In the name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

The past two weeks we have looked at Paul’s explanation of God’s eternal plan to rescue his fallen creation and creatures from the consequences of our slavery to sin and the alienation it has caused, both between God and humans and among humans ourselves. We have seen that God did this, in part, by giving the Law to Israel—the people God called to be an integral part of his rescue plan but who were as deeply flawed as the rest of humanity—to expose sin for what it is and then ultimately deal with the terrible consequences of sin by becoming human so that he could condemn sin in the flesh once and for all and give us a real hope and chance to live in a new and restored relationship with him. There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus! We have also seen that God gives us his Spirit to live in us to transform us into the image of Jesus so that we can be truly human and the creatures God created us to be. In today’s Epistle lesson, Paul continues to lay out for us why God’s rescue plan is indeed Good News and that is what I want to look at briefly.

When I was a boy, Christmas was a big deal for me. As December rolled around the excitement and anticipation grew in me with each passing day almost to the breaking point. Being a kid, of course, I made Christmas all about me and about getting great toys and presents, both from my family and from Santa Claus. I can remember many a Christmas Eve as I would wait impatiently for my dad to get home from the store so that we could eat supper and get next door to my grandma Maney’s to open presents. That was followed by communion at church and then down to my grandparents Shaffer’s house to open more presents with my family. At church, I found myself wanting to get communion over with because there were more presents to open. This, of course, was topped off by waiting to see what Santa would bring the next morning. I could barely get to sleep on Christmas Eve, so great was my excitement and anticipation. Clearly I had a blessed childhood because sadly there are many kids in this world today who will never know anything remotely like the excitement and anticipation I felt.

Why am I telling you all this? Because I hope it will illustrate for you the kind of hope and expectation Paul is laying out for us in today’s lesson from Romans. Paul is essentially telling us that like kids who are blessed with love of family and material abundance, we who are Christians should be waiting in eager anticipation for the fulfillment of God’s ultimate promise to us—the promise of New Creation. But before he gets to that he has to wrap up his argument from earlier in Romans 8 because we are still living in God’s good but fallen world and we are still profoundly broken people.

First, Paul is reminding us that if we are really going to live in the Spirit, we have to be led by the Spirit. Apparently it is not good enough for us to have the Spirit. The Spirit also has to have us! In other words, we have to conform our will to the Spirit’s and be willing to obey him. “Sounds pretty heavy-handed,” you say. “Why would I want to submit to the Spirit?”  Paul might ask these questions in reply. Why would you want to continue to live your life in slavery to the fear of death and of living alone, ultimately bereft, unremembered, and without hope? Why would you want to continue to be alienated and exiled from God, the one and only Source and Author of all life? Why would you still want to live under God’s condemnation and wrath when you have been given the wondrous gift of life in Christ? For you see, when we are led by the Spirit we have the assurance that we are God’s adopted children and have been delivered from slavery to our general pattern of rebellious and self-centered living. We have the assurance that we are going to inherit what Christ has already inherited and we will turn to that in a moment.

Second, Paul encourages us to be led by the Spirit because he is quite aware that God has given us freedom to choose between all kinds of things, and he clearly has in mind the awful lesson of Israel in the desert. We know this because he uses the technical term for adoption in this section of his letter that is used in Exodus 4.22, which refers to God’s adoption of Israel to be his people. Paul was only too aware of the painful reality that once liberated from their Egyptian slavery, many of the Israelites lost faith and hope and wanted to return to their former condition of slavery because it was easier than following God to his promised land! Likewise with us. As we saw last week, being led by the Spirit, although life-giving, is neither quick or easy. We’d much rather live for ourselves than for God. It takes a lifetime for the Spirit to help us overcome our fallen nature and this can cause us to become discouraged and fall away.

