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At the moment of salvation, we are born again. We receive a new nature. And we receive the Spirit of God. He takes up residence in us. He lives in us. He dwells in us. And He does many wonderful things for us. One of the things He does is give us assurance that we are God’s children. And we need that assurance. Who wants to live in a state in which we are unsure if we are His child?

So you have not received a spirit that makes you fearful slaves. Instead, you received God’s Spirit when he adopted you as his own children. Now we call him, “Abba, Father.” For his Spirit joins with our spirit to affirm that we are God’s children.

Here’s how that works: Our spirit, which is the essence of who we are, understands that we have a new, close, personal, relationship with the Creator, and that He is our Father and we are His child.

Of course, the Spirit of God knows we are thinking this, and He agrees with us. And He assures us, in His still, small voice: “That’s right. You really are a child of God. It’s true that you are not perfect. You sin. You make mistakes. Nevertheless, your Heavenly Father has made you one of His children. He is your Father and you are His child – now and forever.”

So, which are you? A fearful slave, unsure of your relationship to your master, wondering if He will throw you out of His house, or a confident child, sure of your place in your Heavenly Father home?

Things go with things. There are things that go with being a child of God. And since we are his children, we are his heirs. In fact, together with Messiah we are heirs of God’s glory.

God’s children are His heirs. That means that our Father will give us a great inheritance, riches so amazing they’re hard for us to imagine, as it is written: No eye has seen, no ear has heard, and no mind has imagined what God has prepared for those who love him. And, unlike inheritances in this world, our inheritance can’t be squandered. And it’s eternal; and imperishable.

And one of the most amazing things we will inherit is God’s glory. Not the full measure of God’s glory – oh no. That’s blasphemy. That belongs to God Himself.

But we will receive a little bit of God’s glory. Not inherent glory, like the glory of God; not like the glory of the sun – but more like the glory of the moon, which is reflected glory from the glory of the sun.

What is God’s glory? What makes Him glorious? His beauty and splendor. His honor. He’s so honorable. His majesty. He’s such a great King. His power – it’s unlimited. His wealth – vast beyond comprehension. His wisdom – beyond understanding.

You’re probably thinking: Wonderful! I want that! I want to share God’s glory.

The Rabbi anticipated that response and added this: But if we are to share his glory, we must also share his suffering.

Share the Son of God’s suffering? I want to share the glory – but I don’t want to share Messiah’s suffering. He suffered a lot. He was despised. He was rejected by the majority. He was arrested, put on trial, declared guilty when He was innocent, beaten, humiliated, whipped and crucified.

Share Messiah’s suffering? No thank you. I’ll pass. But I still want the glory.

Sorry. It doesn’t work that way. It’s a package deal. Glory and suffering go together. We can’t have the glory without the suffering.

Therefore, we must have an attitude that expects suffering, and endures suffering. We have a mindset that does expect the world to accept us. We have a willingness to be part of a despised minority. We expect rejection and endure it when it comes.

A spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down. To help us endure the suffering that will come to us, the Rabbi added this sweet thought: Yet what we suffer now is nothing compared to the glory he will reveal to us later.

If we compare our present suffering with our future glory, it’s nothing. It’s a drop of water compared to an ocean. It’s insignificant. We are to know this. Believe this. Remind ourselves of this, especially when we are suffering. If we do, we will endure.

More about present suffering and future glory: It’s not just believers who are suffering now and will experience future glory. For all creation is waiting eagerly for that future day when God will reveal who his children really are.

Why?

Against its will, all creation was subjected to God’s curse. But with eager hope, the creation looks forward to the day when it will join God’s children in glorious freedom from death and decay.

It’s not just God’s sons and daughters who are suffering. The entire universe is suffering. When Adam and Eve sinned and were cursed, the universe was cursed with them. Decay and death permeate creation. Entropy. The second law of thermodynamics. Everything is going downhill, from a state of higher order to one of lesser order.

