NOTES for Rom 8:18-39

Continuing the theme of the Kingdom and the spiritual wholeness of the human being, Paul draws attention to the fact that the Kingdom, although it has already entered the world, has still not been revealed in it completely. Therefore the faithful still do not know the Kingdom in all its fullness, for which for now they can only hope (vv. 24-25). It would seem that they can be at peace regarding the promises given to them by the Savior. According to ideas commonly accepted in those days among learned rabbis, the people of God, like the Messiah Himself, had been conceived by God even before He created the world. Paul transfers this idea to the Church, seeing in it the new people of God, and he regards all who belong to it as those who, by God's mercy, have become part of the plan that guarantees them the attainment of the fullness of the Kingdom (vv. 28-30).

If so, then all whom God has brought into the Church through Jesus Christ can truly be at peace: they have entered the number of those whose path was determined by God already at the beginning of time. But on the other hand, as long as the Kingdom has not been revealed in all its fullness, evil still partly rules in the world. There is not yet wholeness, not only in human nature but in creation as a whole, so that until the complete transfiguration of the world not only the human being but all the rest of creation is doomed to suffer (vv. 18-21). It is no accident that the apostle, when speaking of the body, again turns to the idea of "redemption," or more precisely, ransom: just as a slave can obtain freedom only if he is ransomed into freedom, so the body too must be "ransomed," liberated from the slave-like dependence in which sin holds it (vv. 22-23).

Seen this way, sin becomes not only a person's guilt, but also his misfortune: with all his heart he would like to attain the Kingdom in all its fullness, but he cannot do this until the Savior frees him, just as a slave, however much he desires it, cannot free himself from slavery unless he is ransomed. Those who have entered the Church and become sharers in the Kingdom receive a kind of advance, but they do not receive it for no reason: this gift becomes the consequence of the choice they have made, after which suffering is inevitable insofar as the world lies in evil (vv. 17-18). The advance they have received allows them to share in the Kingdom already when it would appear that they are not yet ready for anything of the kind, since sin still nests in their nature. But now their whole life is already determined by the Savior's will and unfolds according to the laws of the Kingdom, so that resistance to the sin in which the world lies also becomes, for them, resistance to their own sin. That is why the Risen One no longer condemns His faithful for their sins (vv. 31-34). As we can see, a person's relationship with God and with the Messiah sent by Him is determined only by that person's own choice, and if the choice has been made rightly, nothing can tear him away from Christ and from the Kingdom (vv. 35-39). Not even his own sin, which has not yet been fully overcome.

Behind these words of the apostle Paul stands his sense that the process of creation is not yet complete, and that since the creation of man two creative forces have been acting in the world: God's and man's. This is very consonant with the picture described in the first two chapters of the book of Genesis (Gen. 1-2), where all creation is shown as directed toward the human being created in the image of God: it is the human being who is entrusted with cultivating and preserving the whole created world (the "garden"), it is the human being who gives names, that is, gives meaning to the existence of all other living creatures; but it is also the human being who, falling into sin, brings distortion into creation, which God intended as the co-creation of the Creator and man.

Therefore Paul notes in one of the following verses (v. 22) that "the whole creation has been groaning together and suffering together until now." But it is not only suffering; it "waits with hope." What does it wait for? For what Paul speaks about in the previous verse and here: that glory will be revealed in us, that there will be the revelation, our manifestation as sons of God. For when this happens, these two creative forces will begin to act hand in hand, and the grace of God will freely fill the whole world. It follows that in the light of these words our turning to God, our knowledge of His will in Jesus Christ, and the transformation of life by the action of the Holy Spirit acquire truly cosmic significance.

