Christ Life In Us Romans 8:18-19

So let's turn to Romans chapter 8. We're taking it in small sections, as you might have noticed. And just for you folks who are wondering about the future, actually, I've been asked by at least one person, what's going to happen after we finish chapter 8 of Romans? Well, we talked about it, and our brother Mike Doyle said, hey, how about let's do Colossians? So if you guys are, you know, Read ahead, we're gonna go to Colossians here after we finish, probably will be starting in August. That's kind of the schedule. So in August, you can look forward to Colossians. Okay, so it's Romans chapter eight today.

And let's, we're gonna start back, not too many verses for today. Let's start back in verse 16. And it says, the Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, heirs also, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with him, in order that we may also be glorified with him. Then on to verse 18, for I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed to us. for the anxious lungs of creation wait eagerly for the revealing of the sons of God. So just some really neat verses here for today. So here's my thought for today. So today we're gonna be talking about the concept of present suffering versus future glory. So I found this little thing on the internet. You know, you can type in clip art and you can find clip art of about any topic out there. So we're gonna see how this fits in. So let's just go ahead and look at this first.

So let's think about salvation. Actually, we talked about this at Sunday school a little bit. Salvation, God's plan for salvation kind of shows the totality of his work with mankind. So God starts off with his salvation plan in what's been called phase one, that we're saved from the penalty of sin.

And that happens when we put our faith and trust in the Lord Jesus Christ at death on the cross and resurrection. When we do that, we're born again. And that's what's called, and that's an event in a person's life. And when that happens, he's born again and he starts phase two. Phase two in a believer's life is being saved from the power of sin. And that's his entire Christian life on this earth. But then, after the Lord takes him home, or he dies, or maybe the Lord returns, we have phase three. Phase three is being saved from the presence of sin.

So we come to faith in him, we're saved from the penalty of sin, we live our Christian life, being saved from the power of sin, and it's critical that we believe we've been saved from the power of sin. If we think we have to fight it ourselves, It's almost a lost cause, but it's because we can't. And that's why we spend so much time, you may notice we spend so much time here at Holly Hills focused on your response to what God says. He said you've been separated from your sin nature, but you do believe that. That's the key, that's the key to the Christian life. Okay, so then when you die or the Lord takes you home, you're saved from the very presence of sin. So the theologians weren't that satisfied with those Little saying that they had to, and I don't, I shouldn't, I'm not, who am I to judge?

These are scriptural words. So people have named phase one something, and phase two something, and phase three something. And you've heard of these. Most of you have heard of this. So first of all, phase one is called justification. And there's good reason. There's scriptures that talk about that. You've been justified, declared righteous by God, based on your faith. And it's a little dark, because you believed. It only takes one time to believe. And maybe you're the kind of person that you weren't sure, and you believe, you know. So anyway, you can't define that point, but it's basically a point.

But what's called the second phase, sanctification, which is a bigger word, is this growing in grace and the knowledge that God has accomplished in you. You've been saved from the power of sin. And then thirdly is glorification. We're face to face with our Savior, So I kind of want to put a verse next to each one of these. And it's important. Here's a really important thing you need to understand.

And when you look at scripture, you ought to be thinking in your mind, is it talking about phase one, phase two, or phase three? Because you're going to see, when you study God's word, we happen to have a verse on phase three today. So you have to, where am I at? Where am I at in the salvation picture? God has his plan for salvation. This verse I'm reading, where does it fit into his plan?

So the verse I chose for justification is Romans 3.24, being justified as a gift by his grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus.

So that's called justification, and I chose for the second one, a very familiar verse we've taught many times here, Romans 6.11, even so, or reckon so, or consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus.

And then thirdly, in 2 Corinthians 5.8, I prefer rather to be absent from the body and to be at home with the Lord.

And that with is a preposition, and that's the idea of where this face-to-face idea comes from. So back to the top part of this chart. So today we're going to talk about, you can actually label today's message maybe two things. One thing will be this present suffering, versus future glory. And the picture says here that the glory outweighs this present suffering. But my picture actually isn't correct. It should show glory being so, having so much weight that it pushes it down as far as it can go. So glory is so much greater than this suffering.

