Romans 8: 18-28
I believe that our current suffering cannot be compared to the glory that will be revealed in us. Created nature awaits with great expectation the revelation of the sons of God. Because she was subjected to uselessness, not by her own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected her, in the hope that even created nature will free itself from the bondage of decay in which it finds itself, receiving the glorious freedom of life. the children of God. . We know that all created nature is groaning up to now, as in labor pains. And not only that, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan within, eagerly awaiting our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. Because in this hope we have been saved. But the hope we see is not hope. Who is waiting for what they see? But if we wait for what we don’t see yet, we wait patiently for it. Likewise, the Spirit helps us in our weakness, because we do not know how to pray, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with ineffable groans. And he who searches hearts knows the intention of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. We know that God works in all things for the good of those who love him, of those who have been called according to his purpose.
- Before I went to college.
- I had hardly ever thought about cancer and terminal illness.
- But since then the death of the disease in college has been on my side along the way.
- Two of my college classmates died of leukemia and pancreatic cancer before they were.
- 22 years old.
- At the seminary.
- I saw Jim Morgan.
- My professor of systematic theology.
- Wither and die in less than a year from bowel cancer.
- He was 36.
- At my high school in Germany.
- My advisor.
- Professor Goppelt.
- Died suddenly just before I finished.
- Then I got to Betel! I taught for six years and saw students.
- Teachers and administrators die of cancer: Sue Port.
- Paul Greely.
- Bob Bergerud.
- Ruth Ludeman.
- Graydon Held.
- Chet Lindsay.
- Mary Ellen Carlson.
- All Christians.
- All of them.
- Died very early.
- And now I’m coming to Bethlehem and Harvey Ring is gone.
- And you can multiply the list ten times.
What do we have to say about these things? Something must be said because sickness is a danger to our faith in God’s love and power, and I consider this to be my primary responsibility as a food shepherd and to strengthen faith in God’s love and power. There is no weapon like the Word of God, to avoid danger to faith. That is why I want us to listen today, carefully, to the scripture’s teaching about Christ and cancer, the power and love of God over the diseases of our bodies.
I believe that today’s message is crucial as a pastoral message because it needs to know the position of its pastor on issues of illness, healing and death. If you thought that my opinion is that every disease is a divine judgment for a specific sin, or that not being healed after a few days of prayer is a clear sign ofnautentic faith, or that Satan is, in fact, the regulator of this world and can God simply look helpless while his enemy plagues his children?if you thought one of those ideas was My ideas, you would relate to me very differently in case of illness than if you knew what I really think, so I want to tell you what I really think and try to show you from the scriptures that these thoughts are not only mine but also, I think, God’s thoughts.
I would like all who have a Bible to open with me in Romans 8:18-28. There are six statements that summarize my theology about the disease and at least the seed of each of these statements is here. Let’s read the text:
I believe that our present suffering cannot be compared to the glory that will be revealed in us; the created nature awaits with great expectation the revelation of God’s children, for it has been subjected to futility, not by its own choice, but by the will of the person who submitted it, in the hope that the same created nature will be freed from the slavery of the decadence in which it is found, receiving the glorious freedom of God’s children. We know that all created nature moans so far, as in labor pains; and not only that, but we, who have the principles of the Spirit, moan inside, anxiously awaiting our adoption as children, the redemption of our bodies; because in this hope we have been saved. . But the hope we see is not hope, who expects what he sees?But if we wait for what we don’t see yet, we look forward to it.
Similarly, the Spirit helps us in our weakness, because we do not know how to pray, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with ineffable groans; and he who probes hearts knows the intention of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for us. for the saints according to God’s will.
We know that God works in all things for the good of those who love Him, of those who have been called according to their plan.
My first statement is this: the age in which we live, ranging from the fall of man to sin to the Second Coming of Christ, is an era in which creation, including our bodies, was?Subjected to futility? And slave to decomposition. Verse 20: Creation has been subject to futility. Verse 21: Creation will be freed from the bondage of rot. And the reason we know that this includes our bodies is given in verse 23: Not only the rest of the creation, but also we (Christians) moan inside as we await our adoption as children, the redemption of our bodies. Our bodies are part of creation and participate in all the futility and corruption to which creation has been subjected.
