There’s a word in Greek, it’s really like a little… you put it at the beginning of the word, the word sun, and it means with or together. In fact, the word synod that we have, like Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod, comes from the Greek word sun hodos, which means to walk together or to be on the way together. It’s that word together, and Paul actually uses that little Greek phrase on three words right in a row in verse 17.
Let me read it for you in English and then I’ll give you a weird translation to try to capture it. In English it goes like this, starting with verse 16: “The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we’re the children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God.” And here’s the first one: “and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him.”
Now, that word fellow heirs is one word in the Greek, that word suffer with him is one word in the Greek, and that word glorified with him is one word in the Greek. In other words, it goes like this. Paul says we are co-heirs, which means we are co-sufferers before we are co-glorified. So that God has forgiven our sins, adopted us into His family, given us all the riches of heaven, thrown open the door to eternal life completely by His grace and mercy, by the death of Jesus on the cross, so that we have all of these things.
But just like Jesus suffered, we also must suffer, and so that just like Jesus is glorified, we also will be glorified. So that our sufferings now are with Christ. I can’t even figure out how to capture this. It’s not like Jesus is suffering here and we’re kind of suffering with Him. No, it’s that in our sufferings, Christ suffers, and in His sufferings, we suffer. He’s sympathetic with us. That’s, in fact, the word, sympatheo. He feels our own suffering. He’s not far from it.
If someone punches you in the face, Jesus feels it. If you stub your toe, He crunches His face. If you knock your head, He grinds His teeth. He’s with you in this suffering. And in this Jesus being with you in the suffering, it transforms our suffering. Look, apart from Christ, apart from the death and resurrection of Jesus, apart from His mercy and kindness, all of our sufferings are reminders of the curse. When you go to a funeral, it reminds you that the person who is there to be buried is a sinner and they’re suffering the curse.
If you eat of it, you’ll die. And every bit of your own suffering, if it’s physical suffering—and I think a lot of the physical suffering is what the text is actually talking about. If you’re sick, if you’re diseased, if you’re weak, if you’re tired, if the bad diagnosis came, if you’re just getting older, you feel the corruption of this world, that’s a sign of the curse, that you’re dying. And not just the physical suffering but also all the other suffering, the fighting between people in our homes, out of the homes, the alienation, the frustration of husband and wife and parents and children and neighbors for one another and wars and all this stuff, that’s all reminders of the curse that we’re living in a fallen world.
But through the death and resurrection of Jesus, our suffering has been transformed. Maybe here’s the picture: The pain that we feel is not the pain of a deathbed, but the pain of a birthing room, and that’s an entirely different kind of pain. If you’re on the deathbed and you’re writhing, and you know what’s coming next is death, but if you’re in the birthing room and you’re feeling the pain, you know what’s coming next is life, a child to be born. And that’s how Paul says it. He says, “Not only this, but we know that the whole creation has been groaning together, I’m looking at verse 22, can you see it here? We know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now.”
So that the sufferings of this life for the Christian are not the throes of death but the contractions coming before birth. And that is an entirely different thing. Your suffering, the things that you’re suffering now, and all of us are suffering, some of us have a long list, some of us just have a few things on it, but all of us are suffering, and that suffering is not—listen very carefully—that suffering that you’re enduring now is not an indication that God is mad at you or that God is angry with you or that you are under the curse. No, Jesus suffered for that already. God is not angry with you. He has not forgotten you. He has not turned His back on you.
The sufferings that you are enduring now are creating in you a hope for the life to come. They’re indicating to you that something better is on the way. Every tear that you cry is a reminder that the Lord will wipe away all of your tears. Every sleepless night is a reminder of the rest that’s on the way for the people of God. Every night of sorrow, every time of tribulation, all of it is a reminder that glory is to come. We are co-sufferers so that we also will share in His glory. There’s a picture that Luther preached one time that I think captures this.
He says you have to imagine that you’re in the dungeon of a castle. Remember this? I’ve told you this before. I’m just checking to see if you’re nodding, if you remember what I preach or not. Maybe it’s good that you forget so then I can use it again. You have to imagine yourself in the dungeon of a prison, which is already a pretty bad spot to be, and it’s even worse because that prison is under a castle, and that castle is being bombarded. The cannonballs are hitting the walls of the castle, and you’re down there in the dungeon, and every time the cannonball hits the side of the castle, you feel the whole thing rumble, and the dust falls from the ceiling, and you think, “Is the castle going to hold up? Is it going to collapse?”
This is what this life is like. But Luther says, “But it’s a totally different picture if you have been captured by the king of the castle, and the army that’s bombarding the castle out there—well, that’s the army of the king, who is also your father, who is surrounded the castle and is hitting it with cannonballs so that he can rescue you and he can get you out of prison.”
So that every bit of suffering in this life, all the tribulation and affliction and everything that we’re enduring, this is reminding us that the Lord is rescuing us from this life, rescuing us from this fallen world, bringing us to the hope of eternal life and the joy of the resurrection. And that our moaning, our affliction, our deep kind of sighing and the pain of this life, this is a reminder of the life to come.
In fact, so much so that the Holy Spirit takes all of our pain, all of this deep groaning and affliction, He takes that as His own language to pray. I was just reading Luther this last week, and he was talking about this. He says that when we start to pray, it’s like the froth on the top of a beer. It’s just not there yet. It’s not from the heart; it’s just something that we want. And he says that oftentimes the Lord will wait to answer our prayers so that our prayers sink down to the bottom of the glass.
Our prayers, through our afflictions, sink down to the bottom of our hearts, and the Lord hears them because that’s where He is. So He waits for the prayers to get down there to where we hardly have any words to use. It’s just simply a groaning, and the Lord hears the prayers; the Holy Spirit takes up those prayers, and then the Lord delivers us.
So it’s not just creation, but we ourselves—this is verse 23—who have the first fruits of the Spirit groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. So why do the animals have to die? And why do we have to die? Why does creation suffer? And why do we suffer? These are all the shakings of the world that’s on the way—reminders of the resurrection, gifts from God to set our hope on the life that is to come.
That day when Jesus will stand on the earth and call us up out of the grave, and we will stand clothed in glory with Him and see Him face to face. So may God grant it; may God grant it for Christ’s sake, that we would rejoice even in our sufferings and afflictions, knowing that the weight of glory is waiting for us. And may we, with Paul, consider the sufferings of this present time not even worthy to be compared to the glory that will be revealed in us. May God grant it for Christ’s sake. Amen.
The peace of God passes all understanding. Guard your hearts and minds through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
