Tag: John Lightfoot

Romans 8:18–23: The Argument in Brief

Because this study of Romans 8:18–23 has developed into three substantial parts, 7A–7C, it will help to state my interpretation of the passage before defending each element in detail. Paul is not abruptly introducing a future transformation of the physical universe or the biological resurrection of individual human bodies. Romans 8:18–23 brings the argument of Romans 5–8 toward its eschatological climax. Adam introduced Sin and spiritual Death into the human world; Israel was subsequently created as God’s covenant people through the Exodus and Sinai; Torah entered that already-existing Adamic reign of Sin and Death but could not impart resurrection Life; and Christ, the Last Adam, brought the righteousness, Spirit, and Life necessary to accomplish what the Law could never accomplish.

That chronology is fundamental. Death does not begin at Sinai. Paul explicitly says that Death reigned “from Adam to Moses” (Rom. 5:14). Israel’s covenant creation therefore takes place within an already fallen Adamic world. The Law was holy, just, and good, but Adamic Sin seized the commandment and produced Death (Rom. 7:7–13). Israel under Torah consequently becomes the covenant arena in which the older Adamic problem is exposed and intensified, while the Law itself remains unable to impart the resurrection Life necessary to overcome it. Romans 8 supplies Paul’s answer: “the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus” liberates from “the law of sin and death” (Rom. 8:2).

Against that background Paul declares in Romans 8:18 that “the sufferings of this present time” were not worthy to be compared with “the glory about to be revealed in us.” That statement establishes the temporal horizon governing the entire paragraph. Paul and the first-century saints were suffering during the closing transition of the old covenant age, but the glory toward which they were moving was not thousands of years removed from them. It was “about to be revealed.” Romans 13:11–12 confirms the same horizon: their salvation was nearer, the night was far spent, and the Day was at hand.

In verses 19–21 Paul describes “the creation” awaiting the manifestation of the sons of God. I understand this creation as Israel in its covenant condition under Torah. God had made, created, and formed Israel through the first Exodus and Sinai (Deut. 32:6), even describing that covenant formation in heavens-and-earth language (Isa. 51:9–16). Yet Israel’s covenant creation remained subject to the older Adamic reign of Sin and Death. Torah could expose Sin and administer condemnation but could not impart resurrection Life. The creation was therefore subjected to futility “in hope,” awaiting the Messianic liberation that could come only through Christ, righteousness, and the Spirit.

The “bondage of corruption” in verse 21 consequently belongs to Paul’s larger Adam-to-Christ argument rather than primarily to the physical decay of animals, vegetation, or the planet. Romans 7 ends with the cry, “Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” Romans 8 answers with the Spirit of Life in Christ Jesus. Adamic Sin and Death stand on one side of Paul’s argument; Christ, the Spirit, righteousness, liberty, and resurrection Life stand on the other. The creation’s liberation into “the glorious liberty of the children of God” therefore belongs to the same approaching complex as the manifestation of the sons and the glory “about to be revealed” in verse 18.

Verse 22 then makes an important movement from “the creation” to “the whole creation.” During the greater, second Exodus, the gospel had gone from Israel into the nations. Jesus commanded that it be preached to “all creation” (Mark 16:15), and Paul later declared that it had been preached “in all creation under heaven” (Col. 1:23). These passages demonstrate that creation language does not have to refer to the material cosmos. It can describe the human creation reached through the gospel.

The “whole creation” groaning and travailing “until now” is therefore the expanded Jew-Gentile creation being brought forth through the gospel. The creation subjected under Torah was Israel, but during the AD 30–70 second Exodus believing Gentiles were grafted into Israel’s covenant olive tree, received the same Spirit, and were joined with believing Jews in the one Body of Christ. The first Exodus itself anticipated this enlargement when a mixed multitude left Egypt with Israel and provision was made for the stranger who joined himself to Israel’s covenant worship. What appeared there on a comparatively small scale becomes enormous in the greater Exodus as the gospel goes into “all creation” and gathers the nations into Israel’s Messiah.

Verse 23 then focuses particularly upon Paul and the apostolic firstfruits: “we ourselves also, which have the firstfruits of the Spirit.” They already possessed the Spirit and therefore participated in the resurrection Life of the physically risen Christ, but firstfruits anticipated a completed harvest. They were already sons through “the Spirit of adoption” (Rom. 8:15), yet they awaited adoption in its consummated manifestation and inheritance. They already belonged to Christ, yet they continued to groan while awaiting “the redemption of our body.”

The singular “our body” does not by itself prove a corporate interpretation, but neither should it simply be converted into “our individual physical bodies.” Paul supplies his own corporate category when he writes, “we, being many, are one body in Christ” (Rom. 12:5). That one Body consists of believing Jew and Gentile, and Romans 9–11 explains how it reaches its promised covenantal fullness. An elect remnant of Israel believes; unbelieving natural branches are broken off; believing Gentiles are grafted into Israel’s olive tree; natural branches may be grafted back in through faith; Israel’s reception is described as “life from the dead”; the fullness of the Gentiles comes in; and in this manner “all Israel shall be saved” (Rom. 11:15–26).

The argument of the paragraph can therefore be seen at a glance:

This chart is important because it keeps the internal movement of Romans 8:18–23 before us. Paul begins with an approaching glory, identifies a creation awaiting liberation, broadens his language to the “whole creation,” and then identifies a Spirit-bearing firstfruits community awaiting “the redemption of our body.” Romans 9–11 does not abandon that argument. It develops the identity and covenantal completion of that Jew-Gentile people through the remnant, olive tree, fullness of the Gentiles, “life from the dead,” and salvation of “all Israel.”

The Exegetical and Contextual Equations of Romans 8–11

Romans 8–11 therefore gives us several complementary descriptions of the same covenant people reaching the same resurrection-redemption consummation. The expressions should not be treated as lexical synonyms. “Whole creation,” “our body,” and “all Israel” each make their own contribution to Paul’s argument. Likewise, “redemption of the body,” “life from the dead,” and “all Israel shall be saved” are not dictionary definitions of one another. The equations express redemptive-historical identity and convergence: Paul is describing the same Jew-Gentile covenant people and the same approaching consummation from different perspectives.

The first equation identifies the people approaching consummation:

WHOLE CREATION (Rom. 8:22)
= OUR BODY (Rom. 8:23)
= ALL ISRAEL (Rom. 11:26)

“Whole creation” emphasizes the believing Jew-Gentile creation brought forth through the gospel. “Our body” emphasizes the corporate union of those believers in Christ. “All Israel” describes that covenant people reaching its promised Messianic fullness as believing Israel and the fullness of the Gentiles are gathered together in Israel’s Messiah and covenant olive tree.

Paul’s resurrection-redemption terminology gives us the corresponding equation:

REDEMPTION OF THE BODY (Rom. 8:23)
= LIFE FROM THE DEAD (Rom. 11:15)
= ALL ISRAEL IS SAVED (Rom. 11:26)

Again, these expressions perform different functions in their immediate contexts, but they converge upon the same resurrection-redemption consummation. The Body awaiting redemption in Romans 8 is not disconnected from the olive-tree people reaching fullness in Romans 11. The liberation of creation, manifestation of the sons, adoption, redemption, “life from the dead,” fullness of the Gentiles, and salvation of “all Israel” belong to one approaching Messianic consummation.

Bringing the two equations together gives us the larger movement of Romans 8–11:

THE WHOLE CREATION’S DELIVERANCE
= THE ONE BODY’S REDEMPTION
= LIFE FROM THE DEAD
= ALL ISRAEL SAVED
= BELIEVING JEW + BELIEVING GENTILE BROUGHT TO COVENANT MATURITY / COMPLETENESS / FULLNESS
= THE AD 70 CONSUMMATION

The two Exoduses help explain how Paul arrives at this Jew-Gentile consummation. The first Exodus redeemed Israel from Egyptian bondage and constituted her as God’s covenant people, while already making room for the mixed multitude and the believing stranger. The greater Exodus delivers from the deeper bondage of Adamic Sin and Death. During the AD 30–70 transition, the gospel goes from Israel into the nations, genuine Gentiles are grafted into Israel’s covenant promises through Israel’s Messiah, and believing Jew and Gentile are reconciled to God in one Body and given the same Spirit. The covenant creation centered in Israel thus reaches its promised Messianic maturity through the massive Gentile ingathering of the second Exodus.

Romans 8:18–23 can therefore be paraphrased this way:

The sufferings we are presently enduring during this final appointed time of covenant transition cannot compare with the glory that is about to be revealed in us. Israel, God’s covenant creation under Torah, has been waiting for the manifestation of God’s Spirit-born sons because the Law, though holy, could expose Adamic Sin and Death but could never impart the resurrection Life necessary to overcome them. God subjected that covenant creation in hope because Torah was never His final order; the creation was destined for the liberty and glory belonging to His children in Christ. And now, as the gospel has gone from Israel into the nations, the whole believing Jew-Gentile creation is groaning and travailing together toward the birth of the mature Messianic order. Even we who possess the firstfruits of the Spirit continue to groan because firstfruits anticipate harvest. We are already sons, already possess the Spirit, and already participate in the resurrection Life of Christ, but we eagerly await the consummated adoption—the redemption of our one Body.

This is the argument Parts 7A–7C will develop and defend. Adamic Sin and Death are answered by Christ, the Spirit, righteousness, and resurrection Life. The first Exodus creates Israel as God’s covenant people; the greater Exodus brings Israel’s promises to their Messianic goal through the gathering of believing Jew and Gentile into one Body. The gospel preached to “all creation” produces the believing Jew-Gentile “whole creation”; that whole creation constitutes the corporate Body awaiting redemption; and Romans 9–11 describes that covenant people reaching its fullness as the fullness of the Gentiles comes in and “all Israel” is saved.

It is one people, one Body, one resurrection-redemption, and one approaching consummation. And Paul tells us when that consummation stood in relation to himself and his first-century readers: the glory was “about to be revealed in us.”

Introduction: From Creation to Resurrection—Where the Argument Has Brought Us

The argument of this series has been cumulative. Parts 1–6B have challenged Covenant Creation at the points where its reinterpretation of Genesis must finally be tested against the larger movement of biblical revelation. The issue has never been whether Scripture can use the language of creation covenantally. It plainly can. Nor has the issue been whether the passing of an old heavens and earth and the arrival of a new heavens and earth can describe covenantal judgment and New Covenant fulfillment. Full Preterism has every reason to affirm those realities. The real question has been whether those later covenantal uses of creation language require us to go backward and redefine the original creation of Genesis 1–3 as the Mosaic covenant world.

