Romans 8:12-25 Commentary

I have an acquaintance who not long after she graduated from college had to destroy all of her credit cards. She did so because she’d become so deeply indebted to the company that had eagerly given her those cards that she’d put herself in financial danger. My acquaintance had literally become a debtor.

Few financially savvy people wish to be indebted to anyone or thing. While we may need to borrow money to purchase “big ticket items” such as a house or car, most of us generally try to pay off our credit card and other debts as soon as it’s financially prudent.

However, the companies that issue credit cards don’t make most of their money off people’s financial prudence. Their profits lie in our willingness to amass huge debts to them that we must repay at wildly inflated interest rates. So credit card companies have traditionally made it ridiculously easy to procure their cards – perhaps hoping card owners will amass debts to them.

In this Sunday’s Lesson’s verse 12 Paul at least implies that both financially wise and unwise image-bearer of God are “debtors” [opheiletai*]. Much like we are hardwired to serve something or someone, we are also indebted to something or someone. The only question that remains is, “To whom are we indebted?”

It’s a central question Paul poses in Romans 8:12-25 that directly follows the apostle’s assertions in Romans 8:1-11. In verse 9 he insists “You … are controlled not by the sinful nature, but by the Spirit if the Spirit of God lives in you.” In verse 10 Paul adds, “If Christ is in you, your body is dead because of sin, yet your Spirit is alive because of righteousness.”

In Romans 8:12ff. Paul shifts from focusing on the life-giving power of the Spirit to the Spirit’s claim on those whom the Spirit has enlivened. God’s dearly beloved people have what the NIV translates as an “obligation.” We are literally, as we noted, “debtors.”

Yet the apostle insists Jesus’ friends aren’t indebted “to the flesh [sarki], to live according to it [kata sarka]” (12b). That “flesh,” what we might call our sinful nature, no longer has any claim on people who have received God’s saving grace with our faith. We don’t owe it anything anymore. Our sinful nature is no longer our master, lord or dictator.

That is one of God’s greatest graces. After all, as Paul grieves in verse 13a, if we “live according to the flesh [kata sarka], we will die [apothneskein].” Our sinful nature is, in other words, less like a friendly banker than a loan shark. It doesn’t just, to use mafioso terminology, knee cap its debtors. Our sinful nature spiritually kills us.

But, Paul continues in verse 13b, “if by the Spirit you put to death [thanatoute] the misdeeds of the body [praxeis tou somatos], you will live [zesesthe].” Quite simply, the Spirit empowers Jesus’ friends to trade in our obligation to the way of death for the way of life God graciously provides.

“The best thing we can do,” The Message paraphrases Paul as writing in verse 13b, “is give [our sinful nature] a decent burial and get on with” our “new life.” Preachers may want to note that this “execution” and burial is a kind of partnership. The apostle, after all, repeatedly calls Jesus’ followers to put to death our sinful nature. But even God’s adopted children know we can’t do that all by ourselves. Among the best things Christians can do is to cooperate with the Holy Spirit in both killing off and burying our sinful nature.

In the death of our sinful nature, after all, God’s dearly beloved people find the life for which God created us and with which God has graced us. It’s the eternal life that’s a loving relationship with both God and our neighbor that will, by God’s amazing grace, find its fullest flowering in the new earth and heaven.

Verses 14ff. flesh out part of what that new life looks like on this side of the new creation’s curtain. That new life comes with a new status. In verses 14-15 Paul insists, “Those who are led [agontai] by the Spirit of God are the children [huioi] of God. The Spirit you received [elabete] does not make you slaves [douleias], so that you live in fear [phobon] again; rather the Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship [huiothesias]. And by him we cry [krazomen] Abba, Father.”

Two intertwined themes dominate this striking profession. The Spirit plays a monumental role in the lives of God’s adopted children. God graciously transforms us from God’s enemies into God’s adopted children. We’re no longer people who have made ourselves orphans or severed all family ties. No matter which family we’re born or adopted into or even make, we are members of God’s worldwide family.

What’s more, God’s adopted children who are indebted to God don’t have to make our own way through a world that can be so dark. While as The Message paraphrases this, “there are things to do and places to go,” the Spirit plays the part of Psalm 23’s shepherd. The Spirit summons and guides God’s adopted children to where God would have us go on our way to the new creation.

