Groaning With Hope

There is a word that recurs three times in the middle of Romans 8, and it is not a triumphant one. Groaning. Creation groans as in the pains of childbirth. We ourselves groan inwardly as we wait for the redemption of our bodies. And the Spirit intercedes for us through wordless groans when we do not know what to pray. Paul's greatest chapter about assurance has a low, aching sound running through it.

This matters because Christians are sometimes tempted to pretend the aching is not there. Romans 8 does not pretend. It says plainly that the present sufferings are real, that creation has been subjected to frustration, that we do not yet have what we hope for. And then it says, in the same breath, that the sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed, that the frustration was in hope, and that we wait for what we do not have with patience. Hope, in this chapter, is not the absence of groaning. It is groaning with a direction.

The one idea to hold is that God is at work inside the groaning, not merely after it. The Spirit helps us in our weakness. When we do not know what to pray, he prays. God searches hearts and knows the mind of the Spirit. And in all things, the hard things included, God works for the good of those who love him. The chain of verses 29 and 30, foreknown, predestined, called, justified, glorified, is written in the past tense all the way through, as though the last link were as settled as the first. From God's side, it is.

The turn toward life is the end of the chapter, which is one of the most quoted passages in Scripture and deserves to be. If God is for us, who can be against us? Paul lists everything that might separate a believer from the love of God, death and life, angels and demons, present and future, height and depth, and concludes that none of it can. Not because the list is short but because the love is in Christ Jesus our Lord, and he has already been through death and out the other side. So today, if you are groaning, groan honestly. You are in good company; creation and the Spirit are groaning with you. But groan toward the end of the chapter, where nothing in all creation can separate you from the love of God.