The Groaning of God’s People

An alternate title: “Be Discontent.”

Be discontent, you ask?  Doesn’t NIV Paul say, “I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation” (Phil. 4:12)?  Indeed he does!  Paul learned how to satisfy himself in the Lord in any and every situation.  And we should do likewise.  We should remember that “the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us” (Rom. 8:18).

But I nonetheless want to argue here that Scripture, while encouraging us to be content with what we have and in the circumstances we face, encourages us simultaneously to manifest a holy discontent with life as it is.  And this makes sense when we remember that the Kingdom of God is both present and future, that it is both Already and Not Yet.  There’s constant tension in the Christian life.  Jesus has inaugurated the Kingdom of God and has, together with the Father, sent the Spirit into our hearts and into Christ’s Body, the Church; but, at the same time, we are aware—sometimes painfully aware—of the need for our God to complete what he has begun.  This was heavy on my mind and heart last week after I read Romans 8 as part of our church-wide Bible Reading Plan.

Romans 8 talks persistently about the Spirit.  “The law of the Spirit of life,” Paul says, “has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death” (v. 2).  The contrast indicates implicitly that, whereas previously we were in bondage to the law of sin and death, now we are liberated by the law of the Spirit of righteousness and life.  Therefore Paul says, “[we] walk … according to the Spirit,” (v. 4) which is “life because of righteousness” (v. 10).  The clear teaching here, as in so many other places in Scripture, is that those who have eternal life in Christ by the Spirit will walk in step with the same Spirit who kneads the righteousness of the Kingdom into our lives.  The Holy Spirit, then, is an essential part of the Christian life—not an afterthought or only a part of the Pentecostal churches.  The very substance of the Christian life is communion with the Father through the Son and in the Spirit.  Only in the Spirit of Christ do we become “partakers,” as Peter calls it, “of the divine nature” (2 Pet. 1:4).

But I want us to notice something more specific about the Holy Spirit in Romans 8.  Right after declaring that our present sufferings are “not worth comparing” with future glory, Paul goes into a discussion, basically, about discontent.  He uses his statement about the greatness of future glory not as motivation for contentment in the present but as motivation for discontent!  The entire created order, Paul says, “was subjected to futility … 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” (vv. 20-21).  And this hope of creation has a specific result: groaning.  “The whole creation has been groaning,” Paul says (v. 22).  And it’s not only the non-human creation!  “We ourselves … groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption” (v. 23).  But it’s this next part that should surprise us most.  “The Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words” (v. 26).  The Greek root is the same in all three instances—the creation groans (Gk. sustenazei), God’s people groan (Gk. stenazomen), and the Spirit intercedes for us with groans (Gk. stenagmois).

Now, please keep in mind that this is the Spirit of God we’re talking about.  Paul says explicitly, right after talking about the groans of the Spirit, that “the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God” (v. 27).  So the Spirit’s intercessory groans on behalf of the saints are offered to the Father according to the will of the Father.  In other words, our Father in Heaven himself groans for our full deliverance and only delays it because of his patience, “not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance” (2 Pet. 3:9).  And if God himself groans, and if the whole of the created order groans, then what are we doing consorting with the world?  God calls us, I want to suggest, to be content in the world and discontent with the world, for God himself is discontent with the world and the world is discontent with itself.

So what’s the point of all of this?  I wrote last week about how God gathers a gathering people.  This week I want to suggest, based on what we saw above in Romans 8, that God gathers a groaning people.

How do we groan appropriately?  Groaning is not complaining.  Groaning is not worrying.  Groaning is not the bitter berating of those who “walk as enemies of the cross of Christ” (Phil. 3:18).  Groaning is not giving up the fight for that “holiness without which no one will see the Lord” (Heb. 12:14).  On the contrary, groaning fights for contentment in the world while expressing discontent with the world.  Groaning expresses trust that life will not remain as it is forever; rather, “we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed” (1 Cor. 15:51); “behold, I AM making all things new,” says the Lord.  Groaning remembers that the enemies of God stand in desperate need of the grace of God in Christ, and this groaning yearns for many more wandering sinners to be gathered into the fold of the Living God.  And groaning fights with all God’s strength for intimacy with the God of all grace and glory, pleading that he will bear witness in our small lives to the transformative power of the gospel.

In short, groaning disciples pray as Jesus taught us to pray:

“Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.  Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.  Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.  And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil” (Matt. 5:9-13).

We groan with all of creation and together with God’s Spirit for the full and final coming of the eternal Kingdom of the Triune God.

So: God gathers a groaning people.  Let’s groan for and to the glory of God.

Come, Lord Jesus.