Behind these words of apostle Paul stands his perception that the process of creation is not ended yet, but two creative powers act from the creation of man: Divine and human. It is very conformable to the description of the creation in the first two chapters of the book of Genesis (Gen. 1-2), where it is shown that all creation is directed to man, created in God’s image, it is exactly to man that was asked to cultivate and protect any creature of the world (" the garden "), it is exactly man who gives names, that is gives a raison d’être to all other living beings. But man himself, falling into sin, brings changes in the creation conceived by God as “co-œuvre” of God and man. That is why as Paul says in one of the following verses (verse 22): "the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now". And doesn’t travail only, but "in earnest expectations waits". What waiting? What Paul speaks of in the previous verse and here, - that in us will open the glory, there will be manifestations, our revelation as sons of God. Wherefore when it will occur, two creative powers of creation will begin to act side by side and the Grace of God will fill the whole world without obstacles.

Thus, Paul's words give a universal meaning to our conversion, to our knowledge of God's will through Jesus Christ, to the transformation of our life by the action the Holy Spirit.

God loves us always, all the time, without stopping for a second. And nothing "can separate us" from His love. From outside, nothing. No other creature, not even affliction. Only sin. Sin can. We ourselves can. God gave us freedom, including the freedom to refuse Him, His love, and His forgiveness.

Father Daniel-Ange wrote: "Sin is a short circuit of love." We begin to resist the love of God already when we commit sin; we separate ourselves from it when we refuse to ask forgiveness. God can forgive everything, everything of which we repent. He gives us the strength to forgive and to ask forgiveness, He gives us the strength to change, He loves us and always accepts us. Only we ourselves can reject Him; He gave us such freedom. And then we drive another nail into His arms opened toward us.

It is interesting, what Paul means, by saying that sometimes, when we do not know ourselves about what to pray, "the Spirit maketh intercession for us"? We would have been able of course to remember the experience, probably familiar to every Christian, when the prayer which we begin with our own will, is as if seized from above, and we pray already not alone and not only by ourselves: it's as if a certain power supports and leads us, power of the breath of God, and we understand then that God was very near and we are really not alone any more. But here, it is all the same our prayer, our relationships with God and Christ.

Is it what the apostle meant, or maybe, there is still something more? Or the emotion so familiar to us hides again something else, of what we can only guess. The entire Kingdom is penetrated by the breath of God; as Christians, as inhabitants of the Kingdom, it is impossible for us not to feel it. That is why, as seen, we sometimes experience this breath, as God's participation in our prayers. But indeed, the Kingdom is something more, than just our relationships with God and with Christ. Of course relationships form its foundation, but it also has its spiritual substance, which is formed by the same breath of God, that we began to call afterward the Spirit and perceive as the third hypostasis of the Trinity. But such a substance of course stops already being just a substance, similar to substances of our world.

Because it is in itself full of live, full as never has been no substance of the non transformed creation. It is not simply the nature; it is the living embodiment of the wisdom of God and God's love. In our non transformed world the nature is inert; it is against any spiritual influence, as such. In the Kingdom everything is different: there the nature is absolutely malleable, answering kindly to any spiritual influence. And the man living in the Kingdom becomes a part of this spiritualized nature.

His prayer becomes not only the element of his spiritual life, but also a part of the nature of the Kingdom. And then the entire Kingdom can respond, particularly, if the one who prays suddenly got confuse and does not know what to ask next. The proverb of one’s own house, where walls help, is in this case more than ever relevant: in the Kingdom its inhabitants are not only really helped by all, but also by everything. And if words are not enough for us, the breath of God that pervades the Kingdom, speaks for us. Or, more exactly says the words that we miss.

Paul speaks of Christians as the new people of God, as the Church in its spiritual dimension. In the rabbinic tradition of the Second Temple period, there was an idea that the people of God had been conceived by God even before the creation of the world. This, of course, does not mean that the fate of every person born a Jew is completely predetermined from beginning to end. After all, there were Jews who betrayed their calling to be God's people. And with the new people of God the situation is even less predictable, because people are not born Christians. But as a spiritual reality, in Paul's thought, the Church was conceived by God from the very beginning, and everyone who enters it finds himself among those whose life was predestined, perhaps even before the creation of the world. He becomes part of God's plan and God's people.

