3rd Advent 2010
Romans
8:15-39
translation
by James Langbecker
You
have not become victim to the spirit of slavery, so to become victim to the
power of fear. You have received the spirit of sonship. When we say, “Our
Father”, it is the Spirit itself bearing witness with our spirit that we are
children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with
Christ. When his passion and death think in us, then also his revelation.
I have considered that the
sufferings of this age are not worthy to be compared with the revelation that
will be opened to us.
Creation itself is eagerly
awaiting the revelation of the sons of God, for the creation was caught up in
the forces of decline, not for its own sake, but for the sake of man’s
evolution, which is not hopeless, but full of hope.
And even the creation will
one day be freed from its subjection to the forces of decline, and will share
in the freedom attained by the children of God through their spiritual
activity.
Through spirit knowledge we
know that the whole creation in its distress suffers the pains of unfulfilled
birth, and not creation alone, but we ourselves, having in our human nature the
first fruits of the spirit, we groan as we eagerly await our entry into full
sonship, that the sickness of sin of the bodily nature of mankind be healed.
For in this hope is our life
destined for eternity. Now hope that is seen is not hope, for who hopes for
what he already sees? But as we hope for what we do not yet see, we eagerly
await it.
In this manner the spirit
supports us also in our weaknesses. When we do not know how to speak to God in
prayer, the spirit supports us inwardly in wordless prayer of feeling will. And
he who can see into human hearts knows that the spirit speaks in a divine way
in those who keep themselves whole.
We can be sure that
everything works for good for those who love God, who are called by his
destiny-ordering will.
Because those whose destiny
he knew in spirit worlds, their destiny he ordered in harmony with the image of
his Son, the first-born among many brothers.
 |
| Christ, Hans Memling |
And
those whom he chose according to their destiny, he also called to spirit-awakening; and those whom he called to spirit-awakening, he also gave
the spirit’s self-justification and self-revelation.
What remains to be said?
If God be for us, what power
can succeed against us? He, who did not spare his own Son, but gave him forth
on behalf of us all, will he not freely give us all we need through this Son?
Who can condemn those in whom the self-evidence of the spirit is given by God?
It is Christ-Jesus, who died,
yea, and who is risen, who has become the fulfiller of the fatherly deeds of
the Ground of the World, who is the true Representative of Man before God.
Who shall separate us from
the uniting power of Christ’s love? Shall difficulty or distress, persecution
or famine, lack of clothing, danger or attack?
As it is written:
To come to you we must die all day
long;
We are looked upon as sheep to be
slaughtered. (Psalm 44:22)
We will fully triumph over
all these trials through him who unites his being with our being through love.
For I am confident that
neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor archai, nor things present, nor things
to come, nor spirit-powers, nor height,
nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from
the love of God in Christ-Jesus, our Lord.
3rd Advent
December
12, 2010
Romans 8, 15-39
Sons and daughters, just by virtue of being their parents’
children, stand to inherit their parents’ estate. They have the hope and
expectation of an inheritance simply by virtue of having been born into the
family. At the same time, by virtue of having been born, they may also be
‘inheriting’ much else: family dynamics to be lived and grappled with, inherited
characteristics of temperament and bodily health.
The family of man has inherited many characteristics from
our first parents, Adam and Eve. Being part of the human family means grappling
with illusion and sorrow, with illness, and ultimately with death itself. We
were created in Paradise, but have been making
a sorry mess of things since.
God saw that mankind’s God-given inheritance was depleted,
ravaged by deep debts we could never hope to repay. The inheritance was in
ruins. And so He decided to rebuild the estate by creating the possibility of a
new ancestor. Thus He sent His own Son, Christ, to become a new Adam for us. The
new body we are to inherit is the resurrection body, the light body of Christ.
It is a body we are to inherit when we make ourselves available to take it in.
Taking in Christ’s body makes us members of a new kind of human family. Taking
in Christ’s body, His blood, strengthens our own light bodies. We begin to
shine, to radiate His goodness and love out into the world.
And the world rejoices. It rejoices because the shining of
the Sons and Daughters of the Spirit gives promise of release to all of
creation; for all has fallen into darkness and bondage with us. All of creation
rejoices in the hope and promise of its own inheritance from the sons and
daughters of God. For what we will be able to give creation some day is its
freedom. As the poet Nelly Sachs says:
All lands are ready to rise
from the map.
To shake off their skin of stars
to tie the blue bundles of their
seas
on their backs
to set their mountains with fiery
roots
as caps on their smoking hair...
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