Groaning Till We Bring in the New Creation

NT Wright calls Romans 8.18-27 the climax of Paul’s letter to Romans, and yet it’s probably the least quoted passage. Most readers jump past those verses to the more popular (most popular?) ones regarding how nothing can separate us from the love of God. Wright suggests that if you start in these verses and then work out, you’ll see the bigger picture of what Paul and the Holy Spirit are trying to express to us. “The Holy Spirit prays for us with groanings that cannot be expressed in words” because we don’t know what to pray for. Mostly because we are not understanding our role in bringing about the new creation.

Christ came to show us how we are to love: love God, love our neighbor and fulfill a role as steward of God’s creation. We know what we’re supposed to do and yet we don’t do it (Romans 7) despite having the law. We need practical advice on how to live with each other (Romans 12, 13, 14, 15). We shouldn’t ignore how the created earth, its fauna and flora, point us back to God and do our part to ease its groaning (Romans 1) and we’ve neglected our role (“fallen short of the glory” Romans 3).

In this brief passage in Romans, we have the world groaning in hope for a return to the state of Eden. We have our bodies groaning in hope for a return to Eden as well when we’re free of death and disease and able to walk humbly with our Lord. And so we have the Holy Spirit groaning to help our spirits find that connection with God and find our God-given role in bringing our neighbors, our world back into the grace and bring forth its glory. We don’t know what to pray, because we don’t understand how we fit into this bigger picture, and the Holy Spirit helps us. Despite being mired in prayers about parking spots and comfortable circumstances, the Holy Spirit with groans reaches to the throne room on our behalf to open our eyes to how we help redeem God’s creation.