Who is it in verse 20 who subjected creation to vanity and enslaved it to decomposition?And God, the only other possible candidates to consider would be Satan or man himself. Perhaps Paul thought of Satan, when he brought man to sin, or to man. , when he decided to disobey God?perhaps one of them is called the one who subjected creation to futility. But can’t the reference be to Satan or man because of the words?At the end of verse 20. This little prayer, “in hope, “gives us the purpose of the one who subjected creation to futility. But was it not the intention of man or Satan to bring decay into the world so that the hope of redemption may be ignite in the heart of man and that day of the “Glorious Freedom of the Children of God”?to shine brighter. Only one person could submit creation to futility for this purpose, namely the righteous and loving creator.
I therefore conclude that this world is under God’s judicial condemnation of a rebellious and sinful humanity, a judgment of decay and universal futility. And no one is excluded, not even God’s precious children.
Probably the futility and corruption paul speaks of refer to physical and spiritual ruin. On the one hand, man in his fallen condition is enslaved to a faulty perception, bad goals, foolish behavior and spiritual insensitivity. They are floods, hunger, volcanoes, earthquakes, giant waves, pests, snake bites, car accidents, plane crashes, asthma, allergies, influenza and cancer, all tearing and destroying the human body in pain and bringing man to dust.
As long as we’re in the body, we’ll be slaves to decomposition. Paul said the same thing elsewhere. In 2 Corinthians 4:16, he said, “Do not be discouraged. Although externally (the body) we use (fallen) internally, we are renewed day after day. “The word Paul uses here to use is the same word used in Luke 12:33 when Jesus said, “Be careful that your treasure is in heaven, where no thief comes near and no butterfly destroys. “Just as clothes in a dark, hot cupboard will be devoured and destroyed by moths, our bodies in this Fallen World will be destroyed one way or another. Because all creation was subject to futility and enslaved to decomposition for the duration of this era. This is my first statement.
My second statement is this: There will come a time when all the children of God, who have endured to the end in faith, will be free from all futility and corruption, spiritually and physically. According to verse 21, the hope with which God subdued creation was that one day “created nature itself will be set free from the bondage of decay it is in, receiving the glorious freedom of the children of God. ” And verse 23 says that we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, weep within, eagerly awaiting our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. It has not happened yet. We are waiting. But it will happen. Our citizenship, however, is in heaven, from where we eagerly await the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. (?) He will transform our humbled bodies, making them like His glorious body. (Philippians 3: 20-21). ?? in a moment, in the blink of an eye, at the sound of the last trumpet. Because the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised incorruptible and we will be transformed (1 Corinthians 15:52). “He will wipe every tear from your eyes. There will be no more death, no sadness, no crying, no pain, as the old order has passed. (Revelation 21: 4).
The day will come when each crutch will be sculpted and each wheelchair converted into redemption medallions. And Merlin, Reuben, Jim, Hazel, Ruth and everyone else among us will enter the Kingdom of Heaven with happiness and happiness, but not yet. Not yet. We moan, waiting for the redemption of our bodies, but the day will come and that’s my second statement.
The third point is that Jesus Christ came and died to realize our redemption, to demonstrate the character of this spiritual and physical redemption, and to give us a taste of this redemption. He won our redemption, showed his character, and gave us a taste of Please pay attention, because many healers today seriously distort this truth.
The prophet Isaiah foretold Christ’s work as follows in 53:5-6 (a text Peter applied to Christians in 1 Peter 2:24):
But he was pierced by our rebellions, ground by our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we were healed. We have all strayed, like sheep, each one has returned in his own way; and the Lord has brought down the wickedness of all of us.
The blessing of forgiveness and the blessing of physical healing were obtained by Christ when He died for us on the cross, and all who give his life will benefit from these benefits, but when?That’s the current question, when will we be cured, when will our bodies no longer be slaves to decomposition?
Jesus’ ministry was a ministry of healing and forgiveness. He said to the disciples of John the Baptist, “Go tell John what you hear and see: the blind come, the sick walk, the lepers are healed, the deaf hear, the dead are resurrected, and the good news is preached to the poor; and blessed is he who is not offended by me. ?(Matthew 11:4-6. ) Why would anyone be offended by someone who resurrects the dead and has been bringing the kingdom to the kingdom for so long?Easy? He only raised about three people. He left hundreds of them in the graves around him. Why didn’t everyone have faith?When Jesus resurrected the widow’s son in Luke 7:13-14, she did not know Him. It wasn’t because of your faith. It just says, “He had pity on her. “So you didn’t feel sorry for everyone else in Israel?
The answer to why Jesus did not resurrect all the dead is that, contrary to the expectations of the Jews, the Messiah’s first coming was not the consummation and complete redemption of that fallen era; the first coming was, in fact, to conquer this consumption, to illustrate its character and to please its people. Soon Jesus resurrected some of the dead to illustrate that he has this power and will one day return and exercise it for all his people. sick to illustrate that this will be the case in his final kingdom. There will be no more crying or pain.