And we're gonna see that as we teach. And then the second part we're gonna talk about is about creation. What's, the creation all around us, what God has created. Creation is involved in God's future glory as well. We're gonna see that today too. Okay, so let's go back to last week. And last week we talked about being children of God and being heirs of God. We spent a lot of time talking about that. The last part of verse 17 from last week, we talked about the fact. And let's just look at the, it says, if indeed we suffer with him, with Christ, so that we may also be glorified with him.

And in this particular case, we have some ifs. And you might think, well, that's kind of, maybe it is true, maybe it's not. But in the Greek language, there are cases where the if is really emphatic. It's a direct statement. And this is one of those cases. If indeed could be translated sense indeed, or in as much as. It's a very strong statement of fact. It's not a condition, it's an accepted fact.

He's saying, if indeed we suffer with him, so that we may also be glorified with him. It's a fact that's going to happen in our Christian life. We suffer with him, it's present tense. It's going on all the time. Continuous action, present tense implies that.

So since indeed we suffer with him, and suffer here is the idea, it's actually co-suffering, and this is talking about, I was thinking about this as I prepared this, and here's another place where it uses that word, talking about the body suffering, I'm suffering with other believers, and if one member suffers, all members suffer, so it's this co-suffering. So what he says, if indeed, or since indeed we're suffering with Christ, this is talking about our suffering for being a Christian, basically. This is the kind of suffering, And it's suffering that we don't deserve. It's suffering that just happens because we identify ourselves as a believer. And it's with Christ in the context. And we are suffering for who we are. We're suffering as a Christian. Now, we can suffer for our own mistakes, right? For our own sins, right? If I go too fast, I get a speeding ticket, and I suffer for that. I mean, that's on me, right?

I can't blame God. Well, God, you made me speak. I'm trying to get to church here, and I had to speak to get to church. Well, that won't hold up, I'm afraid. This is talking about suffering for Christ, for being a Christian. Okay, so let's go on. So the second part is, so here's the reason. So that, it says, since we are suffering with Him, so that, with the purpose that, we may also be glorified with Him. And this construction is such that this is God's design.

Present suffering here results in future glory. It's just like with our Savior, right? He underwent the cross for the marvelous resurrection, right? He endured suffering for glory. And just believers are in the same boat. We endure suffering for future glory. We suffer with Christ is a necessary prelude to our being glorified with Christ. And so glorified is this idea to be glorified together.

And what's amazing here is that, you know, you kind of think, we have this worldview about heaven. You know, you kind of go up to, well, I'm going to go to heaven, right? I go up in all these puffy clouds and I kind of float around, and oh, there's Jesus over there. And you kind of, no, that's not heaven. Heaven is with a person. you're going to meet a person.

And you're going to be not glorified yourself, you're glorified with Him, which is even more amazing. And it says also, we're going to see, that He is glorified in us for the work of salvation He did in us. God the Father will glorify the Son for You know allowing us to go to be there with him. It's just amazing just amazing So it's not decided we kind of floating around in heaven.

Oh, hi, jesus. How you doing there? Oh, you know and looking around. It's a pretty nice place. No, we're going to see a person Glorification is a person our savior It's an event is this talked about as an event eris tense. We were talking about this morning a little bit So it's a future event that's going to happen to be glorified with him And the idea of glorification or glory is the idea of honor, of his being, his person, his attributes. God is a glorious person in all that he is. His very being, his attributes, his acts are all glorious.

So now, this kind of starts, in the last part of 17, starts the discussion in Romans 8, which we're gonna see for quite a while. There's quite a few verses that follow about our glorification and what that looks like. Okay, so here's the verses for today. For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed to us. for the anxious longings of creation wait eagerly for the revealing of the sons of God. So it starts off here for I consider.

And this is a pretty familiar word to us. We teach it a lot. This is this logits of my word. It's actually an accounting term. It's putting it down as true. Imagine if you're, I don't know if any people are into bookkeeping. You keep the books for companies, for yourself. You look in your own checkbook. That's actually a thing of the past almost. I haven't looked at my checkbook in ages. I don't think I even have a checkbook anymore. I used to have one, but I stopped doing that. You know, you use your plastic all the time.

