NOTES for Rom 8:19

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.

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.