The Triumph of Grace: Romans 1--8
Lesson Ten--Page 41
Lesson Ten--Romans 8:18-39 Grace triumphs over suffering 8:18-27 All groan for the time when God will restore all things
What creation wants to do:
Verses 18-22 Creation groans Read Genesis 3:14-19. This is when God subjected the creation to frustration. Brainstorm all the things creation wants to do for God and man, but can't because of the curse put on it by God. Genesis 3:14–19 The Lord God said to the serpent: Because you have done this, you are cursed more than all the livestock, and more than every wild animal. You shall crawl on your belly, and you shall eat dust all the days of your life. 15 I will put hostility between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed. He will crush your head, and you will crush his heel. 16 To the woman he said: I will greatly increase your pain in childbearing. With painful labor you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, but he will rule over you. 17 To Adam he said: Because you listened to your wife’s voice and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, “You shall not eat from it,” the soil is cursed on account of you. You will eat from it with painful labor all the days of your life. 18 Thorns and thistles will spring up from the ground for you, but you will eat the crops of the field. 19 By the sweat of your face you will eat bread until you return to the soil, for out of it you were taken. For you are dust, and to dust you shall return.
Why creation can't do this:
Think of an example from your own life when you witnessed something in nature that illustrated the “futility” and “slavery to corruption” under which the creation is living. Verses 23-25 Christians groan Even though we have a foretaste of heaven (the gift of God's Holy Spirit), we yearn for eternal life. Examine each of the beautiful descriptions of the hope all Christians share:
“the sons of God to be revealed”
“the glorious freedom of the children of God”
“our adoption as sons, the redemption of our body”
In light of what Paul says here, evaluate the statement “Christians should not be so heavenly-minded that they are of no earthly good.”
© 1997 Northwestern Publishing House. Reprinted by permission.