When Adam and Eve fell, the universe fell with them. When the sons and daughters of God rise, a fallen universe will rise with us. Nature will be transformed. Creation will be renewed.

Until that happens, we groan; and all creation groans. For we know that all creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.

There is a sadness in creation. Something’s missing. Something isn’t right. Something’s wrong. There are times when you can feel it, sense it: when you hear the whimper of a sick child; the moan of a suffering animal; a beautiful song about lost love or unrequited love – love for another that isn’t returned; the sigh of the wind in the trees. You can feel it, sense it when you see beautiful flowers fading; when you hear about a rape or senseless murder; or when you attend the funeral of someone who died too young.

And the sadness that pervades creation is in us too. And we believers also groan (Lord, I’m sad. I’m tired, worn out, discouraged. I’ve had enough. I want to leave this world.) And we believers also groan even though we have the Holy Spirit within us as a foretaste of future glory, for we long for our bodies to be released from sin and suffering. We, too, wait with eager hope for the day when God will give us our full rights as his adopted children, including the new bodies he has promised us.

Are Yeshua-followers expected to always be happy? No way! Even though the Spirit of the living God is living in us, which gives us a taste of the glorious things we will enjoy in the future, like glorious bodies and perfect access to the presence of God, we still experience sin and suffering now. Therefore we will mourn. We will be sad. We will groan.

We were given this hope when we were saved – this hope of future glory, and no more sin and no more suffering.

What is hope? The Rabbi defined it for us and taught us what to do with it. (If we already have something, we don’t need to hope for it. But if we look forward to something we don’t yet have, we must wait patiently and confidently.)

Hope is related to faith and the future. Hope is faith that God’s promises will be fulfilled in the future.

We have hope, which by definition means that we don’t have what we hope for, because hope is fulfilled in the future. But we’re sure that the things God has promised will happen. God promised that all who are saved will become His glorious children. Until that happens, we trust God to fulfill His promise, and we wait patiently, and we wait with confidence.

The Holy Spirit assures us that we are God’s children. And He helps us pray so that God will respond to our prayers. And the Holy Spirit helps us in our weakness. For example, we don’t know what God wants us to pray for. But the Holy Spirit prays for us with groanings that cannot be expressed in words. And the Father who knows all hearts knows what the Spirit is saying, for the Spirit pleads for us believers in harmony with God’s own will.

Here’s how it works: We’re sad. Upset. Discouraged. We’re in pain. We suffer. We groan.

It’s like a very sick child who is too young to talk. He’s moaning. The mother is there and understands that something is seriously wrong with her child. In sympathy for her suffering child, she starts moaning too. But she knows more than her child and is able to articulate what she knows. So, she calls the doctor. He hears her moaning and understands that something needs to be done. He goes to the home, diagnoses the problem, and gives the child medicine that heals him.

We’re like that young suffering child who can’t talk. The Holy Spirit is like the mother. God the Father is like the doctor.

Here’s how it works: We’re sad, upset, suffering. We sigh. We moan. We groan. The Spirit of God, who is living in us, feels our pain. He groans with us. He tells the Father: “Your child is sad and suffering. Please do something about it.”

The Father understands. He promises to end the sadness and suffering, but in His time and in His way. And He will. And until He does, we have His promise that He will give us the grace to endure.

Good things will happen to us. Bad things will happen to us. God is so great and so wise and so full of love for us, that He is able to use all things to benefit us and bring us to the glorious goal He purposed for us. And we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them.

God has a purpose for the people who belong to Him. What is His purpose for us? And when did He begin to implement that purpose? For God knew his people in advance, and he chose them to become like his Son, so that his Son would be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters. And having chosen them, he called them to come to him. And having called them, he gave them right standing with himself. And having given them right standing, he gave them his glory.

Before the universe was made, God had a great and eternal purpose. He purposed to create beings in His image who would become little versions of His Son who would live forever with Him. Before the universe was made, God chose those human beings for that purpose.

