The Now and the Not Yet (8:16-25)

This section gives us a powerful image of a fallen world, cursed in the garden (Genesis 3:17-19), groaning and longing to be set free from its slavery to corruption “into the freedom of the glory of the children of God” (8:21). The whole cosmos was corrupted by Adam’s fall, not just humanity. Like a woman in childbirth, creation longs to see the new world born, the kingdom of God to come, and the sons of God to be revealed. Jesus taught us to pray, “Thy kingdom come” because in one sense, the kingdom of God has come, yet in another sense, not completely. We live in what is called “the now and the not yet,” where the kingdom of God has been initiated on earth yet not in its fullness.

We don’t live as if in the times of the Old Testament, as if the Holy Spirit hasn’t been given, as if we have no power, as if the kingdom hasn’t come at all. Nor are we to live without passion, without purpose, as if the kingdom of God has fully come and our battle is over, as if we have no mission.

How, then, do we live in “the now and not yet?”

We suffer.

We are invited, due to the “now and not yet” in which we live, to suffer with Christ for people…to genuinely love them...to pray for them...to serve them…to do all things for their salvation…desiring for them to know Christ and be forgiven.

Here is the challenging aspect of this: to what degree do our lives reveal that we are aware of the age in which we live? Or to put it another way, if we aren’t involved with suffering for people, desiring and pursuing their salvation, do we understand reality? Does not lack of passion reveal that we believe ourselves to be back in the Old Testament or forward in the kingdom fully come?

We have a mission.