But we have a taste of our redemption now at this age. The benefits obtained on the cross can be seen to some extent even now, including healing. God can heal and heal the sick now in response to our prayers, but not always. People of our time who are obsessed with the miracles of our time, who guarantee that Jesus loves you now and accumulate guilt in the back of God’s people by saying that the only thing between them and healing is lack of faith, have not understood the nature of God’s designs in this fallen age. They downplayed the depth of sin and the crucial nature of God’s purifying discipline and the value of faith through suffering. They are guilty of trying to force in this age what God has in store for his neighbor.
Note the sequence of thoughts in Romans 8: 23-24: “We ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan within, eagerly awaiting our adoption as sons, the redemption of our body. Because in this hope we were saved. Because Christ brought about redemption, believers have already received the Holy Spirit. It’s like a down payment for our total redemption, but these are just the first fruits, a sample. And when Paul points out that we, even those of us who have the Spirit, groan as we await the redemption of our bodies, it can be said that he is warning against the false inference that, because we have been saved, our groans soon in them. the fallen bodies are over. Then he continues in verse 24: “For in this hope we have been saved. ” Our salvation has not ended, it has only begun. We are only saved in hope. This is morally true; Paul says in Galatians 5: 5: “For by the Spirit we hope for righteousness through faith, which is our hope. ” And this is physically true; We await the redemption of our bodies. Christ accomplished this redemption and demonstrated His physical reality in His healing ministry and gave us a taste of healing many people today, but some very slowly, some only partially, some not. This is my third statement.
The fourth point is that God has control over who gets sick and heals, and all his choices are for the sake of his children, even if they are very painful and lasting. It is God who has subjected creation to futility and corruption, and He is the one who can deliver it. In Exodus 4:11, when Moses refused to go to talk to Pharaoh, God said to him, “Who gave this man his mouth?” Who made you deaf or mute?Who gives you sight or blinds you?Behind every disease is at last the sovereign hand of God. God speaks in Deuteronomy 32:39, “Look now that I am the only one, myself. There’s no God but me. I make him die and I make him live, I hurt and heal, and no one can get rid of my hand. ?
But isn’t he the greatest enemy of our integrity, doesn’t he attack us morally and physically?Wasn’t it Satan who tormented Job? Yes, it was. But Satan has no more power than God has given him; he’s a chained enemy. Indeed, for the author of the book of Job, it was not wrong to say that satan’s wounds had been sent by God. For example, in Job 2:7, we read, “Satan came out of the Presence of the Lord and afflicted Job. with terrible wounds, from the plants of the feet to the crown. “So when his wife tells him to curse God and die, Job says, “Will we accept God’s goodness, not evil?”And if we think Job made a mistake in attributing to God his wounds afflicted by Satan, the author adds in verse 10: “In all this, Job did not sin with his lips. “In other words, it is not a sin to recognize God’s sovereign hand even behind a disease of which Satan is the most immediate cause.
Satan may be cunning, but he is somehow stupid, because he does not see that all his attempts to afflict the Saints are simply transformed by divine providence at times for the purification and strengthening of faith. God’s goal for his people at this time. It is not primarily to free them from pain and suffering, but to erase every trace of sin and to do so, in our weakness, to hold on to it as our only hope.
My son, do not despise the discipline of the Lord, do not let yourself be hurt by his rebuke, because the Lord disciplines those he loves and punishes all those he accepts as a son; God disciplines us for our good, so that we can share His holiness; no discipline seems to be cause for joy at this moment, but rather sadness; later, however, it produced fruits of justice and peace for those who exercised (Hebrews 12: 5,6,10,11).
Any affliction that reaches God’s children, by persecution or sickness, is destined by God to increase our holiness by putting us more confident in the God who resurrects the dead (2 Corinthians 1:9). If we are angry at God for our illnesses, we will reject his love, because it is always in the love that disciplines his children. It is for our own good and we must try to learn valuable lessons from it. Then we will say to the Psalmist: “Was it good for me to have been punished so that I could learn your decrees?I know, Lord, that your ordinances are righteous, and that for your faithfulness have you punished me?(Psalm 119: 71, 75). Here is my fourth statement: in the end, God controls who gets sick and who heals and all his choices are for the sake of his children, even if the pain is great and the sickness is long, because, as the last verse of our text says, Romans 8:28, “God works in all things for the good of those who love him, of those who have been called according to his plan. “
The fifth statement is that we must therefore pray that God will heal and strengthen our faith until we are healthy. It is acceptable for a child to ask their parent to do their needs during a problem. And it is acceptable for a loving Father to do his needs. give your child only the best. And that’s what it always does: sometimes curing now, sometimes not, but always, always the best for us.