In verse 16 Paul goes on to assert God’s Spirit somehow partners with God’s adopted family members’ spirits. The New Living Translation (NLT) translates verse 15 as insisting God’s Spirit “joins with our Spirit to affirm that we are God’s children.” While the evil one’s voice of condemnation may be persistent and loud, the apostle insists the Holy Spirit teams up with our spirit to convince us we belong not to sin, Satan and death, but to God.

What’s more, Paul professes in verse 17, God’s adopted children “are heirs [kleronomoi] – heirs of God and co-heirs [synkleronomai] with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings [sympaschomen] in order that we may also share [syndoxasthomen] in his glory.” This is a breathtaking assertion whose wonder is not shrunk by its mysteriousness.

God’s adopted children share, by God’s amazing grace, in the family inheritance. People who are indebted to God can look forward to everything God has promised us – not just eternal life on this side of the new creation, but also all things in the indescribable glory of the new earth and heaven. What God will bequeath to God’s only natural and eternal Son, Jesus, God also promises to bequeath to Christ’s adopted siblings.

At this point, however, the Spirit inspired the apostle to insert a sobering theme: the at least loosely related sufferings of Christ, his adopted siblings and the whole creation. Preachers might point to the remarkable parallels Paul draws between the misery endured not just by Christ, but also by God’s adopted people and God’s creation.

It begins with an allusion to Christ’s sufferings. In verse 17b Paul writes we will inherit everything God promises “if indeed we share in [Christ’s] sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory.” Christ’s suffering was lifelong, immeasurable and undeserved

Yet the apostle insists when Jesus’ followers suffer with and for him, we look forward to sharing his glory. In fact, whatever shape our suffering with Christ takes, either for the sake of following him or putting to death our sinful nature, it can’t be compared to our Savior’s.

Nor, however, can we compare our suffering with Christ to the glory that God promises to reveal to us. There is, as The Message paraphrases verse 18, no “comparison between the present hard times and the coming good times.”

Yet in verses 19ff. Paul goes on to insist even God’s handiwork that is the creation is suffering. While it may not share in Christ’s sufferings the way God’s adopted children do, the creation is suffering deeply.

It has been “subjected [hypotage] to frustration [mataiotete], not by its choice [hekousa]” (20a). What’s more, the apostle adds in verse 21a, “the creation will be liberated [eleutherothesetai] from its bondage [douleias] to decay [phtoras] and brought into the freedom [eleutherian] and glory [doxes] of the children of God.”

Preachers can admit these are deeply mysterious professions. But we may need to say little more about them than this: creation is suffering deeply. It didn’t choose that suffering for itself. The decay the creation is suffering was, in fact, imposed on it.

But creation’s suffering will not get the last word. Just as God graciously freed God’s adopted children from slavery to sin, God promises to free the creation from its slavery to frustration and decay. What’s more, just as God promises to bring God’s adopted children into glory, God promises the creation itself will someday share at least some of that glory.

On this side of heaven’s curtain, both the creation and God’s dearly beloved people are “groaning [systenazei]” (22). In fact, the Greek suggests we’re somehow groaning together because we’re experiencing similar misery. After all, both God’s creation and God’s adopted children are waiting for God to complete God’s rescue work.

This, Paul ends this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson by insisting, is the “hope [elpidi]” in which the creation and God’s people were “saved [esothemen]” 24a. In rescuing everything and one that groans, God insists God, not our misery will get the last word. And so Jesus’ indebted friends can “wait [apekdechometha] for it patiently [hypomen]” (25).

*I have here and elsewhere added in brackets the Greek words for the English words the NIV translation uses.

Illustration

In his extraordinary book, The Barn, Wright Thompson describes his return to the Mississippi Delta, the site of, among other things, Emmitt Till’s murder. He notes how “On the eastern boundary between the flatland and hill country a series of reservoirs trapped the runoff and on the western edge levees kept the big river from flooding out crops and people. Humans had stopped the natural order of things, halting the patterns that had created their fertile home, working with puritanical resolve to harvest the bounty that had taken a million years to create.

“Nothing about the physical appearance or ecosystem of the Delta carries any of the Creator’s fingerprints. Not until learning about the barn [where Till was tortured and murdered] had I considered the idea that removing God’s dominion from his creation might also remove his protection, leaving this corner of the world undefended from the impulses and desires of man, and the demands of commerce.”