When Faith Still Hurts
We Ourselves · Romans 8:18-25
The world hurts. It hurts people who believe in God and people who do not, and it does not check which is which before it comes.
Most of us learned this early, from a grandparent who stopped knowing our names or a house on our street that burned. Later it came closer: a phone call in the middle of the night, a scan with a shadow on it. And some of the ache belongs to no event at all. We watch a child handled roughly in a parking lot, or read one paragraph too many about a war, and something in us sits down heavy and stays there the rest of the day. Nothing happened to us. It still hurts.
Some of us have decided that ache means our faith is thin. Paul had not decided that.
For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience. (Romans 8:18-25, ESV)
Paul calls the sufferings what they are, and he says they are "not worth comparing" with a glory that has not been revealed yet. So we live between the two, with the suffering here and the glory still ahead, and creation groans in that space. Paul could have left believers outside the groaning, looking in with sympathy. He puts them in it instead: "we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly." And he says what the groaning waits for. It waits for "the redemption of our bodies." These bodies, the ones that get the diagnosis and stand at the grave.
We have found ways to keep that from being true of us. The most common is the explanation.
When something terrible happens we want a reason, and usually we want someone to blame. The disciples did. They passed a man blind from birth and asked, "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?" (John 9:2, ESV). Jesus answered, and His answer took their question apart: "It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him" (John 9:3, ESV). He pointed to what God was about to do. We rarely refuse the question. If we cannot find a fault, we reach for some other reason and hand it to a grieving person before there is any room in them for it. I needed to show up rather than using words of rationalization when speaking to someone I love who is still struggling with health disruptions. I need to be close rather than distantly touching it from across a room. I carry that pain with me from time to time. I might not let it go because it reminds me that we need to be present more than we need to say anything. An explanation feels like control, and control feels a good deal like peace, which is probably why the reason we offer is more for us than for them.
A quieter version is composure, the idea that strong faith shows up at a funeral dry-eyed and ready with a verse. Both give out at a grave.
John takes us to one. When Jesus arrived, Lazarus "had already been in the tomb four days" (John 11:17, ESV). Martha met Him first, and He told her, "I am the resurrection and the life" (John 11:25, ESV). Then Mary came.
Now when Mary came to where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet, saying to him, "Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died." When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in his spirit and greatly troubled. And he said, "Where have you laid him?" They said to him, "Lord, come and see." Jesus wept. So the Jews said, "See how he loved him!" (John 11:32-36, ESV)
Mary gets no explanation. Jesus asks where they have laid him, and when they say "come and see," He goes with them. Before He reaches the tomb, He weeps. No one there had more reason for composure than He did.
Our explanations were reaching for something. We wanted to know that someone had hold of the ending. Jesus did not hand Martha a reason. He told her who He is. Then He called, and "the man who had died came out, his hands and feet bound with linen strips" (John 11:44, ESV). A body. The very thing Paul says we are waiting to have redeemed walked out into the daylight still wrapped for burial. John calls it a sign (John 12:18), and a sign points past itself, to the day John was later shown, when "death shall be no more" (Revelation 21:4, ESV).
If the people who have the firstfruits of the Spirit groan inwardly, groaning does not mean the Spirit is absent. If the Son of God wept on His way to raise His friend, tears at a grave are not unbelief. And since "hope that is seen is not hope," we will ache as long as we hope, because what we hope for is not here yet. In a creation still waiting to be set free, the ache is what Christian hope feels like from the inside.
Paul calls it childbirth. Creation groans "in the pains of childbirth." Labor can hurt as much as dying. What separates them is what the pain is for. Grief can also turn into a rut we just keep living in, and that is a different thing from what Paul is describing, because his groaning is waiting on something. Believers and unbelievers bury the same fathers and sit in the same waiting rooms, and everyone groans. The question is whether we are groaning toward the redemption of the body or only groaning.
Paul's instruction for the people around us is short: "weep with those who weep" (Romans 12:15, ESV). It makes no exception for those who do not know what to say. It seems to expect we won't, and it asks us to come anyway.
The doing part is getting close to the person, embracing them with open arms, telling them it will be alright even when we know that it may not. Assurance that lifts up hope is from God. Neglect which lowers hope is not. That assurance stands on the glory Paul says is "to be revealed to us," which no diagnosis can reach.
What have we trained ourselves not to see? When we groan, what are we waiting for: a raised body and a creation set free, or only life the way it was before the phone call? Somewhere near each of us is a person whose grief we have been managing from a safe distance. We already know the name.
The creation is still groaning, and so are we. Paul leaves it there, with the waiting unfinished and the hope unseen, and gives one word for the meantime.
But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience. (Romans 8:25, ESV)
Developed with the assistance of AI writing tools, under the author's full theological review and final editorial control.