And even if we choose to become Christ’s, being led by the Spirit is not an easy thing to do. You cannot possibly love God and your fellow humans and not suffer over what you see. Many of you are bearing the burden of suffering over loved ones who are afflicted with disease and infirmities. You yourself may be suffering from physical or emotional afflictions. We can suffer for doing good in the name of Christ because we invite people’s abuse and exploitation of our kindness, and that never feels good. We cannot look around at the massive suffering in our world and not be afflicted. People are starving to death. Injustice runs rampant. Wars and devastation are widespread. Even Christ’s body, the Church, is afflicted by dissension, schism, false teaching, and sadly by just some downright mean and mean-spirited people who comprise part of his body. It is enough to make any sane person lose heart and hope.

So Paul reminds us again why we want to persevere in our Christian faith and hope.  Paul has already reminded us that there is no condemnation for us who are in Jesus. Now he also reminds us of our ultimate Christian hope—God’s promised New Creation. This hope is so spectacular, so breathtaking, that it makes most of our earthly hopes pale in comparison, hopes like my Christmas hopes with its accompanying anticipation. The hope of New Creation is so spectacular that even God’s creation is longing for it. Paul clearly has in mind Genesis 3.17ff here. God created his creation to be good as Genesis 1-2 make clear. But human sin introduced a curse on God’s good creation and it has been laboring under God’s curse ever since, just like we have.

But God has promised to ultimately put to right his fallen creation, starting with humans, so that we can be the good and wise stewards we were created to be. As we have seen, God has dealt decisively with evil on the cross and confirmed evil’s defeat in Jesus’ resurrection. When Jesus returns again in great power and glory, heaven and earth will be fused into one, we will be raised from the dead and given new resurrection bodies that are animated and powered by the Spirit, which means they will be indestructible.

Creation too will be redeemed and finally get to be the good creation God always intended it to be. Because there will be no more sin, there will be no more curse, either for us or for creation—ever. There will be no more sorrow or suffering or loneliness or alienation or death or decay or sickness or deformity—ever. I don’t know exactly what any of this will look like but surely it will be better than any of us can fully imagine because it is God’s good gift to us and God is the ultimate Source of good. If you cannot get excited by this hope and vision of New Creation, then either I have done a terrible job of painting it for you or there really is nothing that is going to get you excited with anticipation so that you await it like a young child eagerly awaits Christmas morning. This is the inheritance about which Paul speaks in today’s lesson as well as the hope of Christians, and it is all made possible by God’s gracious gift to us of himself as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. No wonder Paul talked about God’s people eagerly going out to meet our Savior when he returns again (cf. 1 Thessalonians 4.13-18)!

So what does this mean for us today? If God loves his creation and intends to redeem both us and it, there is work to do for us right now. We who are in Christ must live in the assurance that there is now no condemnation for us and in the hope of New Creation. That means we roll up our sleeves and use the gifts God has given us to help him put to right the things we can. We feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and speak out when we see people abused and exploited. And because we have the hope of New Creation and are powered by the Spirit living in us, we do this all joyfully and tirelessly. We put God and the service of others at least on par with our own needs and wants. We tell others about our Christian hope when we have the chance. As we have seen before, when we bring the love of Christ to bear on others who desperately need it, God will use our work as powerful testimony to those whom he calls and they will invariably ask us why we do what we do. Not only do we do, we also pray for others and ourselves, and Paul will talk about that in next week’s lesson. So will we.

Of course, you cannot have this hope and expectation if you do not have a clue about the promised New Creation. If you don’t, then go back and look at a couple of key texts in Scripture. For starters, look at Isaiah 55, 1 Corinthians 15, and Revelation 21-22. Don’t study these (and other) passages by yourself but do it together with other Christians. Pick up a good commentary like Tom Wright’s For Everyone series to help you interpret passages you don’t understand. Ask the Spirit to open your heart and mind to God’s promises and to ignite a fire and passion for you to serve him as you await his New Creation. You won’t be disappointed.

In sum, this is the complete package for Christian hope and living. Not only is there no condemnation for those who are in Christ, we also have the glorious hope of New Creation. This, in turn, gives us our marching orders for right here and now. We who love God have work to do. We are called to bring new creation to God’s hurting creatures and creation to the extent we are able, and this allows us to live our lives with meaning, purpose, and power. This means that despite our hurts, sufferings, and brokenness, we have Good News, now and for all eternity, not because of who we are but because of who God is.

In the name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.