FRIDAY March 22nd
Romans 8:19-22
‘For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now.’
If we look back to the fall of mankind in Genesis chapter 3, we will discover that the consequences of his rebellion toward God also affected the created world.
In verse 17 we read ‘cursed is the ground because of you’, a few chapters later we see how the flood that God brought upon the earth because the wickedness of man was great in the earth (6:5) destroyed everything except Noah, his family and the animals etc. that God had instructed him to take into the ark.
When the waters resided, creation began to sprout again, but the curse from Genesis 3 was not taken from it, and the ground remains cursed until the day that Romans 8 speaks about, the revealing of the sons of God, or as the Amplified puts it, ‘Creation waits eagerly for the children of God to be revealed’.
Just as we who have placed our faith in Christ will one day be raised to a new glorious state for eternity, so a wonderful renewal, recreation of the world will take place, and creation is groaning under the curse, waiting for that glorious day.
We often sing with the hymn writer the words of the hymn ‘How great thou art’ and in it we sing of the wonder of creation as we see the beauty in all that God has created, yet, how more wonderful it would be if it had not been for the curse of sin! Likewise, for us, as sinners we were under the curse of sin, we were not very attractive as sin filled or sin riddled individuals, yet Jesus came and he made it possible through his suffering and death for us to become new creations, and we are all still a work in progress until that glorious day when we shall be like Jesus! Raised with new glorified, immortal, eternal, spiritual bodies.
And then God will restore the earth, it says in 2 Peter 3:7 that ‘the heavens and earth that now exist are stored up for fire, being kept until the day of Judgement and destruction of the ungodly’, verse 13 continues ‘But according to his promise we are waiting for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells.’
In Revelation 21, John saw into the future and God allowed him to see and record for us in verse 1 ‘Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away and the sea was no more’.
If we look at this world around us and consider how wonderful and how beautiful it all is despite the curse being upon it because of sin, how much more wonderful is the new earth going to be, sin free, pain free, disease free, curse free and it says in verse 3 ‘Behold the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God.’