The evidence examined thus far has given us no reason to make that move. The biblical writers distinguish the original created world from the covenant people later created and formed within it. Adam and the entrance of Sin and Death precede Moses. Paul explicitly says that Death reigned “from Adam to Moses” and that the Law subsequently “entered” the history already governed by Sin and Death (Rom. 5:14, 20). Israel is later described as a people Yahweh made, created, and formed through His redemptive acts, particularly the Exodus and covenant at Sinai. The existence of a genuine covenant creation therefore does not require Genesis to be that covenant creation. It requires us to preserve the chronology Scripture itself gives us.

That distinction has been especially important in answering the argument that later New Testament creation texts must determine the meaning of Genesis simply because the Bible begins and ends with creation. The bookends do not require identical referents. Biblical fulfillment regularly moves from physical and historical realities into greater covenantal and spiritual realities without retroactively changing the nature of the original type. The earthly land does not become nonphysical because the New Covenant inheritance is greater than Canaan. The earthly Jerusalem does not cease to have been a physical city because Paul contrasts it with “Jerusalem which is above.” Fleshly circumcision does not become nonphysical because the New Covenant people receive a circumcision “made without hands.” In the same way, the New Covenant creation does not require the original creation to have been the Mosaic covenant.

This has also been the weakness in the “bookends” approach to Genesis and Revelation. Revelation tells us how its visions are to be read. Its prophecy concerns things that “must shortly come to pass”; its appointed time was “at hand”; its fulfillment was not to be delayed; and its new heaven, new earth, and New Jerusalem belong within that explicitly imminent prophetic horizon. Genesis gives us no corresponding interpretive signal telling us that its heavens, earth, seas, vegetation, luminaries, animals, and mankind are symbols for Israel’s later covenant institutions. To use Revelation’s symbolic and covenantal consummation to redefine Genesis is to reverse the direction of revelation.

At the same time, Parts 1–6B have exposed the opposite problem in Partial Preterism. Kenneth Gentry and other partial-preterist interpreters can correctly resist Covenant Creation’s redefinition of Genesis while still carrying futurist assumptions into passages describing resurrection, new creation, and consummation. The result is a divided eschatology. Texts concerning Jerusalem, temple judgment, covenant transition, and much of the Olivet Discourse may be fulfilled in AD 70, while resurrection, the final transformation of the saints, and other elements belonging to the same New Testament expectation are detached from that horizon and moved thousands of years into the future.

That solution is no more satisfactory. We do not need to redefine Genesis in order to defend Full Preterism, but neither do we need to surrender the apostolic time texts in order to preserve the historical creation. The same hermeneutical discipline must govern both ends of the discussion. We must not move Sinai backward into Genesis, and we must not move the New Testament consummation forward beyond the horizon repeatedly established by Jesus and His apostles.

This is why the argument must now turn to Romans 8.

Romans 8:18–23 brings the major questions developed throughout Parts 1–6B into a single Pauline passage. Here we have “creation.” Here we have subjection to futility, bondage, and corruption. Here we have the manifestation of the sons of God. Here we have resurrection Life through the Spirit. Here we have adoption. Here we have “the redemption of our body.” And here Paul places the entire expectation under one of the clearest temporal statements in the chapter: “the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which is about to be revealed in us” (Rom. 8:18).

Romans 8 therefore allows us to test both systems simultaneously. Covenant Creation argues that covenantal creation and resurrection language ultimately requires a reinterpretation of Genesis. Partial Preterism argues, in effect, that preserving Genesis requires at least some of Paul’s resurrection and consummation language to remain future. But what if both moves are unnecessary? What if Paul himself supplies the redemptive chronology that allows us to preserve the original creation, the later Mosaic covenant creation, and the AD 70 resurrection consummation without collapsing one into another?

Part 7 will answer those questions in three installments. This first installment, Part 7A, concentrates upon the identity and condition of Paul’s “creation.” We will begin with Romans 5–8 and Paul’s Adam-to-Moses chronology, examine the glory that was “about to be revealed,” test the selective handling of Paul’s eager-expectation language, identify the “whole creation,” and then return to Deuteronomy 32 and Isaiah 51–52 to establish where Scripture itself places Israel’s covenant creation. Finally, Romans 8 and Galatians will allow us to examine what it means for that creation to have been subjected to futility and held in bondage while awaiting liberty.

The progression is deliberate. Before asking what Paul means by “the redemption of our body,” we must determine what creation is groaning. Before asking who participates in the resurrection, we must establish the relationship among Adam, Moses, Israel, the nations, Sin, Death, Torah, Spirit, and Life. And before deciding whether Paul’s consummation remains future, we must allow his own statement that the glory was “about to be revealed” to govern the discussion.

The biblical sequence defended throughout this series can therefore remain intact:

ORIGINAL CREATION → ADAMIC SIN AND DEATH → EXODUS-SINAI COVENANT CREATION → TORAH → CHRIST AND RESURRECTION LIFE → APOSTOLIC GOSPEL TO JEW AND GENTILE → ONE BODY IN CHRIST → AD 70 CONSUMMATION

Covenant Creation moves part of that sequence backward. Partial Preterism moves part of it forward. As Parts 7B and 7C will demonstrate, Israel Only attempts to narrow its Jew-Gentile fulfillment back into biological Israel. Paul requires none of these moves. He allows redemptive history to move forward from Adam to Moses, from Moses to Christ, from Israel into the nations, and from the firstfruits of resurrection Life to the approaching consummation.

We begin, therefore, where Paul places the issue: with a creation groaning in expectation and a glory that was “about to be revealed.”

I. Romans 5–8 Must Define Paul’s Death, Body, and Resurrection Language

Romans 8 does not suddenly introduce an unrelated discussion about environmental decay or the future repair of the physical universe. Paul has been developing an Adam-Christ, Death-Life, Flesh-Spirit argument since Romans 5. Through Adam, Sin enters the world and Death through Sin (Rom. 5:12). Death reigns from Adam to Moses even over those who had not sinned according to the likeness of Adam’s transgression (v. 14). This fact alone is fatal to any attempt to identify Adamic Death with the Mosaic covenant. Adamic Sin and Death are already operating before Sinai. The law enters later so that the trespass might abound (v. 20). Paul therefore distinguishes the Adamic problem from the Mosaic administration even while showing how intimately they become related.

Romans 6 develops this contrast through union with Christ. Paul tells living Christians that they had already died and been buried with Christ and had been united with Him in “a death like his” (Rom. 6:5). Yet Paul could still speak prospectively: “if we be dead with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him” (v. 8). Their participation in Christ’s death obviously did not require their biological death. Consequently, the corresponding participation in His resurrection “like” His cannot simply be assumed to require biological resurrection merely because Paul uses the language of death, burial, body, and resurrection. The controlling issue is participation in the two corporate orders represented by Adam and Christ—the reign of Sin and Death on the one hand and righteousness and Life on the other.

Romans 7 then shows how the Mosaic commandment interacts with the Adamic problem. Paul writes, “I was alive without the law once: but when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died” (Rom. 7:9). The commandment did not create Sin. Sin was already present. Rather, Sin “taking occasion by the commandment” deceived and killed (vv. 8, 11). This is precisely the distinction we must preserve against Covenant Creationism. Adamic Sin and Death do not begin at Sinai, but Torah becomes the covenantal sphere in which Sin seizes the commandment and produces transgression, condemnation, and Death. Thus, Paul can cry, “O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” (v. 24), before immediately announcing the liberating work of Christ and the Spirit in Romans 8.

The categories in Romans 8 therefore cannot simply be equated with biological existence. Paul says that those “in the flesh cannot please God,” but immediately tells physically living believers, “ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit” (Rom. 8:8–9). He then says, “if Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin; but the Spirit is life because of righteousness” (v. 10). These Christians were biologically alive while being “not in the flesh,” and their “body” could be described as dead while they remained physically alive. Whatever else Paul intends, his categories of Flesh, Spirit, Death, Life, and body cannot be reduced to physical substance. Romans 8:18–23 must be interpreted within this argument rather than imported into an assumed scheme of material cosmic renovation.

This is also why we must be precise when speaking of the “body” under consideration. It is too imprecise to call it simply an “Adamic-Mosaic body,” as though Adam and Moses inaugurated the same covenantal order. Adam supplies the historical origin and federal headship of Sin and Death; Moses belongs to the later covenant administration in which those Adamic powers operate through Torah. The Mosaic covenant body therefore labors under Adamic Sin and Death. This formulation preserves Paul’s own chronology and prevents the old covenant from being pushed backward into Genesis.

II. “The Glory About to Be Revealed”: Gentry, Kayser, DeMar, Burgess, and Mellō

Paul introduces the groaning and liberation of Romans 8 with an explicit temporal statement: “For I reckon that the sufferings of the present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory about to be revealed in us” (Rom. 8:18 YLT). The grammatical construction should be stated accurately. The form mellousan is a present active participle of mellō, while apokalyphthēnai, “to be revealed,” is an aorist passive infinitive. The argument therefore does not depend upon incorrectly describing mellō itself as an aorist infinitive. The point is that Paul characterizes the glory governing the paragraph as glory that was “about to be revealed.”

As I pointed out in Part 6B, addressing mellō in Acts 17:31 and 24:15, Kenneth Gentry’s treatment of mellō creates a serious problem for his Postmillennial Partial Preterism. In Before Jerusalem Fell, discussing Revelation 1:19, Gentry states that when mellō is used with the aorist infinitive its “predominant usage and preferred meaning” is “be on the point of, be about to.” He adds that the same is true when the word is used with the present infinitive in Revelation 3:10 and observes that the basic meaning supplied by Thayer and Abbott-Smith is “to be about to.”[1] Gentry is certainly correct that context ultimately determines the force of a word and that no lexical gloss should simply be imposed mechanically upon every occurrence. But semantic range does not answer the exegetical question. The issue is what mellō means in Romans 8:18, and the surrounding context strengthens rather than weakens its ordinary imminent force.

Paul does not merely say that glory will someday be revealed. The glory was “about to be revealed” (v. 18); the creation was in “earnest expectation” awaiting the manifestation of the sons of God (v. 19); the whole creation was groaning and travailing “until now” (v. 22); and those possessing the firstfruits of the Spirit were themselves eagerly “waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body” (v. 23). Paul later tells these same Roman Christians that “now is our salvation nearer than when we believed,” that “the night is far spent,” and that “the day is at hand” (Rom. 13:11–12). Thus mellō does not bear the entire temporal argument by itself. About-to-be-revealed glory, eager expectation, groaning “until now,” approaching redemption, salvation drawing near, and the Day at hand form a cumulative first-century expectation.

