Back to Course

Wondering What to Believe?

  1. Does Nature Give Proof of God?
    8 Digging Deeper
  2. Can I Hear God's Voice?
    8 Digging Deeper
  3. Who is God?
    8 Digging Deeper
  4. Who Wrote the Bible?
    8 Digging Deeper
  5. Can I Trust the Bible?
    7 Digging Deeper
  6. Is there a Right and Wrong?
    7 Digging Deeper
  7. Why Does God Allow Evil?
    9 Digging Deeper
  8. Who Am I?
    7 Digging Deeper
  9. What is the Meaning of Life?
    7 Digging Deeper
  10. Does God Love Me?
    5 Digging Deeper
Lesson 8, Digging Deeper 6
In Progress

Do you ever have a desire or longing for something better?

We know that we are weak and imperfect. We “do the things that we should not do” and “do not do the things that we should do” (Romans 7:15-20). We yearn for something better when we will not have to struggle with our inward desires and bodily appetites. In Romans 8:23 Paul says that we “groan inwardly” as we desire a better, more spiritual life: “We ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.” Thomas Schreiner in The ESV Study Bible (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2008) explains the passage this way:

God’s people also groan for the completion of his saving work. The tension is seen here between the already and not yet in Paul’s theology. Christians already have the first fruits of the Spirit, but they still await the day of their final adoption when their bodies are fully redeemed and they are raised from the dead. Their adoption has already occurred in a legal sense (v. 15), and they already enjoy many of its privileges, but here Paul uses “adoption” to refer to the yet greater privilege of receiving perfect resurrection bodies. (p. 2366)