But one still has to enter the Church. Until that has happened, a person is in the world of chance, where nothing is predetermined and nothing is definite, where anything at all can happen to anyone, and where chance appears to a superficial gaze as freedom. But God does not deprive a person of freedom; each person is free to choose whether to live in the world of chance or in the world of God's definiteness.

Meanwhile, the discussion of the new people of God, of the Church, allows the apostle to raise the question of the scale of the process we know by the name of salvation. And that scale turns out to be truly universal. It is no accident that Paul says we are saved "in hope": indeed, the process of our sharing in the life of the Kingdom, of our becoming a living Torah and, accordingly, of the transformation of our nature has only just begun. It will plainly require time, and no small amount of it. Our earthly life can be only the beginning of this path.

And the path itself is inseparable from the process of transforming all creation as a whole. All of it, in one way or another, suffered because of the fall, whose cause was humanity. Therefore this situation can only be corrected as a whole, with both humanity and all the rest of creation in view. But then the path of a person's spiritual formation, his deliverance from the consequences of the fall, must inevitably be synchronized with the corresponding work that touches the rest of creation. And this path will be completed only with Christ's return in glory. For now, all that remains for us is to hope that everyone who has begun it will safely reach the end.

The words of the apostle Paul always strike us with their astonishing power and confidence. After reading this passage, no doubt remains that the Lord truly will not abandon us under any circumstances. The love of God is so great and strong that nothing on earth or in heaven, nothing around a person or in his inner world, can overcome it. These words can lift a person from the depths of despair and give him strength to go on.

If the confidence of Paul, who did not even meet Jesus during His earthly life, could be so absolute, then how strong must the faith have been of those who saw the light of Tabor. Clearly it was this burning faith, and not the moral and ethical system of Christianity, that made the appearance of the Church possible.

This text does not mean at all that the end justifies the means and that whatever we do in the name of God will be credited to us as a good deed. Good intentions, as is known, are not credited. The apostle Paul is speaking about something somewhat different. In what we do according to God's will, there is a difference between our actions for Him and actions according to His will. "If God is for us, who is against us?" This principle works only when God is truly for us, when we are truly doing His work. The apostle Paul encourages believers in persecutions, reminding them that no sufferings can compare with the glory of God. But the issue is precisely the situation in which believers are persecuted, and not at all one in which they themselves become persecutors.

In fact, every Christian witness is always by the witness of the Kingdom. It is not surprising: because the main task and the main sense of the earthly ministry of the Savior was to bring the Kingdom in the world, and Its main affair afterward, as today, and until His return in glory, became the cultivation of the Kingdom in our world being transformed, but not yet transformed. But it is possible to witness about the Kingdom differently, and one of the central becomes the witness of this love, which penetrates into it.

There is nothing surprising here: because the Savior spoke Himself about mutual love, as about "a new commandment". It would seem, what can be new in what is old, as the world? And were few things said about love before the coming of Christ? But all the same, there is something new and important in the words of Jesus. Certainly, love (at least, in the sense, in which this word is used in the biblical books) supposed always, above all, a certain relation to the neighbor, relation, in which only good was wished to this neighbor.

But Jesus speaks about something bigger: he speaks about the Kingdom, where love is not simply a relation, but the environment of life of the inhabitants of the Kingdom, this spiritual environment, without which there is no kingdom. Love is, in a certain sense the basis of the Kingdom, its spiritual substance, just as natural substances form the environment of our non transformed world. And if somebody joined the Kingdom, became its inhabitant, dived completely into this spiritual environment, it is indeed already completely impossible to remove him from there.

For, the Kingdom does not belong to our world, does not live according to its laws, it enters our world, transforming it, changing its nature, but changing it, it does not become a part of it, the element of this old order of things, which it is called to transform. It is not surprising that in the non transformed world there is not such power, which could influence the relations linking man to the Kingdom and to his inhabitants. But connects them the relation of love, this love, of which the Savior Himself gave example to His followers and which people of righteous life belonging to various Christian confessions, demonstrated many a time. The love, which nobody will indeed take away from man, unless he shall deliver it himself.