Phillip Kayser is important precisely because, unlike Gentry, he does not weaken mellō when he reaches Romans 8:18. Kayser writes, “But I want you to notice the use of the word μέλλω in verse 18,” and renders Paul’s statement as “literally, ‘which is about to be’” revealed.[2] More significantly, Kayser does not isolate verse 18 from the resurrection-redemption language that follows. He states, “In context Paul is saying that this glory is the redemption of our bodies,” and concludes that Paul “was about to be raised in AD 70.”[3] Kayser therefore concedes three things of considerable importance: mellō has its imminent force, the approaching glory is connected with the redemption of the body, and resurrection fulfillment belongs to AD 70.

Kayser nevertheless preserves another resurrection at the end of history. His August 12, 2018 sermon on Revelation 20:4–6 is appropriately titled “The Two Resurrections,” because he distinguishes the resurrection he places in connection with AD 70 from another resurrection associated with the final judgment.[4] Kayser therefore solves Gentry’s mellō problem only by dividing the resurrection. Yet Romans 8 creates another difficulty for him. Kayser elsewhere understands the groaning creation in connection with the effects of Adam’s sin upon the physical creation and anticipates the ultimate removal of those effects in the final consummation.[5] He consequently places the glory and a resurrection-redemption in AD 70 while postponing the liberation of the physical creation associated with that glory.

The difficulty is visible in Paul’s own argument. It would be an overstatement to claim that mellousan in verse 18 grammatically modifies every verb in verses 19–23. It does not. Verse 18 establishes the temporal horizon of the glory, however, and the following verses explain what is awaiting that glory. The creation eagerly waits for the manifestation of the sons of God (v. 19), and Paul explains that “the creation itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God” (v. 21). More literally, its liberation is into “the freedom of the glory of the children of God.” The creation’s liberation is therefore explicitly joined to the glory of God’s children—the glory Paul has just described as “about to be revealed.”

Verses 22–23 tighten that connection further. “The whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now,” followed immediately by, “And not only they, but ourselves also,” who possess “the firstfruits of the Spirit,” groaning while awaiting “the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body.” The “not only . . . but also” construction coordinates the groaning and expectation of the creation with the groaning and expectation of the Spirit-bearing saints. If Kayser is correct that the glory of verse 18 was about to be revealed and that the redemption of the body in verse 23 belongs to an AD 70 resurrection, he needs an exegetical reason within Romans 8 for removing the creation’s liberation in verse 21 from that same approaching glory. The text itself supplies no second temporal horizon.

This becomes especially problematic if Kayser’s “creation” is the physical cosmos. If the bondage of corruption describes the biological decay imposed upon nature because of Adam, the physical world was plainly not liberated from that condition in AD 70. Animals continued to die, vegetation continued to decay, human bodies continued to return to dust, and the material creation did not enter biological incorruptibility. Kayser therefore solves Gentry’s mellō problem but creates a ktisis—“creation”—problem. His chronology points toward AD 70 while his definition of creation requires another consummation.

DeMar and Burgess Go Further Than Kayser

The developing position of Gary DeMar and Kim Burgess is especially significant because it goes farther than Kayser at precisely the point where Kayser’s interpretation encounters difficulty. DeMar had already conceded the temporal force of Romans 8:18 when, citing Young’s Literal Translation, he wrote, “Whatever the glory is it was ‘about to be revealed.’”[6] That admission is important, but mellō is only one element of the temporal case. Paul surrounds it with additional expressions of eager expectation: the creation was eagerly awaiting the manifestation of the sons of God (v. 19), while those possessing the firstfruits of the Spirit were eagerly awaiting adoption and the redemption of the body (v. 23). In their later treatment of the passage, DeMar and Burgess recognize these imminent expectations as belonging to the AD 70 consummation. Kayser therefore is not alone among Partial Preterists in conceding the first-century temporal horizon of Romans 8:18–23.

Their treatment in The Hope of Israel and the Nations goes considerably farther, however, because Burgess also rejects the assumption that Paul’s “creation” must refer to soil, vegetation, animals, and the material universe. He interprets the creation anthropologically—as human creation—and distinguishes different groups within the passage. Burgess identifies the “creation” of verses 19–21 with the Jews, “the whole creation” of verse 22 with the Gentiles, and the “we ourselves” possessing the firstfruits of the Spirit in verse 23 with Christians.[7] His interpretation therefore does not merely relocate the liberation of the physical creation to AD 70. It denies that the physical cosmos is the referent of Paul’s creation language in the first place.

At this point, however, Burgess’s concession must be distinguished from the interpretation I will defend in the following sections. I do not simply adopt his threefold division—Jews in verses 19–21, Gentiles in verse 22, and Christians in verse 23—as though that division had already been established by the text. In particular, Burgess must demonstrate that Paul changes the referent from “the creation” in verses 19–21 to the Gentiles when he writes “the whole creation” in verse 22. Other interpreters who understand ktisis anthropologically have divided the groups differently. John Lightfoot, for example, identifies the “whole creation” with the Gentile or heathen world and distinguishes it from Jewish believers possessing the firstfruits of the Spirit. The detailed identity of these groups therefore requires separate exegesis and will be taken up below.

For the present argument, Burgess’s larger concession is what matters. Romans 8:19–23 can be interpreted anthropologically without making the groaning creation the physical cosmos, and Burgess specifically identifies the creation subjected to futility in verses 19–21 with the Jews. That is particularly significant because verse 20 states that this creation “was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it in hope.” If Burgess is correct about the identity of the creation in verses 19–21, then the object God subjected to futility is Israel, not the material universe. The question is no longer simply, “What happened to the planet at the fall of Adam?” The exegetical question becomes: when, how, and under what covenantal conditions was Israel subjected to the futility and bondage from which she awaited Messianic liberation?

That question fits the argument Paul has already developed in Romans 5–8 remarkably well, although I do not attribute my entire answer to Burgess. Romans 5 locates the entrance of Sin and Death in Adam. Romans 7 describes what happened when the commandment encountered that already-existing power of Sin: “when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died” (Rom. 7:9); “sin, taking occasion by the commandment, deceived me, and by it slew me” (v. 11); and the resulting cry is, “who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” (v. 24). Romans 8 then describes a creation subjected to futility, enslaved to corruption, groaning for liberation. If the creation of verses 19–21 is Israel, as Burgess argues, then Romans itself directs us toward Israel’s covenant history under Torah rather than toward a physical universe supposedly awaiting biological renovation. The precise relationship between Adam, Sinai, Torah, futility, and liberation will be developed below.

Burgess goes farther than Kayser in another important respect. He also treats “the redemption of our body” in verse 23 corporately rather than automatically interpreting it as the future resurrection of the individual biological bodies of Christians. Paul certainly knows how to speak distributively of the physical bodies of individual believers. Only twelve verses earlier he writes that the Spirit “shall also quicken your mortal bodies” (Rom. 8:11)—plural. Yet when he describes the object of the church’s eschatological expectation in verse 23, he writes “the redemption of our body”—singular. The singular by itself does not prove the entire corporate interpretation, but neither should it be silently converted into “our bodies” and then made to carry an individualistic biological resurrection that Paul did not express. Romans 12:4–5 shortly supplies Paul’s unmistakable corporate category: “we, being many, are one body in Christ.”

The distinction is important for my disagreement with Covenant Creation as well. An anthropological or covenantal use of “creation” in Romans 8 does not require Genesis 1 itself to describe the creation of the old covenant world. That conclusion simply does not follow. Adam accounts for the entrance of Sin and Death. Israel’s covenant formation comes later in redemptive history. Torah then encounters the already-existing Adamic power of Sin, and Paul describes the resulting bondage in Romans 7 before announcing liberation in Romans 8. The body is Mosaic in covenantal formation; the Sin and Death enslaving it are Adamic in origin. Covenant Creation collapses these stages when it pushes the later covenant-creation category backward into Genesis 1.

Nor does the anthropological interpretation provide support for Israel Only. To say that the “creation” of Romans 8 is human and covenantal does not establish that it consists only of biological Israelites. That is a separate proposition requiring separate proof. Paul’s own argument will instead move from Israel’s historical covenant creation into the nations through the Great Commission, from natural branches to wild branches grafted into the same tree, and from an elect Jewish remnant to one Jew-Gentile body. The covenantal reading therefore removes the physical-cosmos assumption without replacing it with an ethnic-Israel-only assumption.

The progression of Partial-Preterist concessions is therefore striking. Gentry acknowledges elsewhere the ordinary “about to be” force of mellō but resists its necessary AD 70 consequence here. DeMar concedes that the glory was “about to be revealed.” Kayser goes farther by accepting the imminent force of mellō, connecting that glory with the redemption of the body, and placing resurrection fulfillment in AD 70. DeMar and Burgess go farther still by recognizing the cumulative imminent expectation of Romans 8:18–23 as pointing to AD 70, interpreting the creation anthropologically rather than cosmologically, and treating “our body” corporately. I need not adopt every detail of Burgess’s division of Jews, Gentiles, and Christians in order to recognize the importance of those concessions.

The DeMar-Burgess position is thus more damaging to the traditional Partial-Preterist division than Kayser’s concession alone. Kayser gives us the chronology and connects the approaching glory with resurrection, but his physical-creation interpretation forces him to postpone the liberation of creation. Burgess removes that physical-cosmos assumption. Indeed, by identifying the creation subjected to futility in verses 19–21 with Israel, he directs attention toward precisely the covenantal and redemptive-historical question that the physical-cosmos interpretation obscures. Burgess then interprets the singular “our body” corporately. Whatever disagreements remain over his precise division of the human groups, the usual appeal to a decaying material universe and individual biological bodies can no longer simply be assumed as the meaning of Romans 8.

The Romans 8 Consistency Syllogism

Major Premise: Romans 8:18–23 coordinates the glory about to be revealed, the manifestation of the sons of God, the liberation of creation, adoption, and the redemption of the body within one interconnected eschatological expectation.

Minor Premise: Partial Preterists themselves concede the principal elements of this reading: DeMar acknowledges that the glory was “about to be revealed”; Kayser connects that imminent glory with body redemption and an AD 70 resurrection; and DeMar and Burgess go farther by placing the cumulative expectation in the AD 70 horizon, interpreting the creation anthropologically, and interpreting “our body” corporately.