So anyway, this is an accounting term, so it says, for I consider. So the word refers to a process of reasoning which results in arriving at a conclusion. So Paul is saying here, you know, I've looked at the facts, I've reasoned through this, and I've come to a conclusion here. For I've come to a reasoned conclusion, is how Weiss translates it. So what follows is, this is Paul's Reason reason conclusions, you know in the bookkeeping world You got made sure all the the pluses and minuses add up and you hopefully you get a positive amount in your account and not a negative amount So Paul's reason through it and what was his conclusion?

That the suffering of this present time Is not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed So he's saying, you know, you have suffering down here, but there's no comparison between that and what's what's to come and Suffering here is that which is suffered again.

For a believer, it's the suffering which we endure as being a believer. It's present tense. It's actually, what's interesting here is the word is present time. It could be rendered present season. And I noticed Merriman said suffering is a seasonal thing. And I'm scratching my head.

What does that mean? But you think about this, suffering is only for a while, right? Because as a believer, we're going to leave this world, whatever suffering you have, and that will be it. We will suffer no more. That's the end of that. And even on this earth, it seems like, maybe I'm, I hope I'm not the only person, but I, there have been very difficult times in my life of suffering, you could say. And there have been times that are not suffering. So it seems to be seasonal. That's just kind of a gut feel. But I, you know, and it's certainly seasonal for the believer, because it will not last forever. Okay, so then I went through, I just went through some verses. I said, well, let's just look at some verses that talk about the sufferings for Christ. And this is the believer's suffering on behalf, for Christ, for his being a Christian.

So the first one is in 2 Corinthians 1.5.

For just as the sufferings of Christ are ours in abundance, so our comfort is abundant through Christ. So what he's kind of doing here is he's kind of saying, God is in the business of comfort. We're comforted by his word, by his spirit. He says, you know, the sufferings are many, but the abundance are many too.

The next verse, very familiar, that I may know him and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his suffering. There's fellowship in suffering. You know, we go out and have a fellowship meal. He says, you know, my dear brothers and sisters, there's fellowship in looking at the suffering, in his sufferings being conformable unto his death. And here's one we're gonna study down the road here, you know, sometime toward the end of the year maybe. Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake in my flesh. And I do my share on behalf of his body, Christ's body, which is the church, in filling up what is lacking in Christ's afflictions.

Boy, that's an incredible verse, kind of a real head scratch. You say, how can I fill up what's lacking? First of all, is there anything lacking? This is one of those question mark verses, you say, wow, that's an interesting verse, Roger. I want you to explain that verse to me.

Well, we'll get there. It's coming down the road here. Stay tuned. Then these last two verses kind of talk about this balance between suffering and glory. And they're both in Peter, which we're going to be getting to in Sunday school. So if you want to go to the best Sunday school class, 1 Peter is the one for you guys. I know I get a reaction from Courtney there. And my shawning, so it must not be too good. OK. No, his class is good, too.

Anyway, so it says in 1 Peter 4.13, but to the degree that you share in the sufferings of Christ. Keep on rejoicing, so we're to be rejoicing that we're suffering in the sufferings of Christ, so that, and here we go with the glory part, so that also, at the revelation of his glory, you may rejoice with exaltation. The balance between suffering now and glory, then 5.1 says, therefore, I exalt the elders among you as fellow heirs and witnesses of the suffering of Christ, and a partaker of the glory that is to be revealed. So here's that balance between present suffering and future glory. Okay, so let's go on here. So back to our verse 18. For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory.

So this is kind of interesting. This word for are not worthy, Is of no weight, so he's saying that basically, when you're doing this comparison, I want you to compare it properly. I don't want you to, I don't want you to compare it improperly. He says, are not worthy is of no weight.

And what some have observed, this particular word here, is kind of refers to a set of scales. In my little research I did, I couldn't exactly find exactly the path, but it seemed like it led back to the idea of scales. So that's where I kind of came up with this idea of having glory is a more weighting. It's the most weight, whereas suffering has zero weight. So God says, think about this. Your sufferings, in comparison with glory, have no weight. On that balance scale, they have no weight. So glory is the focus, which is amazing. Our sufferings have no weight.