Then, when they were born, He called them. He invited them to receive the salvation He provided. He invited them to come to Him. He invited them by making them aware of who He is and enabling them to respond to Him with faith.

Those chosen ones were born sinners, without right standing with Him. So, He gave them right standing by providing them with atonement through the death of His Son. And He gave them the grace and the faith to believe in Messiah’s death and resurrection.

Finally, when the full number of His people are born, and have responded to His call and have come to Him, He will share His glory with us. He will glorify us. He will transform us into glorious sons and daughters who will love Him and enjoy Him forever – and vice versa – the other way around.

Can anyone thwart God’s great and eternal purpose for us, so that we don’t become His glorious sons and daughters? Absolutely not!

What shall we say about such wonderful things as these? If God is for us, who can ever be against us? No one can go against God and His purpose for us and succeed.

Well, maybe He won’t give us everything He promised. Promises are broken all the time. Since he did not spare even his own Son but gave him up for us all, won’t he also give us everything else? God the Father gave us His greatest treasure – the Son whom He loves. If He gave us the greatest, He will certainly give us the lesser – things He can create – everything else.

Well, perhaps a powerful accuser will rise up and convince God to reject us. That would be terrible. Not gonna happen! Who dares accuse us whom God has chosen for his own? No one – for God himself has given us right standing with himself. Our right standing with God is greater than all past wrongs. No accuser and no accusation can cause us to go from right standing to wrong standing.

But isn’t there a possibility that some powerful being will interfere, and judge us, condemn us and punish us in Hell? Absolutely not! No one is more powerful than the Father and the Son, and They are not going to condemn us. They are helping us.

Who then will condemn us? No one – for Messiah Yeshua died for us and was raised to life for us, and he is sitting in the place of honor at God’s right hand, pleading for us.

Messiah Yeshua loves us and is totally committed to us – so committed to us that He died for us. But, He’s no longer dead. He was raised to life – for us, so that with His eternal life He could bring us to eternal life.

And our living Lord who is so committed to us and loves us so much is sitting in the place of greatest honor and highest authority, pleading with His Father to bring us to our glorious condition. And the Father is on His throne, listening to the pleading of His Son for us, and responding: “Yes! I will make sure they become my glorious sons and daughters.”

No one can overcome the will, or the purpose, or the judgment of the Father and the Son who love us and have given us right standing. Therefore it’s impossible for us to be condemned.

But, people can stop loving other people. It happens all the time. What if the Son of God stops loving us? Then we’re in terrible trouble.

And, don’t the bad things that happen to us mean that He might not love us? After all, if the Son of God loves us, wouldn’t He prevent us from suffering? Can anything ever separate us from Messiah’s love? Does it mean he no longer loves us if we have trouble or calamity, or are persecuted, or hungry, or destitute, or in danger, or threatened with death? (As the Scriptures say, “For your sake we are killed every day; we are being slaughtered like sheep.”)

This quote is from Psalm 44. It expresses the same truth that Rabbi Paul expressed here – that there are times when God’s people will experience defeat and death. That happened to Israel, including the faithful remnant within the nation. When Israel experienced defeat and death, it didn’t means that God didn’t love His people.

No, despite all these things – trouble, danger, disaster, persecution, hunger, poverty, death – overwhelming victory is ours through Messiah, who loved us. We can be absolutely certain that we will be overwhelmingly victorious and become the glorious sons and daughters of God.

OK, troubles and suffering can’t separate us from Messiah’s love. But, aren’t there other things that can cause God to turn away from us? This universe is a big place with powerful forces. And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow – not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love. No power in the sky above or in the earth below – indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Messiah Yeshua our Lord.

And if nothing in all creation can separate us from God’s love, then we are safe. We are secure. We will reach the goal God has purposed for us – becoming the glorious, eternal, perfected sons and daughters of God.

So, have that assurance. Be at peace. Be confident. Be full of hope and joy. Trust God and His promises. Endure your insignificant problems. Be filled with the Spirit and proclaim this one true message of hope to everyone around you.