Conclusion: The burden rests upon Partial Preterism to demonstrate from Romans 8 itself why this one approaching glory-liberation-resurrection complex must nevertheless be divided between AD 70 and another consummation thousands of years later.

Burgess’s interpretation also sharpens the question we must answer next. If the glory was about to be revealed, if the creation eagerly awaited the manifestation of that glory, if its liberation belonged to “the freedom of the glory of the children of God,” and if the creation subjected to futility in verses 19–21 is Israel rather than the physical universe, then when was Israel subjected to this futility, and what was the bondage from which she needed liberation? That question cannot be answered by simply pointing to Genesis 3 and the decay of the physical world. Nor can it be answered by Covenant Creation’s attempt to push the Mosaic covenant creation backward into Genesis 1.

Paul has already supplied the categories with which the question must be answered. Adam explains the entrance and reign of Sin and Death. Torah explains the covenantal administration in which Sin seized the commandment and produced transgression, condemnation, and Death. Christ and the Spirit explain the liberation for which the creation and the first-century saints groaned. The next question, therefore, is not whether Burgess’s precise Jew-Gentile-Christian division must be adopted wholesale, but whether his central concession is correct: Paul’s groaning creation is human rather than planetary. That is the issue to which we now turn.

III. Peter Leithart and the Problem of Selective “Eager Expectation”

The difficulty becomes more pronounced when another Partial Preterist is allowed to interpret Paul’s expectation language. Peter Leithart, in his commentary on Revelation, includes 1 Corinthians 1:7–8 among the passages expressing the apostles’ expectation of an approaching first-century consummation. The Corinthians were “eagerly waiting” for the revelation of Jesus Christ, who would confirm them “unto the end” and make them blameless “in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.” After surveying New Testament statements concerning the nearness of the Lord and the approaching consummation, Leithart concludes that “the apostles eagerly expected something to happen soon in their day.” He then makes an observation directly relevant to the present discussion: “Phil. 3:20 uses the same verb.”[8]

That observation is much more significant than it may initially appear. The verb is apekdechomai, language of eager expectation. Paul uses it in 1 Corinthians 1:7 for the Corinthians eagerly awaiting Christ’s revelation. He uses it in Romans 8:19 for the creation’s earnest expectation of the revelation of the sons of God and again in Romans 8:23 for believers awaiting adoption, “the redemption of our body.” He uses it in Philippians 3:20 for believers awaiting the Savior from heaven, immediately before describing the transformation of “our vile body” into conformity with Christ’s glorious body (v. 21). Leithart himself has therefore drawn the lexical line from 1 Corinthians 1:7 to Philippians 3:20, while his interpretation recognizes the genuinely imminent expectation represented by the former.

Again, the argument is not that one Greek verb automatically imposes precisely the same date upon every passage in which it occurs. The argument is contextual and cumulative. If the eager expectation of Christ’s revelation in 1 Corinthians 1:7–8 belongs to the approaching AD 70 consummation, as Leithart recognizes, what exegetical feature suddenly pushes the eager expectation of bodily redemption in Romans 8 or bodily transformation in Philippians 3 thousands of years into the future? Romans 8 has already described the glory as “about to be revealed.” Philippians follows its eager expectation of the Savior and bodily transformation with “The Lord is at hand” (Phil. 4:5). The contexts strengthen the temporal connection rather than dissolving it.

This creates a problem not merely for Leithart but for the divided consummation of Partial Preterism generally. One cannot appeal to apostolic imminence when interpreting Christ’s AD 70 coming in judgment and then treat the same expectation vocabulary as temporally elastic when Paul connects it with resurrection, adoption, bodily redemption, and transformation. If Christ’s revelation was near, but the redemption associated with that revelation was not; if the Day was near, but the resurrection belonging to that Day was not; if salvation was nearer than when the Romans believed, but the redemption of their body remained thousands of years away, then the unity of Paul’s eschatology has been divided precisely where his language joins it together.

The Imminence and Eager-Expectation Syllogism

Major Premise: When Paul joins explicit imminence language with eager expectation of Christ’s revelation, salvation, adoption, bodily redemption, and bodily transformation, these events should be understood within the same approaching eschatological horizon unless the context demonstrates otherwise.

Minor Premise: Romans 8 describes glory as “about to be revealed” and believers as eagerly awaiting “the redemption of our body”; Romans 13 says salvation was nearer and the Day at hand; 1 Corinthians 1:7–8 describes believers eagerly awaiting Christ’s revelation and “the end”; Philippians 3:20–21 uses the same eager-expectation vocabulary for the Savior and bodily transformation, followed by “The Lord is at hand” in Philippians 4:5.

Conclusion: Paul’s resurrection, bodily redemption, and transformation language belongs naturally to the same approaching first-century consummation as Christ’s revelation and the Day of the Lord, rather than to a separate consummation thousands of years later.

The temporal evidence is therefore already pointing us toward the identity of the creation that groans in Romans 8. Paul is not describing a material universe that has spent thousands of years eagerly awaiting the repair of its molecules. He is describing an eschatological creation standing at the transition between bondage and liberty, possessing firstfruits while awaiting consummation, and groaning for a redemption that Paul says was approaching. The next question is therefore not whether the physical planet was getting old. It is: What creation had been subjected to this covenantal bondage, and why?

That question takes us directly to the Exodus, Sinai, Deuteronomy 32, and Isaiah 51.

IV. “The Whole Creation”: What Creation Was Awaiting Liberation?

Once the temporal horizon of Romans 8:18–23 has been established, the next question is unavoidable: what exactly is the “creation” that Paul describes as eagerly waiting, subjected to futility, groaning under bondage, and anticipating liberation? The traditional futurist interpretation generally assumes that Paul is describing the physical universe—the earth, animals, vegetation, and material order subjected to decay because of Adam’s fall. But that conclusion cannot simply be imported into ktisis, “creation.” The term must be interpreted from Paul’s argument in Romans 5–8, from the grammatical progression within Romans 8:19–23, and from the New Testament’s own use of creation language.

An anthropological interpretation of ktisis is hardly an invention of Full Preterism. John Lightfoot, Henry Hammond, and John Gill understood the “creation” as referring to Gentiles; Crellius interpreted it as regenerate Christians; Le Clerc referred it particularly to Gentile Christians; and John Locke also belongs within the history of non-cosmic interpretations of the passage.[9] These interpreters disagree over precisely which human group Paul has in view, and their disagreement should not be artificially harmonized. Their importance is narrower but substantial: they demonstrate that ktisis does not require the physical universe as its referent. Paul’s creation must therefore be identified contextually and redemptive-historically rather than by assuming that “creation” automatically means the material cosmos.

Gary DeMar and Kim Burgess provide an especially important contemporary example. Burgess identifies “the creation” of Romans 8:19–21 with the Jews, “the whole creation” of verse 22 with the Gentiles, and the “we ourselves” possessing the firstfruits of the Spirit in verse 23 with Christians.[10] I agree with Burgess that the passage concerns human rather than planetary creation, and his identification of verses 19–21 with Israel is especially significant. I do not, however, believe that Paul’s transition to “the whole creation” in verse 22 requires an exclusive identification with Gentiles. The grammatical development of the paragraph, read within the Great Commission’s movement from Israel into the nations, suggests a broader and more precise redemptive-historical progression.

“The Creation” Subjected to Futility

Paul uses the same definite expression repeatedly throughout verses 19–21. “The creation” waits for the manifestation of the sons of God (v. 19); “the creation” was subjected to futility (v. 20); and “the creation itself” will be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God (v. 21). Nothing in those three verses indicates a change of referent. The same creation waits, was subjected, remains in bondage, and anticipates liberation.

If Israel is this creation, as Burgess also concludes with Full Preterism, the question changes dramatically. Paul is no longer describing what supposedly happened geologically to the planet at Adam’s fall. The question becomes what happened covenantally to Israel in redemptive history that placed her in a condition of futility, bondage, corruption, and expectation.

Romans 5–7 has already supplied the categories necessary to answer that question. Adam accounts for the entrance and reign of Sin and Death: “by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin” (Rom. 5:12). Paul can therefore say that “until the law sin was in the world” (5:13). When the commandment later came, “sin revived, and I died” (7:9), and Sin, “taking occasion by the commandment,” deceived and killed (7:11). Romans 8 follows immediately after the cry, “Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” (7:24). Paul’s discussion of futility, bondage, corruption, and liberation therefore arises from an argument already governed by Adam, Torah, Sin, Death, and the promised deliverance in Christ.

The Mosaic Law did not create the Adamic problem. It entered a world in which Sin and Death already reigned and administered God’s covenant to a people living within that condition. Paul’s point in Romans 8:20 is consequently significant: the creation “was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it in hope.” Its subjection was neither accidental nor ultimate. God subjected it “in hope.” The Law could expose Sin, increase transgression, condemn, and administer Death, but it could not impart the resurrection Life promised in Christ (Rom. 5:20; 7:7–13; Gal. 3:21–24). The covenant administration itself therefore pointed beyond its bondage toward a promised liberation.

The distinction established earlier can now remain in the background without being re-proved in every paragraph: Israel is Mosaic in covenantal formation, while the Sin and Death enslaving her are Adamic in origin. The importance of that distinction for this section is that it gives us a category other than the two alternatives usually imposed upon Romans 8. Paul need not be describing either the physical universe of Genesis 1 or a covenant creation supposedly beginning with Adam. Israel can be the later covenant creation formed through Exodus-Sinai and subjected under Torah within the already-existing Adamic reign of Sin and Death. Sections V and VI will establish that identification more directly from Deuteronomy 32, Isaiah 51, and Paul’s treatment of Torah.

From “the Creation” to “the Whole Creation”

Paul’s wording changes in verse 22: “For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now.” The connective “for” maintains continuity with verses 19–21, so Paul has not abandoned his subject and begun discussing an unrelated creation. Yet the addition of “whole” deserves attention. The question is whether it merely renames the same group, identifies the Gentiles exclusively, or broadens the horizon of the human creation already under discussion.