To be compared with the glory, so this speaks to an inconstable comment. It speaks to our glorification, which is the third and final aspect of our salvation, and which God will deliver us from the presence of sin forever. Okay, so let's go on here, the last part. That is to be revealed to us. Kind of a really short little phrase here. So it says, are not worthy to be compared with the glory to be revealed to us. So it's gonna be in the future. We're gonna have glory revealed to us as believers.

And the idea of revealing here is the idea to uncover, to unveil, and Now this is Newell, he said, you know, it's difficult to get your hands around the idea of glory being revealed to us because God is glorious. How does that work out? And he says, we know that when we're glorified with Christ, we will share His glory, we'll appear with Him in glory, but it still is kind of mind-boggling, so to speak. And this verse kind of speaks to that, in Colossians 3, 4.

When Christ, who is our life, is revealed, then you also will be revealed with Him in glory. So for the believer, we're gonna see here shortly, the believer is, you know how the Lord was veiled? When he walked on the earth, the Lord was veiled. Men couldn't see who the Lord Jesus Christ really was. Then he went to the Mount of Transfiguration, right? And he was revealed for who he was, right?

And Peter was there, and they, you know, Peter got, oh, let's make some tents. Let's do this. Look at all this glory. Well, we're kind of the same picture. Man is being veiled. We're veiled here. People don't see. what's on the inside. They don't see the Lord Jesus Christ in us. We're veiled in a sense, and that's kind of what, and we're gonna be revealed with Him in glory, which is kind of amazing.

Okay, I have a couple more things on being revealed. So actually this last little phrase in the inner linear, which is a word for word from the original, says, it kind of drags, it has a little more meaning. The coming glory, so glory hasn't arrived yet, And we're going to talk about glory in a second. What is glory? The coming glory about to be revealed in us. So it talks about kind of a, it's coming, but it hasn't got here yet kind of idea. So the Greek structure means that it has to happen. It's a certainty. The glory is sure, but the time frame is not sure. The glory is already here. Christ already has, God already has all the glory that's needed for all time, for every single one.

And it's about to be revealed, to be uncovered. So this is the idea, like, you know, we have a statue of somebody, you know, some famous person, and you have it, some carving, you have it veiled, and you rip the thing off, and oh, there he is, you know, look at where it was. So that's unveiled. That's the idea with us. We're going to be about the revealing of us. And one last thing about revealing. So there's actually here, it says to be revealed. There's an in us and to us. And actually, according to what you can see, both those are true. It's the word ice. To or an are both kind of correct.

And here's one where it kind of shows the in part. in 2 Thessalonians 1.10, when He, Christ, comes to be glorified in His saints. So this is why I was mentioning before. Think about this.

Our Savior is gonna be, He's glorious to start, He's gonna be glorified even more. More praise and honor will be given to Christ because of us. And it says, in His saints on that day and to be marveled at among all who have believed. John 17 is a beautiful place to see this. You look at John 17, and we're a gift from God the Father to God the Son, and that God the Son's gonna be glorified in his saints, it's just incredible. Such passages show that only will the saints behold, we're gonna behold Christ's glory, this is all part of the glorification process, but beholding they will also share the glory and be glorified with him. Like I said, when we arrive in heaven, which I'm going to call glory, it's this incredible situation where glory is going to prevail. God's glory is going to prevail in us because of what Christ has done.

Okay, so verse 19. So now he kind of switches gears, if you will. He said that we talked about that the believer is going to be glorified, versus his suffering, but now let's think about creation. He's going to step back for a second, and then we're going to talk about creation for about the next four or five verses, and Mike's going to be teaching that coming up. But this is the first of those verses.

For the anxious longing of creation waits eagerly for the revealing of the sons of God. So here we picture, we picture creation. And when he talks about creation here, he means everything, and I'll probably get ahead of myself here a little bit. So it's the anxious longing of creation is the subject here.

And this is the idea, have you ever, I'm sure, if you've gone to a parade, we go to the parade sometimes up in Estes Park, for Thanksgiving parade. It's cold. So you don't want to be out there too long. You get the hot chocolate and you're trying to stay warm. And the parade's coming down the thing and you're looking, you're trying to see, well, when's it coming? Is it coming yet?

