READ: Rom. 8:18–21: … For the earnest expectation of the creation eagerly waits for the revealing of the sons of God …
As believers we live with a wonderful inheritance. Moreover, we will also be allowed to meet our Lord Jesus Christ bodily—in glorified form. There will be an end to sin and to the consequences of sin.
Our final destination is so clearly described in God’s Word and in such certain terms that the Holy Spirit strengthens our hope with it and enables us to persevere until the end.
What awaits us is so overwhelmingly rich that nothing can compare. That means not only that all the good we may still experience on earth is far less, indescribably less.
It also means that all the suffering and misery on earth—because of our sin, and all the suffering that comes for Christ’s sake—cannot keep us from holding fast to hope. For the glory we will experience then will make us forget all the misery of our earthly life.
Now Paul not only speaks of our hopeful longing as believers but also of the hopeful longing of creation, which groans under the curse that came upon it through man’s sin. He even speaks of an eager longing to indicate the utmost intensity of that longing.
What is meant by “creation”—in verse 22 even “the whole creation”? That clearly does not include unbelievers. But it does not mean believers either, for they are separately named as “children of God.” Here “creation” means everything God has created, over which man was placed to rule and to care for, to God’s glory.
Creation is presented here as a person. A person who longs intensely and looks forward to the moment when man, as a child of God, will again reflect God’s glory. That moment will come on the last day: “Then the righteous will shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father” (Matt. 13:43). Then also the whole of nature will be renewed.
How do we look at nature in connection with the future?
Sing: Ps. 104:8