Burgess takes the second option, moving from Jews in verses 19–21 to Gentiles in verse 22. That recognizes a genuine development in Paul’s wording, but the Great Commission provides a better framework for explaining the expansion. Jesus commissioned His disciples to “Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature”—literally, to “all creation” (Mark 16:15). Paul later declares that the gospel “was preached to every creature which is under heaven,” again, “in all creation under heaven” (Col. 1:23). In neither passage can “all creation” mean the physical cosmos. The apostles were not commissioned to preach repentance and faith to animals, vegetation, mountains, oceans, and stars. “All creation” describes the human horizon of the gospel mission.

The grammatical forms in Mark 16:15, Romans 8:22, and Colossians 1:23 differ according to their syntactical functions, so verbal similarity alone does not establish identical referents. The point is more modest and more secure: the New Testament, and Paul himself, can use “all creation” anthropologically in the context of the worldwide proclamation of the gospel. That usage must therefore be allowed into the interpretive field when Romans 8 moves from “the creation” to “the whole creation.”

This does not mean that Gentiles had always belonged to Israel’s covenant creation or that all humanity had somehow been included in the Mosaic order from Adam onward. The movement is historical and forward. Israel is formed as Yahweh’s covenant creation at the first Exodus. The Messiah comes to Israel. From Israel the gospel then moves outward into the nations. The addition of “whole” therefore need not push the covenant creation backward into primordial humanity; it can describe the widening human horizon produced by the Messianic mission.

The movement can be stated simply. Israel is the historical covenant creation from which the argument proceeds. Christ comes within Israel’s covenant history. The gospel then goes outward from Israel into the nations. “The whole creation” consequently reflects the widening apostolic horizon in which Jew and Gentile now stand together within the worldwide sphere of Messianic proclamation.

The First Exodus Already Anticipated Gentile Incorporation

That forward expansion did not arise without precedent. Israel did not leave Egypt alone: “a mixed multitude went up also with them” (Exod. 12:38). The Mosaic legislation subsequently provided for the stranger to enter Israel’s covenant life. The stranger who submitted to circumcision and kept Yahweh’s Passover could be regarded “as one that is born in the land,” under the same covenant law as the native-born Israelite (Exod. 12:48–49).

The full significance of that pattern belongs to Section VII, where the first Exodus and second Exodus will be compared directly. Here the point is narrower. Israel’s covenant identity was historical, real, and distinct from the nations, yet it was not an absolutely sealed genealogical category into which no genuine outsider could ever enter. Scripture itself provides a means by which people from the nations may join themselves to Israel’s God and covenant people.

This already creates a serious problem for Israel Only. Paul’s later incorporation of believing Gentiles does not require those Gentiles to be reclassified as hidden descendants of Jacob. The older biblical pattern allows outsiders to become covenant insiders without first becoming Israelites according to the flesh. Covenant incorporation and biological ancestry are therefore related but not identical categories.

That distinction will become decisive later when Paul describes Gentiles as wild branches grafted into Israel’s olive tree, as fellow heirs and members of “the same body,” and as those who through Christ become Abraham’s seed and heirs according to promise. The first Exodus provides the type; the second Exodus brings the pattern to its Messianic fulfillment.

“All Creation” and the Great Commission

The apostolic mission supplies the historical movement necessary to understand Romans 8:22. Jesus declared that “this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come” (Matt. 24:14). Paul later states that the faith of the Roman Christians was spoken of “throughout the whole world” (Rom. 1:8), that the gospel sound had gone “into all the earth” and “unto the ends of the world” (Rom. 10:18), and that the gospel had come “in all the world” and had been proclaimed “in all creation under heaven” (Col. 1:6, 23).

The Great Commission therefore explains how the redemptive horizon can move from Israel to “the whole creation” without making pre-Sinai Gentiles members of Israel’s Mosaic covenant world. Adam explains the entrance of Sin and Death. Sinai explains Israel’s historical covenant formation and subjection under Torah. Christ and the Great Commission explain the forward movement of Israel’s Messianic salvation into the nations.

This is where my reading differs from Burgess’s more sharply. Burgess moves from Jews in verses 19–21 to Gentiles exclusively in verse 22. I agree that Paul’s horizon has expanded beyond Israel, but “whole creation” need not mean Gentiles alone. Against the Great Commission background, it more naturally describes the broadened human horizon into which Israel’s Messiah and gospel had gone. Israel remains the historical covenant creation from which the argument begins; Jew and Gentile now stand together within the worldwide Messianic sphere.

Paul’s temporal qualification reinforces that apostolic setting: “the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now” (Rom. 8:22). The expression “until now” locates the groaning within Paul’s own eschatological present. The language is corporate and personifying; it does not require every Jew and Gentile reached by the gospel consciously to understand the covenant transition in exactly Paul’s theological terms. It describes the human world now encompassed by the apostolic mission as caught within the travail of the Messianic transition.

The old covenant creation had not yet reached its judicial consummation, while the gospel of Israel’s Messiah had already gone outward throughout the nations. Romans 8 therefore stands at precisely the historical moment in which the covenant story of Israel was becoming the Messianic story of Jew and Gentile together.

Israel Only has particular difficulty with that movement. Paul does not describe the gospel as merely circulating among scattered descendants of the northern tribes. He repeatedly distinguishes Israel from the Gentiles and describes the gospel as moving outward to the nations. The burden therefore rests upon Israel Only to demonstrate that Paul’s Gentiles are actually ethnic Israelites despite his sustained Jew-Gentile distinction and despite the Old Testament precedent of genuine foreigners entering Israel’s covenant life. A covenantal interpretation of “creation” cannot simply be converted into an ethnic restriction Paul himself does not make.

“Not Only … But We Ourselves Also”

Verse 23 then gives us the clearest grammatical distinction in the paragraph: “And not only [the whole creation], but ourselves also, which have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves.” Whatever precise boundaries are assigned to “the whole creation” of verse 22, Paul distinguishes “we ourselves” from it through the “not only . . . but also” construction.

More importantly, he tells us what distinguishes this second group: they possess “the firstfruits of the Spirit.” Paul therefore describes two simultaneous groanings without placing the two groups in the same redemptive condition. The whole creation groans and travails “until now,” while Paul and his fellow believers also groan as those who have already entered the inaugurated blessings of the New Covenant and possess the Spirit as the firstfruits of the coming consummation.

Firstfruits are neither absence nor completion. They are the initial portion that guarantees and anticipates the harvest. The Spirit-bearing saints therefore already possess resurrection Life and adoption in an inaugurated sense (Rom. 8:1–17), yet they still await the consummated “adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body” (8:23). Their groaning differs from that of the wider human creation because they already possess the eschatological pledge of the glory whose manifestation they await.

This distinction is essential. The Great Commission can widen the human horizon to “all creation” without making every person reached by the gospel part of the redeemed body. Paul has already stated that “if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his” (Rom. 8:9). The proclamation goes into all creation; the Spirit identifies those who belong to Christ within that creation.

That gives Romans 8:19–23 a clear progression. “The creation” of verses 19–21 is the covenant creation subjected and awaiting liberation. “The whole creation” of verse 22 broadens the horizon within Paul’s apostolic “now” as the Messianic gospel moves from Israel into the nations. “We ourselves” in verse 23 identifies the Spirit-bearing believing community within that wider human world. Paul is not confusing these categories; he is moving through them.

The Redemptive-Historical Progression

The progression can therefore be summarized compactly:

This sequence preserves the actual direction of redemptive history. It does not move covenant creation backward into Genesis 1. It does not move Paul’s approaching liberation forward into a planetary renovation thousands of years beyond his audience. And it does not take the nations reached by the gospel and redefine them backward into biological Israel.

Paul moves forward: from Adamic Sin and Death, to Israel’s covenant creation at Exodus-Sinai, to Messiah, to the Great Commission, to the nations, to Spirit-bearing Jew and Gentile together, and toward consummated liberation.

Two Groanings and One Approaching Glory

This brings the paragraph back to verse 18. The glory was “about to be revealed”; the creation subjected to futility awaited the manifestation of the sons and liberation into their glory; “the whole creation” groaned and travailed “until now”; and the Spirit-bearing firstfruits themselves groaned while awaiting adoption and “the redemption of our body.”

Paul has not introduced two eschatological horizons. The creation’s liberation and the saints’ redemption belong to the same approaching glory. Nor has he introduced two unrelated redemptive histories. The old covenant creation from which the argument emerges is moving toward liberation at precisely the time when Israel’s Messiah and gospel are reaching the nations.

The physical-cosmos interpretation obscures this progression by carrying Paul backward to a supposed material curse upon nature at Adam’s fall and then forward to a planetary transformation still future to us. Covenant Creation makes the opposite mistake by taking legitimate later covenant-creation language and pushing it backward into Genesis 1. Israel Only recognizes Israel’s central covenant role but refuses the biblical expansion of Israel’s Messianic blessings to genuine Gentiles.

Paul makes none of these moves. Covenant creation remains located in Israel’s Exodus-Sinai history. The gospel moves forward from Israel into the nations. Those nations remain genuinely Gentile by natural origin while believing Gentiles are incorporated into Israel’s Messianic blessings. The Spirit-bearing body then awaits the consummated glory Paul says was approaching.

The Creation and Great Commission Syllogism

Major Premise: Israel was the covenant creation formed in redemptive history and subjected under the Mosaic administration, while the New Testament later uses “all creation” for the human horizon into which the apostolic gospel was proclaimed (Mark 16:15; Col. 1:23).

Minor Premise: Romans 8 moves from “the creation” subjected to futility (vv. 19–21), to “the whole creation” groaning in Paul’s apostolic “now” (v. 22), and then distinguishes Spirit-bearing believers from that wider horizon (v. 23).

Conclusion: Paul’s progression is best understood forward in redemptive history: from Israel as the Sinai covenant creation, through the Great Commission’s expansion into the nations, to the Spirit-bearing Jew-Gentile body awaiting consummated adoption and redemption.

Nothing in that progression requires a physical-cosmos interpretation of Romans 8. Nothing requires Covenant Creation’s reinterpretation of Genesis 1. And nothing requires Israel Only’s redefinition of genuine Gentiles as ethnic Israelites.

The next question is therefore not whether Genesis 1 secretly describes the Mosaic covenant. It is whether Scripture itself describes Israel as a people whom God “made,” “created,” and “formed,” and whether that creation is connected with the Exodus and Sinai. Deuteronomy 32 and Isaiah 51 answer precisely those questions. They locate the covenant creation where redemptive history places it—at the first Exodus—before Paul carries that history forward through the second Exodus and the approaching liberation announced in Romans 8.