Well, this picture, that's what the idea. Creation is stretching their neck, looking Looking down that long path, there's straining, eager longing, stretching forth the head, indicating they're expecting something to happen. I'm expecting that the parade will get through so I can go back inside and get out of the cold if I'm, and that's the spark, and it's almost December, it is about minus something.

But this is, that's the picture. Creation, and it pictures as a person. Creation is pictured as a person. All of creation is pictured as a person. And we're gonna see some other cool things out here too. creation Up and this is creation apart from man is pictured here Know the creation is spoken as a person with feelings and emotion.

He's looking he's anticipating what's going to happen It's waiting eagerly expecting eagerly all the creation is continually waiting with expectation for what is to come and and why is that the case well creation is God, you know, when man fell, creation fell.

So here's what we know about what happened with creation. And this is in Genesis 3, it said, and this is God talking to Adam. He said, cursed is the ground, and actually it implies creation is the ground here, because of you, Adam, in toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. So we see here, Adam's sin So Paul conceived all creation involved in the fortunes of humanity. So when man fell, creation fell with him.

Creation is pictured as a person waiting eagerly for things to be put right. We're desiring eagerly for things to be right too, but creation is looking to us for us to be revealed so it can be taken care of. And here's a verse that kind of speaks to that in 1 Thess 110. and to be expectantly waiting for his son from heaven, whom he raised. Same word is here, approximately the same word. Okay, last part of 19 here, for the revealing of the sons of God. Again, it's another picture, this is a noun form of the previous word, another unveiling, uncovering word.

Move over covering, the statue picture, you remove the covering to reveal what it is. Now the saints, okay, I like this, this is from Constable, I think. He pictures saints were wrapped up in this common brown paper, right, called our skin, right? People look at that and say, well, it's just skin, you know?

But the whole creation is waiting for the revealing of the sons of God at Christ's coming. For the sons of God are connected with Christ, one with him, are to be glorified with him at his coming. All right, so a couple final thoughts here. This is from Merriman. Believers, revelation is creation. We're gonna reveal to creation, we're gonna tell creation something. When Christ returns, his glory is gonna become apparent to all of creation that we are sons of God. And here's a verse that speaks to that.

Beloved, now we are children of God, And it has not yet appeared as yet what we will be, but we know that when He appears, we will be like Him, because we will see Him just as He is. And then one little thing I borrowed here from Robertson, this is kind of a neat picture, kind of comparing glory and suffering. We see, we shall be included in the radiance of his coming, Christ's coming with glory, which will put in the shadows the present suffering. Again, kind of comparing the balance between the glory and suffering. He said that will just be in the shadows of what our thought process. And the last one here is from Chafer. A little bit longer. Chafer does a really good job.

He defines here what glory is, and I think he's right. He says, the essential glory of God, again, it may be said that His glory is concentrated in Himself. God has all glory, is concentrated in God. It's because of what He is, the glory belongs to Him and Him alone. Respecting, expecting his creation his works and it was the saying here is that that they remember the verse in the Psalms it says the heavens declare the glory of God so all the Since he is glorious in his very being everything that he creates is glorious but marred by sin the creation has been marred by sin so his creations whose work are all glorious and So the essential New Testament, essentially the New Testament uses the word glory of a place, not a condition.

I kind of had to ponder this for a minute. So glory is a place. We're going to be glorified and we're going to a glorious, it's a place, it's a person. It's not a condition. God, for example, is now bringing many sons to glory. When Christ shall appear in glory, they shall bring his bride will appear with him, all glories herself." Glory is the same location as that to which Christ referred to in John 14. Verse 1, I go to prepare a place for you. So what he's saying here is that glory is a place. It's a place where Christ is at.

That's glory. That's where we are glorified with him. He's glorified in us. It's this incredible thing that we can't really get our minds about. But that's what glory is about. Glory is a person. It's our Savior who's glorious. And we are glorious only because he is glorious. And he's in us, and we're in him.

Pretty incredible thoughts. Okay, let's close. Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you so much, Lord. We thank you for the marvelous truths about our future home, our future destination with you, Lord. We're thankful that you have provided it. You're maintaining it. It's your plan, it's your purposes that are in play here, Lord. We're thankful that we have trust you as our Savior. We ask it in his name, amen.