In Romans 8:18ff Paul looks to the culmination of God’s plan of redemption. Redemption isn’t just about you and me being saved. It is about the whole world being restored. Paul has told us that God came to us in Jesus Christ and that he paid for the guilt of our rebellion so that we can be reinstated as children of God. As children of God we are again given the creation mandate: to establish God’s rule, God’s kingdom, on earth, in every situation. We are to be agents of restoration, instruments of peace, subduing evil and filling the earth with God’s love. And one day when the whole world has had the opportunity to respond to God then Jesus will return to bring final a decisive judgement and raise up his children to live forever upon a renewed earth. This great plan is underway right now all over the world. I travel a lot and everywhere I go I see instances of God’s kingdom breaking in with ever increasing momentum. It is spreading like wildfire, particularly throughout the ‘global southeast’. The places to which the Christian west once sent missionaries are far more permeated with Christians than the places that the missionaries once came from. Yes, the world is a mess, and we all suffer in it in various ways. But Paul reminds us here that God is doing something to change the world. He is raising up his children again. He is reinstating them to do what they should always have done. And the full reinstatement of God’s children means redemption for this broken world. Step into this movement.
Ask God to show you how you can be an agent of change in the places you spend your time.
Read Romans 8:18-25