V. Israel Created and Formed: Deuteronomy 32, Isaiah 51–52, and the New Covenant Creation

If the “creation” of Romans 8:19–21 is Israel, as the preceding section has argued, Scripture should provide a basis for describing Israel as a creation without requiring us to reinterpret Genesis 1 as the Mosaic covenant. It does. The covenant-creation significance of Deuteronomy 32 and Isaiah 51 has already been examined at length in earlier Parts of this series, so there is no reason to reproduce all of that exegesis here. The conclusions relevant to Romans 8 are more focused. Deuteronomy 32 describes Israel as a people whom God made, created, and formed, while Isaiah 51 places the planting of covenant heavens and the founding of covenant earth within the Exodus-Sinai complex. Isaiah then carries that covenant people through judgment, bondage, awakening, and restoration in Isaiah 51–52, before the prophetic movement reaches the creation of new heavens, new earth, and a rejoicing Jerusalem in Isaiah 65. Our purpose here is to draw those established conclusions forward into Paul’s description of “the creation” subjected to futility and awaiting liberation.

Israel as God’s Created and Formed People

Deuteronomy 32 provides the foundational language. Moses rebukes Israel by asking, “Do ye thus requite the LORD, O foolish people and unwise? is not he thy father that hath bought thee? hath he not made thee, and established thee?” (Deut. 32:6). As demonstrated earlier in this series, the Septuagint makes the creation and formation terminology particularly explicit in describing God as the One who acquired, made, created, and formed Israel. The subject is not the biological origin of Israelites or the original creation of mankind. Moses addresses the covenant people whom Yahweh redeemed, constituted, instructed, and established as His own.

The setting of the Song of Moses prevents us from moving this creation backward into Genesis 1. Israel has corrupted itself as a “crooked and perverse generation” against the God who is her Father and Creator (Deut. 32:5–6). Moses proceeds to rehearse Yahweh’s covenant care of Jacob: the Lord takes Israel as His portion, finds him, leads him, instructs him, keeps him, and alone guides him (vv. 9–12). The creation in view is therefore a people within redemptive history. The Israelites existed physically before Sinai; what God created and formed was their covenant identity as His peculiar people.

This point will become increasingly important when we reach the incorporation of Gentiles into Israel’s promised salvation. Scripture can speak of people who already exist physically as subsequently entering a newly created covenant identity. That fact is already present in Israel’s own history and later becomes especially significant in Jewish descriptions of the proselyte as a new creature. Paul’s “new creation” language likewise does not describe biological origination. Covenant creation concerns a changed covenant standing and identity before God. We therefore have no exegetical reason to force every biblical use of “create,” “creation,” or “new creation” back into Genesis 1.

That distinction fits the chronology already established from Romans without requiring us to repeat the argument of Sections I and IV. Adamic Sin and Death precede Moses; Israel’s covenant formation does not. Paul explicitly places the reign of Death “from Adam to Moses” (Rom. 5:14), thereby distinguishing the Adamic problem from the later Mosaic administration. Deuteronomy 32 gives us the corresponding Old Testament category: the God who created the original world later made and formed Israel as His covenant people within that world.

Isaiah 51 and the Exodus-Sinai Heavens and Earth

Isaiah 51 makes the covenant-creation connection still more explicit. The detailed exegetical questions surrounding this passage—including its Exodus imagery, garment imagery, historical setting, Hebrew and Septuagint forms, and its relationship to the passing of the old covenant heavens and earth—have already received extended treatment earlier in this series. Here we need only carry forward the portion directly relevant to Romans 8.

Isaiah recalls the first Exodus: “Art thou not it that hath cut Rahab, and wounded the dragon? Art thou not it which hath dried the sea, the waters of the great deep; that hath made the depths of the sea a way for the ransomed to pass over?” (Isa. 51:9–10).

The same historical setting remains in view when Yahweh declares, “I am the LORD thy God, that divided the sea, whose waves roared” (v. 15), and then immediately adds: “And I have put my words in thy mouth, and I have covered thee in the shadow of mine hand, that I may plant the heavens, and lay the foundations of the earth, and say unto Zion, Thou art my people” (Isa. 51:16).

The sequence is decisive. Yahweh divides the sea, makes a way for the ransomed, covers His people with His hand, places His words in their mouth, plants covenant heavens, establishes covenant earth, and declares to Zion, “Thou art my people.” The physical heavens and earth obviously existed before these events. Isaiah is using creation language for God’s historical constitution of Israel’s covenant world in connection with the Exodus and Sinai.

The future restoration promised in Isaiah 51 does not require us to move the historical referent of verse 16 forward to AD 70. The first Exodus functions as the pattern and guarantee of the promised second Exodus. Yahweh can promise Zion another great deliverance precisely because He is the God who previously divided the sea, redeemed His people, gave them His words, and established their covenant world. Prophetic typology moves from the accomplished type to the promised antitype; it does not erase the historical identity of the type.

From Isaiah 51 to Isaiah 52: The Created Zion Awakens and Arises

The argument becomes even more significant when Isaiah 51:16 is allowed to remain connected to what follows. The Zion whose covenant heavens and earth were historically planted through the Exodus-Sinai order is also the Zion that comes under covenant judgment. Isaiah 51:17 addresses Jerusalem as the one who has drunk “the cup of his fury.” Her sons lie helpless under divine judgment, and the prophet describes devastation, destruction, famine, and sword (vv. 17–20). Yet the judgment is not the end of Zion’s story. Yahweh promises to remove the cup from her hand and place it into the hand of those who afflicted her (vv. 21–23).

Isaiah 52 then answers that covenant humiliation with the language of awakening, arising, release, and new clothing: “Awake, awake; put on thy strength, O Zion; put on thy beautiful garments, O Jerusalem, the holy city. . . . Shake thyself from the dust; arise, and sit down, O Jerusalem: loose thyself from the bands of thy neck, O captive daughter of Zion” (Isa. 52:1–2).

This is precisely the kind of prophetic movement that prepares us for the resurrection and liberation language of the New Testament. Zion has been brought down under covenant judgment; Zion is commanded to awake and arise. She has been humiliated in the dust; she is told to rise and take her proper place. She has worn the condition of captivity; she is commanded to loose the bands from her neck and put on beautiful garments. The movement is from covenant death and bondage into restoration, liberty, and glory.

That sequence is especially relevant to Romans 8 because Paul likewise describes a covenant creation in bondage, groaning toward “the liberty of the glory of the children of God” (Rom. 8:21). Isaiah has already joined covenant creation, bondage, judgment, release, and glory within the story of Zion. Paul does not need a decaying material universe to supply those categories. Israel’s own prophetic Scriptures had already done so.

The imagery also reaches beyond an exclusively ethnic restoration. Isaiah 52 does not end with Zion merely recovering what she once possessed. Yahweh bares His holy arm “in the eyes of all the nations; and all the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of our God” (v. 10). The Servant then “sprinkle[s] many nations” (v. 15). The restoration of Zion and the extension of salvation to the nations belong to the same prophetic movement. This becomes crucial when Romans 8 is read alongside the apostolic mission and Paul’s movement from Israel into the Gentile world.

Isaiah 52:1 also describes restored Jerusalem as the holy city into which “the uncircumcised and the unclean” will no longer enter in their former condition. Yet the same chapter immediately announces salvation before the nations and the Servant’s cleansing of many nations. The answer is not that Gentiles as Gentiles are eternally excluded from Zion’s salvation. The prophetic movement anticipates the transformation of covenant identity that the New Testament later describes through circumcision of the heart, circumcision “made without hands,” and incorporation into the people of God through Christ.

From Isaiah 52 to Isaiah 65: New Heavens, New Earth, and a Created Jerusalem

Isaiah’s covenant-creation argument does not stop with Zion arising from the dust. The trajectory ultimately reaches Isaiah 65, where Yahweh declares: “For, behold, I create new heavens and a new earth: and the former shall not be remembered, nor come into mind. But be ye glad and rejoice for ever in that which I create: for, behold, I create Jerusalem a rejoicing, and her people a joy” (Isa. 65:17–18).

The parallel language deserves careful attention. God does not merely say, “I create new heavens and a new earth.” He immediately explains the covenantal center of that new creation: “I create Jerusalem.” The new heavens and new earth and the created Jerusalem belong together. This is the prophetic trajectory that Revelation 21 follows when John sees “a new heaven and a new earth” and immediately sees “the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven” (Rev. 21:1–2).

The sequence running through Isaiah is therefore coherent. Yahweh historically plants Israel’s covenant heavens and lays the foundations of her covenant earth in connection with the first Exodus and Sinai (Isa. 51:9–16). That covenant Zion subsequently comes under judgment and drinks the cup of divine wrath (51:17–23). Zion is then commanded to awake, arise from the dust, loose the bands of captivity, and put on beautiful garments (52:1–2). Yahweh reveals His salvation before the nations and the Servant cleanses many nations (52:10, 15). The prophetic movement ultimately reaches the creation of new heavens, new earth, and a rejoicing Jerusalem (65:17–18).

That progression is exactly what Covenant Creation obscures when it moves the old covenant creation backward into Genesis. The old covenant heavens and earth have a historical covenant beginning in the Exodus-Sinai formation of Israel. They can therefore undergo covenant judgment and pass away. The new covenant heavens and earth arise through the Messianic work that brings Zion’s promises to their fulfillment and extends salvation to the nations.

Israel’s Covenant Creation and Romans 8

The Old Testament evidence can now be brought into direct relation with Paul:

The progression in the chart is important because it moves forward, not backward. Romans 8 does not force us back into Genesis 1 in search of a covenant creation. Deuteronomy 32 and Isaiah 51 have already supplied one within redemptive history. Israel was made and formed as God’s covenant people through the Exodus-Sinai complex; Paul can therefore describe that covenant creation as subjected to futility and awaiting liberation as the Mosaic age approached its consummation. The original creation remains the historical foundation of the imagery, while Israel’s covenant creation is its later redemptive-historical application.

This is precisely where Covenant Creation reverses the biblical direction. Because Scripture later employs creation language covenantally, Tim Martin reasons backward and reads the covenant creation into Genesis itself. But nothing in Deuteronomy 32, Isaiah 51–52, Isaiah 65, or Romans 8 requires that move. The biblical sequence is much simpler: God creates the original world; He later creates and forms Israel as His covenant people; that covenant creation passes through judgment and restoration; and the prophetic promise reaches the Messianic new creation and New Jerusalem. Covenantal use of creation language does not require a covenantal reinterpretation of the original creation.