But sometimes, if it is better for us not to be healed on the spot, how will we know why to pray?How do we know when to stop asking for healing and simply ask for grace to trust your goodness?Paul faced this same problem on his journey. We see in 2 Corinthians 12:7-10 that Paul, like Job, received a sting in the flesh he called “Satan’s messenger. “We don’t know what kind of pain or illness he was, but he says he prayed three times to get rid of it. But then God gave him the certainty that although he had not healed him, his grace would still be sufficient and his power would manifest itself not in healing but in faithful service to Paul through suffering.
In our text of Romans 8: 26-27, I think Paul addresses the same question: while we wait for the redemption of our bodies, the Spirit helps us in our weakness, because we do not know how to pray, but the Spirit. He himself intercedes for us with ineffable groans. And he who probes hearts knows the intention of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. Sometimes all we can do is ask for help because we don’t know how Help will come. The Spirit of God takes our imperfect and uncertain expressions and brings them before God in a way that is consistent with God’s intentions. And God graciously responds and responds to our needs. Not always as we expected at first, but always our own good.
So let us not pride ourselves and walk away from God, stoics, reaping all that destiny brings. On the contrary, let us run our Father in prayer and supplication when necessary. This is my fifth statement.
Finally, we must always rely on God’s love and power, even in the darkest hour of suffering. What worries me most about those who say that Christians should always be miraculously healed is that they give the impression that the quality of faith can only be measured. by the occurrence of a miracle of physical healing, while in most of the New Testament it is felt that the quality of our faith is reflected in the joy and trust we have in God during suffering.
The great chapter of faith in the Bible is Hebrews 11. It begins: “Faith is the certainty of what we hope for and the proof of what we do not see. ” What is not often noticed in this chapter, however, are the last eight verses where we have the balanced picture of faith as someone who hopes in God for salvation from suffering and one who hopes in God. peace and hope in suffering. Verse 33-35a: “By faith they conquered kingdoms, practiced righteousness, kept their promises, shut the lions’ mouths, quenched the power of fire, and escaped from the sword; out of weakness, they drew strength, became powerful in battle, and put foreign armies to flight. There were women who, by resurrection, had met their death. Now, if we stop reading here, our idea of how the quality of faith is manifested would be very distorted, because here it seems that faith always wins in this life. But here is a turning point and we discover that faith also has the power to lose life: “By faith” Some have been tortured and refused to be released, in order to achieve a higher resurrection; others have faced ridicule and scourges; still others were chained and imprisoned, stoned, sawed in half, tested, killed with the sword. They wandered around, dressed in sheepskin and goatskin, needy, afflicted, and mistreated. The world didn’t deserve it. They wandered through deserts and hills, through caves and caves. All have received a good testimony by faith.
The glory of God manifests when he heals and when he gives a sweet spirit of hope and peace to the person who does not heal, because this is also a miracle of grace! Oh, that we are a people whose diseases God heals often, but is always filled with joy and peace as long as the diseases persist. If we are a humble people, like children, we plead with God in need and trust in His promises, the Spirit Santo will help us and God will bless our church with all possible blessings. He will act, as the text says, in all things for our own good.
This is, in short, my theology of the disease. First, at that time, all creation, including our bodies, was subject to futility and enslaved to decomposition; second, a new era is coming in which anyone who perseveres in faith to the end. be free from all pain and illness. Third, Jesus Christ came and died to realize our redemption, to demonstrate his physical and spiritual character, and to give us a taste of it now. Fourth, God controls who gets sick and who heals, and both decisions are for the sake of his children, even if they are painful. Fifth, we must pray that God will help us heal and strengthen our faith until we are healed, and we must depend on the intercession of the Holy Ghost when we do not. Finally, we must always trust in God’s power and love, even in the darkest hour of our suffering.
Oh, that we are an assembly of saints that echoes, from the bottom of our hearts, Joni Eareckson’s faith after a long struggle against paralysis and depression. She wrote at the end of her book: “The girl who was emotionally upset, and who doubted every new circumstance is now great, a woman who has learned to trust in God’s sovereignty?”(Joni, p. 190).
1 All verses in this text, which have no reference, were taken from the biblical version of the NVI. The verses in Matthew 11:4-6 were translated directly from the biblical version used by the author in the original text.
By John Piper. © Desiring God. Website: desiringGod. org
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