2017 40 Days of Prayer, Day 23
The Abiding Presence of God:
A Life of Complete Dependence
Day 23
“And not only this, but also we ourselves, having the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our body.” Romans 8:23
The First Fruits of the Spirit
Creation groans because it waits eagerly for our final redemption. Our ultimate redemption will mean freedom from the consequences of sin and death. Our complete redemption will mean complete freedom from the futility of this broken world. The creation groans, longing for this freedom. Our redemption will be the creation’s freedom. Just like the creation groans, we also groan because we also eagerly await our final redemption. What prompts this eager anticipation? The Spirit is the “first fruits” of God’s redemptive work, meaning that the indwelling Spirit bears witness to our relationship to God. The Spirit bears witness that we are children of God. The Spirit bears witness that the work of God is not yet complete in us. Paul told the church at Ephesus, “In Him, you also, after listening to the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation—having also believed, you were sealed in Him with the Holy Spirit of promise, who is given as a pledge of our inheritance…” (Ephesians 1:13-14) The Holy Spirit functions as “a pledge,” “a down payment,” “a promissory note,” or “a deposit.” He is God’s initial deposit into our account. We know with confidence that our inheritance is secure because God has made a massive deposit into our lives through the presence of His abiding Holy Spirit. In Romans 8, we see that the Spirit of God is the very one who brought Jesus Christ back from the dead. We see that the Spirit of God that brought Jesus back from the dead now lives in us. Just as He completed the work in Christ, so also He will complete the work in us. Just as Jesus Christ died and then rose again from the dead, so we too will rise again. Since the Spirit brings life to our souls, we can have confidence that our physical redemption is coming just as God did in Christ and just as God has promised for us.
Waiting for Our Adoption, the Redemption of Our Body
Verse 16 declares our status before God. We ARE children of God, and the Spirit bears witness to that reality. Why then does Paul now say that we eagerly wait for “our adoption as sons?” We have received only part of the gift of our status as adopted children. We have received the first portion of life and peace through the spiritual life brought about in us by the Spirit. We already possess all of the spiritual blessings that are ours in Christ. We do not long for the spiritual redemption, for God has already granted it to us. However, this verse says there is something still waiting for us. Just as the creation is longing for a renewal, so do we. Just as the creation is suffering under the weight of the fallen world, so are we. The creation is longing for a physical renewal, a redemption for the creation itself. We too, long for a physical renewal that is still yet future. There is still a physical redemption to come. We are children of God, but the full expression of this relationship is yet future. When we receive a physical redemption that corresponds to our spiritual redemption, then we will have received the full inheritance of our adoption. In this way, Paul can speak of the now and not yet. We are the adopted children of God and yet we await the full privileges of our adoption as children of God. We have been given life, and yet we await the final step in this life-giving work of God, a resurrected body. The following verse (verse 24) describes God’s motive in the now and not yet of redemption which will be our focus tomorrow.
Now for a question, are we eagerly awaiting our full redemption? Do we long to see Him face to face? Are we longing to experience the gathering of the saints for the worship of our King? This verse almost seems out of place in the modern church with the emphasis on maximizing our current life now and while giving little attention to our future life. With much of modern church-life focused on maximizing our current enjoyment in this life, we may be reducing our future enjoyment of our time in the presence of God. If we are eagerly awaiting the completion of God’s redemption, then our lives will reflect this eternal perspective.
“The fact that Paul refers to ‘the first fruits of the Spirit’ rather than simply the Spirit shows that he is thinking of the Spirit’s role in anticipating and pledging the completion of salvation rather than as merely the agent of present blessing… We possess the Spirit as the first installment and pledge of our complete salvation that we groan, yearning for the fulfillment of that salvation to take place. The Spirit, then functions to join inseparably together the two sides of the ‘already-not yet’ eschatological tension in which we are caught. ‘Already,’ through the indwelling presence of God’s Spirit, we have been transferred into the new age of blessing and salvation; but the very fact that the Spirit is only the ‘first fruits’ make us sadly conscious that we have ‘not yet’ severed all ties to the old age of sin and death. A healthy balance is necessary in the Christian life, in which our joy at the many blessings we already possess should be set beside our frustration at our failures and our intense yearning for that day when we will fail no more – when ‘we shall be like him.’” (From Douglas Moo’s The Epistle to the Romans in the New International Commentary on the New Testament)
Prayer Focus
God, give me a clear and urgent passion for my eternal reward. Place an eagerness within me to see You face to face. Loosen my grip on the things of this world while tightening my grip on the eternal things. Protect our church from too much focus on temporal matters. Make us obsessed with Your glory, Your glory declared to others and experienced in our worship. Protect my eyes from the lust of the sinful nature, which screams in my ear to love this present world more than I love You.
From DL Moody’s Secret Power
WITNESSING IN POWER
The subject of witness-bearing in the power of the Holy Ghost is not sufficiently understood by the Church. Until we have more intelligence on this point we are laboring under great disadvantage. Now, if you will take your Bible and turn to the 15th chapter of John and the 26th verse, you will find these words: “But when the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of Truth, which proceeds from the Father, He shall testify of me; and ye also shall bear witness, because ye have been with me from the beginning.”
Here we find what the Spirit is going to do, or what Christ said He would do when He came; namely, that He should testify of Him. And if you will turn over to the second chapter of Acts, you will find that when Peter stood up on the day of Pentecost, and testified of what Christ had done, the Holy Spirit came down and bore witness to that fact, and men were convicted by hundreds and by thousands. So then man can not preach effectively by himself. He must have the Spirit of God to give ability, and study God’s Word in order to testify according to the mind of the Spirit.