Martin’s Earlier Sinai Reading

Martin’s changed interpretation of Isaiah 51 is especially relevant at this point, although the full history of that change need not be repeated here. Martin formerly understood the planting of heavens and founding of earth in Isaiah 51:16 substantially within the Exodus-Sinai framework. He later abandoned that position and relocated the language toward the AD 70 establishment of the new covenant creation. His earlier reading was substantially correct and, ironically, preserved a distinction his later Covenant Creation system obscures.

The earlier reading allowed the biblical sequence to remain intact: Genesis gives us the original creation; Exodus and Sinai give us the covenant creation of Israel; the prophets then use the first creation and first Exodus as the vocabulary and pattern for the coming new creation and second Exodus. Once Israel’s old covenant creation is moved away from Sinai, unnecessary pressure arises to locate its beginning somewhere earlier. Covenant Creation ultimately pushes that beginning all the way back into Genesis. But Isaiah 51 gives us no reason to make that move.

This does not weaken the AD 70 fulfillment of the new creation promises. It strengthens it by preserving biblical typology. The old covenant heavens and earth must exist before they can pass away. If they were historically planted and founded in the Exodus-Sinai formation of Israel, then their passing at the end of the Mosaic age and replacement by the mature new covenant creation follows a coherent redemptive sequence. The first Exodus establishes the old covenant world; the second Exodus brings that world to its appointed end and establishes the new.

Spiritual Circumcision, Resurrection, and Entrance into Restored Zion

Isaiah’s movement from the judged Zion to the restored holy city also prepares the way for a New Testament development that will become increasingly important as we move through Romans 8 and the second Exodus. If the restored Zion is holy, and if salvation simultaneously goes forth to the nations, how do those who were once strangers and uncircumcised enter the promised covenant inheritance?

Paul answers that question Christologically rather than genealogically. In Colossians 2:11–12, believers possess a circumcision “made without hands” in the putting off of the body of the sins of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ. They are then described as buried with Christ and “risen with him through the faith of the operation of God, who hath raised him from the dead.” Colossians 3:1 can consequently address biologically living Christians as those already “risen with Christ,” while verse 4 still points forward to their manifestation with Him in glory.

The importance of this pattern should not be missed. Entrance into the restored people of God is not grounded in fleshly circumcision or hidden Israelite ancestry. Nor does Paul describe resurrection participation as the result of an outward rite operating independently of faith. His language is spiritual and Christological: circumcision “without hands,” union with Christ, resurrection “through faith,” and a Life already possessed in Him awaiting manifestation in glory.

First Corinthians supplies the corresponding corporate category: “For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles” (1 Cor. 12:13). Paul does not erase the natural distinction between Jew and Gentile; he explicitly names it while declaring that both are incorporated by the one Spirit into the one body. Romans later states the same corporate reality: “we, being many, are one body in Christ” (Rom. 12:5). Paul’s one-body language expressly encompasses multiple members, while 1 Corinthians expressly includes Jews and Gentiles in that body.

This is the New Covenant answer to the problem Isaiah’s restored-Zion imagery anticipates. The nations do not enter because they secretly cease being Gentiles by genealogy. They enter through Israel’s Messiah, receive the Spirit, participate in His resurrection Life, and become members of the same covenant body. The prophetic movement from Zion’s awakening to salvation among the nations therefore prepares us for Paul’s movement from Israel’s covenant creation to the Jew-Gentile body awaiting consummated redemption.

From Covenant Creation to Covenant Liberation

The significance of Deuteronomy 32 and Isaiah 51 for Romans 8 can therefore be stated without redoing the extensive Old Testament exegesis already presented elsewhere in this series. Paul did not invent the idea that Israel could be described as God’s creation. Israel’s own Scriptures supplied that category. God made and formed her as His people, and Isaiah described that covenant formation through the planting of heavens and founding of earth in the Exodus-Sinai setting.

There is an additional connection that becomes particularly important for Romans 8: Israel’s creation and Israel’s Exodus belong together. Isaiah 51 does not isolate “plant the heavens” and “lay the foundations of the earth” from redemption. The same passage speaks of the sea being divided and “the ransomed” passing through it. Israel’s covenant creation emerged through liberation from Egyptian bondage. That historical pattern prepares us for Paul’s creation awaiting another liberation from bondage.

Isaiah 51–52 now allows us to sharpen the correspondence further. The covenant Zion historically formed through the first Exodus subsequently comes under judgment, drinks the cup, lies in humiliation, and is then commanded to awake, arise, leave the dust, loose her bands, and put on beautiful garments. Salvation then moves outward before the nations. The covenant-creation theme therefore already contains the movement from creation through bondage and judgment into liberation, resurrection-like restoration, glory, and Gentile inclusion. Romans 8 stands naturally within that prophetic world.

This allows the argument to advance rather than circle back. Section IV identified the creation of Romans 8:19–21 with Israel. The earlier Parts of this series established the Old Testament covenant-creation background. The present section has brought those conclusions together: the creation Paul describes as subjected to futility is the covenant creation Scripture locates in the Exodus-Sinai history, not primordial humanity extending backward into Genesis 1.

The redemptive sequence can therefore be stated without collapsing any of its stages:

ORIGINAL CREATION → ADAMIC SIN AND DEATH → EXODUS-SINAI COVENANT CREATION → COVENANT BONDAGE AND JUDGMENT → ZION AWAKENS AND ARISES → MESSIAH AND RESURRECTION LIFE → NATIONS INCORPORATED → NEW COVENANT CREATION / NEW JERUSALEM

The sequence matters. Adamic Sin and Death are not created at Sinai. Israel’s covenant creation is not Genesis 1. Zion’s resurrection-like restoration does not require the physical reconstruction of corpses. Gentile incorporation does not require Gentiles to become biological Israelites. And the new heavens and new earth do not require the destruction and replacement of the material universe. Each category must remain where Scripture places it within redemptive history.

The next question is therefore more precise. What happened to this covenant creation that allowed Paul to say it had been “subjected to futility,” remained in “the bondage of corruption,” and awaited “the liberty of the glory of the children of God” (Rom. 8:20–21)? We do not need to return again to the question of when Israel was created. Romans 8, read alongside Paul’s remarkably parallel argument in Galatians 4–5, now allows us to examine the nature of that subjection itself.

VI. “Subjected to Futility”: Sinai, Bondage, Corruption, and the Adamic Reign of Death

Having established the historical location of Israel’s covenant creation, the next question is what Paul means when he says that this creation was “subjected to futility” and awaited deliverance from “the bondage of corruption” (Rom. 8:20–21). The distinction established earlier must remain in place. Adam explains the entrance of Sin and Death into the human world; Sinai explains the later formation of Israel as a covenant creation under Torah. Israel’s subjection to futility under the Mosaic administration is therefore not another description of the original entrance of Adamic Death. Paul has already said that “until the law sin was in the world” and that Death reigned “from Adam to Moses” (Rom. 5:13–14). The issue now is how that already-existing Adamic problem operated within the covenant creation formed under Moses.

The word translated “vanity” in the KJV is mataiotēs, commonly rendered “futility.” Nothing in the term itself requires material deterioration or the decay of the physical universe. Paul uses the same noun when he commands Gentile Christians not to walk “in the vanity of their mind,” immediately describing that condition in terms of darkened understanding, alienation from the Life of God, ignorance, hardness, and sinful conduct (Eph. 4:17–19). Second Peter likewise speaks of false teachers uttering “great swelling words of vanity” (2 Pet. 2:18). Futility can therefore describe a human, moral, and redemptive condition. We cannot simply read a decaying material cosmos into Romans 8:20 because Paul uses mataiotēs.

That meaning fits the argument Paul has already developed in Romans. The Law itself was not futile in the sense of being defective: “the law is holy, and the commandment holy, and just, and good” (Rom. 7:12). The problem was Sin operating through fallen humanity. “Sin, taking occasion by the commandment, deceived me, and by it slew me” (v. 11). What was ordained to Life was “found to be unto death,” not because God’s commandment was evil, but because Sin worked death through that which was good (vv. 10, 13). Torah encountered the Adamic problem, exposed it, and intensified its covenantal consequences, but could not itself overcome it.

Romans 8 opens with the answer to that condition: “For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death” (8:2). Paul immediately explains why the Mosaic Law could not accomplish that liberation: “For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh” (v. 3). The weakness was not moral weakness in Torah but its inability, operating upon fallen humanity, to impart the resurrection Life necessary to conquer Sin and Death. What the Law could expose and condemn, God accomplished through His Son and Spirit.

This gives the creation’s “futility” a natural place in Paul’s argument. Israel existed as God’s covenant creation under a holy administration that could command righteousness but could not give the Life necessary to overcome the Adamic reign of Sin and Death. Paul states the same principle in Galatians: “if there had been a law given which could have given life, verily righteousness should have been by the law” (Gal. 3:21). There was no such law. The Mosaic administration could expose transgression, pronounce covenant condemnation, and direct Israel toward the promised Messiah, but it could not itself produce the resurrection Life toward which Israel’s covenant history pointed. The futility of Romans 8 is therefore thoroughly intelligible within redemptive history without making the material universe Paul’s subject.

Paul adds that the creation was subjected “not willingly, but by reason of him who hath subjected the same in hope” (Rom. 8:20). Whatever nuances are attached to “not willingly,” the larger point is unmistakable: the subjection was purposeful and teleological. It occurred “in hope.” God did not subject His covenant creation to a meaningless cycle of frustration. The Mosaic administration itself pointed beyond itself toward Messiah. The Law “was added because of transgressions, till the seed should come to whom the promise was made” and functioned as a pedagogue leading to Christ (Gal. 3:19, 24–25). Its temporary character was built into its redemptive purpose.

This does not mean that God made Israel sinful at Sinai. Israel came to Sinai already within Adam’s world of Sin and Death. Nor does it mean that the Mosaic covenant itself was Sin, Death, corruption, or futility. Torah was holy and good. Rather, God placed His covenant creation under an administration in which the Adamic condition would be exposed, Sin would seize the commandment, transgression would abound, covenant condemnation would be pronounced, and the inability of Law to impart Life would direct Israel toward Christ. “The law entered, that the offence might abound. But where sin abounded, grace did much more abound” (Rom. 5:20). The creation was subjected “in hope” because Moses was never the terminus of Israel’s redemptive history.

