Romans - Lesson 35

Romans 8:19-22

For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.

A. Creation and the Environment: 

We will conclude with some comments that may be controversial on verses 19-22. Paul begins by bringing in creation. “The creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.”

Two points about the text. One, in terms of the argument of Romans 8. What Paul is saying here is that even the created world is looking ahead to this day when God glorifies His children. It is a way of emphasizing how significant our experience of glory is really going to be. The whole creation is groaning, just as we are, looking forward to that day. In the argument here, these verses are functioning to set up our own groaning as we look ahead to the day of our deliverance. 

But there is another point I think to be gotten out of the text here about the destiny of creation. Paul here talks about the created world itself being subjected to frustration and being liberated one day. “The creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay.” 

I don’t need to tell you that one of the big issues that is talked about and debated is the issue of our obligation as humans to the environment we live in, ecological concerns, environmental concerns. It is very much on the agenda; it is a political issue it's a social issue. 

It is also a theological issue for Christians. As believers, what should we think about environmentalism, ecological concerns? The point I made earlier stands: we need to be people who bring our Christian value system and world view to every issue. This isn’t a matter that we should decide apart from our Christian values and commitments. 

The problem here is that the New Testament doesn’t say much about the natural world. It is very prominent in the Old Testament; there is a lot about the natural world, agriculture, and the land, but very little in the New Testament. So, we don’t have a lot of neat clear evidence to work from. I think that is why a lot of Christians struggle to figure out what position we should take.  

B. Redemption, New Heaven & New Earth, Future Destruction, or Radical Renovation: 

Within the New Testament itself there are different sorts of images that are seen. In Romans 8 and Colossians 1, it talks about the reconciliation of all things. You have this positive sense of creation being destined for redemption, for liberation, continuing eternal concern of God for the created world. 

The New Heaven and New Earth language of Revelation isn’t clear about that, about whether this is a new world, a new earth replacing the old, a transformation as such. 

But the language of 2 Peter though, seems to be pretty strong on the destruction side. There you have the image of this created world being destroyed and replaced with something new to come. So, there is an attempt to put all this Biblical evidence together in terms of a theology. 

Let me make a brief case for my fourth point here., what the New Testament is talking about is a radical renovation of the current creation. When you put all of these passages together, what Scripture suggests is that the created world that God has made, that He originally made good, is not something that he throws away, something destroyed and to be replaced, but something that is going to be renovated in a radical way, as 2 Peter 3 suggests. 

I think the parallel of the resurrection body is a good one here. Our bodies that we live in now are not going to be simply destroyed and replaced with something else. There is going to be continuity, the body is going to be raised and transformed in significant ways. And so, the earth itself is going to be destined for this kind of radical renovation. 

C. Christians need to be environmentalists. 

My point is this: while there are forms of environmentalism that are clearly tied in with pagan religions or with a material world view, Christians need to be environmentalists. The two go hand in hand. Simply because we have a God who has revealed Himself as the God who made the created world and has destined it to be renovated. In the meantime, He has made us stewards of the world that He has given us. 

So, for a number of reasons, Christians need to have a biblically informed environmental ethic. In other words, we are called to have a concern for the wider created world around us. Not only because God has made it and it is His good world that He has created us to be stewards of, but also out of simple love for others.  John Stott put it memorably. He was a man that I had the privilege of getting to know a bit because we worked on some projects together; one of the finest Christians I have ever known. He said, I live simply so that others may simply live. 

This whole matter is a challenge in terms of the lifestyle that we live, in terms of our consumption of resources. I know this is controversial and I hate to bring it up, but I feel obliged to bring it up. I think Christians are wrong when they deny the reality of human-caused global warming and the devastation it could be creating. The scientific consensus is clear. We all hear about people who are trying to deny it, but it is a very tiny percentage of climate scientists who have any question at all about the significance of human global warming. Humans are causing global warming, climate change. The only question is how bad it is going to get. 

The reality is that global warming has the potential of doing immense harm to the poor people of this world. We in the wealthy West will be largely immune to its problems. But it is the poor people of the world who live in flood plains and who can’t move; it’s poor people in the world who live in a certain agricultural belt where they have been used to growing certain kinds of crops for centuries who are not going to be able to grow those crops there again, who can’t move easily. They are going to be terrifically impacted by global warming. 

So, the point I want to make I think there is a solid Biblical theological case to make for Christians to be in the forefront of a concern for the environment which balances the concern for the environment with the reality that we humans are the ones created in the image of God. This is where a lot of environmentalists in its extreme form goes wrong. Edward Abby famously said, I would rather kill a man than a snake. We all know that extreme form out there. 

But this is where again I think that our Biblical world view gives us a posture to address the question that people are the only ones made in God’s image. Our concern should be with their evangelicalism and growth in Christ, but not to the exclusion of a concern for the environment with a realistic attempt to understand our world around us, its problems and issues, and what our responsibility is to our fellow human beings and to the God who has created this world, for effective wise loving stewardship of this created world.

D. These Problems Need to be Considered Theologically: 

I lived through the era when abortion became a significant issue. When I was first a Christian, no one was talking about abortion because it just wasn’t happening. Suddenly Roe v. Wade comes along, and suddenly abortion becomes a legitimate option. Christians began saying there was something that wasn’t right about it, but let’s go to scripture and see what we can find. Let’s face it, there aren’t too many passages in scripture that address the issue of abortion. There is no text that directly addresses it. But passages that biblical scholars rightly discovered talk about the reality of genuine human life before conception with all the implications that flow from that. And so, we began to address these issues. 

As we are beginning to see the really serious problems in our environment caused by human consumerism, we should again come back to Scripture and ask what does Scripture have to say about these matters and where Christians should stand on this. I am hopeful that over time (and I think this is happening) more and more Christians are going to come to realize that we are called to a certain ethic that seeks to respect the environment and change habits of living to the degree that we can in order to keep this world a place which is a legitimate habitation for human beings. 

As Christians, we realize ultimately that this world is not our end. Our job is not to make this world a permanently comfortable place for humans because God is going to transform it one day. But until that day, just as we have a responsibility to take care of our bodies until they are raised, so I think we have equally a responsibility to take care of the world around us until God chooses Himself to transform it.

This is something that I am very sad about to be honest, to see Christian’s buying into these denials of global warming, which has so little scientific basis at all. All the evidence is clear and becoming clearer every day.  Global warming is a huge reality with all the implications that it has.  Christians should not be people who are anti-environmentalist.  We should be in the forefront of those who because of the God we serve and who created this world, and because of our call to love all people and particularly brothers and sisters elsewhere in the world, we should have a concern for this. 

The problem obviously is that climate change is not something that you can see so clearly, it is gradual. It takes place over time. The climate doesn’t change overnight; climate isn’t the weather which has its ups and down. It’s the gradual progression. But when you see the scientific data accumulating, when people are telling us this is what is happening in the world, I think as Christians we are bound to take that into consideration and ask what our response should be in light of it.