Bondage, Adoption, Sonship, and Liberty

The strongest evidence for the covenantal meaning of the creation’s bondage comes from Paul’s own vocabulary immediately surrounding Romans 8:19–23. Before saying that creation would be delivered from “the bondage of corruption,” Paul tells his readers, “ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father” (v. 15). He then moves without interruption from Spirit to sonship, from sonship to inheritance, from inheritance and suffering to approaching glory, from that glory to the manifestation of the sons of God, and from the manifestation of the sons to creation’s liberation into “the liberty of the glory of the children of God” (vv. 14–21). Paul has not suddenly abandoned covenant redemption to discuss geology. Bondage, Spirit, adoption, sonship, inheritance, liberty, and glory form one developing redemptive argument.

Galatians 4–5 provides the most important Pauline control because there Paul employs virtually the same cluster of categories and explicitly connects them with Sinai and the Jerusalem of his own day. The heir, while still a child, “differeth nothing from a servant” and remains under guardians until “the time appointed of the father” (Gal. 4:1–2). Paul then applies the analogy redemptive-historically. When the fullness of time came, God sent His Son, “made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons” (vv. 4–5). God then sent “the Spirit of his Son” into their hearts, “crying, Abba, Father,” so that the slave becomes a son and heir (vv. 6–7). The verbal and conceptual correspondence with Romans 8 is striking.

The importance of this parallel is difficult to overstate. Paul does not leave the identity of the bondage in Galatians at the level of abstraction. Hagar “answereth to mount Sinai in Arabia” and corresponds to “Jerusalem which now is, and is in bondage with her children” (Gal. 4:24–25). In contrast, “Jerusalem which is above is free” (v. 26). Paul concludes, “we are not children of the bondwoman, but of the free” (v. 31), followed immediately by the exhortation, “Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free” (5:1). Romans 8 moves from bondage to Spirit, adoption, sonship, inheritance, liberty, and glory; Galatians 4–5 moves through the same categories and explicitly places Sinai and the Jerusalem then existing on the bondage side of the transition.

Galatians is also already preparing the way for the Gentile argument that will become explicit in the next section. Paul does not reserve the status of sons and heirs for ethnic Israelites. Earlier he has told Gentile believers, “ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus,” and concludes that “there is neither Jew nor Greek” because “ye are all one in Christ Jesus.” Therefore, “if ye be Christ’s, then are ye Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise” (Gal. 3:26–29). The movement from bondage to adoption and inheritance in Galatians 4 cannot be detached from that immediately preceding Jew-Gentile context. Gentiles do not become heirs because Paul secretly identifies them as lost biological Israelites. They become Abraham’s seed and heirs because they belong to Christ.

This becomes especially damaging to Israel Only when Galatians reaches its conclusion. Paul does not say that circumcision finally reveals which Gentiles are really Israelites according to the flesh. He declares instead, “in Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth any thing, nor uncircumcision; but faith which worketh by love” (Gal. 5:6), and later, “in Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth any thing, nor uncircumcision, but a new creature [kainē ktisis]” (6:15). The significance of that “new creation” language will be developed more fully in Section VII alongside Jewish proselyte terminology. For now it is enough to observe the direction of Paul’s argument: circumcision and uncircumcision do not determine participation in the promised inheritance; union with Christ and the new creation do.

“Stand Fast”: From the First Exodus to the Second

Paul’s command, “Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free” (Gal. 5:1), also carries an important Exodus resonance that strengthens the relationship between Romans 8 and Galatians without changing the argument already established. At the Red Sea, with Pharaoh’s army approaching and Israel apparently trapped, Moses declared, “Fear ye not, stand still, and see the salvation of the LORD, which he will shew to you today” (Exod. 14:13). Yahweh Himself would accomplish the deliverance. Israel was called to stand and behold His salvation. When the deliverance was completed, Israel “feared the LORD, and believed the LORD, and his servant Moses” (Exod. 14:31).  When the passages says the people “believed in the LORD, and his servant Moses” the Hebrew for believe is aman which means “to stand firm.”

Paul later describes that same Exodus generation as having been “baptized unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea” (1 Cor. 10:2). That language should not be reduced to the physical application of water. Israel passed through the sea on dry ground; the water destroyed the Egyptians. The baptism was “unto Moses”—a corporate identification with the covenant mediator through whom Yahweh was leading His people out of bondage. Exodus itself culminates the episode by emphasizing faith: they “believed the LORD, and his servant Moses.”  To believe in the revelation or doctrine that comes through Moses is to stand firm being baptized into Moses.

The New Testament repeatedly takes up the language of standing in precisely the sphere of faith and covenant fidelity. “By faith ye stand” (2 Cor. 1:24). Believers have “access by faith into this grace wherein we stand” (Rom. 5:2). Paul commands the Philippians to “stand fast in the Lord” (Phil. 4:1). He reminds the Corinthians of the gospel “wherein ye stand” and “by which also ye are saved” (1 Cor. 15:1–2). And here, in the direct contrast between Sinai bondage and the liberty of the Jerusalem above, Paul commands, “Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free” (Gal. 5:1).

The correspondence should not be flattened into identity, but the redemptive movement is unmistakable. In the first Exodus, the people stand and see Yahweh’s salvation, believe Yahweh and His servant Moses, are baptized unto Moses, and move toward covenant inheritance. In the greater Exodus, the people stand by faith, stand in grace, stand in the gospel, stand in the Lord, and stand in the liberty Christ has accomplished while moving toward the promised inheritance.

FIRST EXODUS: BAPTIZED UNTO MOSES → STAND AND SEE YAHWEH’S SALVATION → BELIEVE YAHWEH AND MOSES → COVENANT PEOPLE MOVING TOWARD INHERITANCE

SECOND EXODUS: BAPTIZED BY ONE SPIRIT INTO CHRIST’S ONE BODY → STAND BY FAITH / IN GRACE / IN THE GOSPEL / IN THE LORD’S LIBERTY → JEW-GENTILE COVENANT PEOPLE MOVING TOWARD RESURRECTION INHERITANCE

The second line anticipates material that will receive fuller treatment in Section VII, but its relevance here is already clear. Paul says, “For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles” (1 Cor. 12:13). The greater Exodus is therefore not merely another outward passage through water. Its covenant people are identified with the greater Mediator through the Spirit. Colossians describes the same Christological reality as circumcision “made without hands,” burial with Christ, and being “risen with him through the faith of the operation of God” (Col. 2:11–12). The first Exodus supplies the pattern; Christ supplies the greater redemptive reality.

Israel was not saved because the waters of the Red Sea touched their bodies; they passed through on dry ground. Likewise, Paul’s explanation of incorporation into Christ centers upon the Spirit, faith, union with Christ, circumcision without hands, and resurrection Life. The second Exodus surpasses the first because Christ accomplishes what Moses and Torah could never accomplish.

Isaiah 51–52: From Covenant Bondage to Arising and Liberty

The Isaiah 51–52 material developed in the preceding section now strengthens this Exodus-shaped movement without requiring us to change the identification already established. The Zion whose covenant heavens and earth were planted in connection with the first Exodus and Sinai subsequently comes under covenant judgment. Jerusalem drinks the cup of Yahweh’s fury and lies helpless under His judgment (Isa. 51:17–23). Yet Yahweh promises to remove that cup, and the very next command is directed to the judged and humiliated Zion: “Awake, awake; put on thy strength, O Zion; put on thy beautiful garments, O Jerusalem, the holy city” (Isa. 52:1).

The command continues: “Shake thyself from the dust; arise, and sit down, O Jerusalem: loose thyself from the bands of thy neck, O captive daughter of Zion” (v. 2). The imagery is covenantal, restorative, and resurrection-like. Zion is in captivity and humiliation; she is told to awake, arise from the dust, loose her bonds, and put on garments appropriate to her restored condition. Isaiah therefore supplies the prophetic movement from covenant creation through bondage and judgment into liberation and glory.

That prophetic pattern stands naturally beside Paul. Romans 8 moves from bondage to the liberty and glory of the children of God. Galatians 4 contrasts the Jerusalem then in bondage with her children against the Jerusalem above who is free. Galatians 5 commands the saints to stand fast in that liberty. Isaiah 52 commands captive Zion to arise and loose the bands from her neck. The language is not identical at every point, but the redemptive movement belongs to the same biblical world.

Nor does Isaiah permit the restored Zion to be sealed off from the nations. Yahweh bares His holy arm “in the eyes of all the nations,” and “all the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of our God” (Isa. 52:10). The Servant then “sprinkle[s] many nations” (v. 15). The liberation of Zion and the extension of salvation to the nations are therefore joined prophetically before Paul announces that Gentiles in Christ become Abraham’s seed, heirs according to promise, and members of the new creation.

This does not mean that Romans 8:21 should be paraphrased, “The creation shall be delivered from the Mosaic covenant,” as though Paul had written those words. The case is more careful and considerably stronger than such a reduction. Romans 5 distinguishes Adam from Moses. Romans 7 describes Sin taking occasion through the commandment. Romans 8 contrasts Sin and Death with the Spirit of Life, bondage with adoption, and bondage with the liberty of God’s children. Galatians 4–5 reproduces the same Spirit-adoption-sonship-liberty complex and explicitly identifies Sinai and the Jerusalem then existing with bondage. Isaiah supplies the Exodus-Zion background in which covenant bondage gives way to arising and liberation. Paul is interpreting Paul within the prophetic framework of Israel’s Scriptures.

“The Bondage of Corruption”

The word “corruption,” phthora, is also frequently treated as though it settles the question in favor of the physical universe. It does not. The term can describe physical corruption when the context demands it, but Paul also uses it within moral and redemptive contrasts. “He that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption,” he writes, “but he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting” (Gal. 6:8). Flesh produces corruption; Spirit produces Life. That contrast is remarkably close to the controlling antithesis of Romans 8.

Second Peter likewise speaks of men who promise “liberty” while they themselves remain “the servants of corruption” (2 Pet. 2:19). The combination is especially significant. Peter can contrast liberty with slavery to corruption without describing the molecular deterioration of human bodies or the physical universe. The categories are ethical, covenantal, and redemptive. Romans 8 similarly contrasts “the bondage of corruption” with the liberty and glory of God’s children.

Within Romans itself, Paul has already identified the enslaving powers dominating the discussion. Sin “reigned unto death” (Rom. 5:21). The old man was crucified so that “the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin” (6:6). The Romans had been “the servants of sin” but were made free from it (vv. 17–18). Romans 7 describes Sin taking occasion through the commandment and bringing Death, and Romans 8 announces freedom through “the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus” from “the law of sin and death” (8:2). When Paul shortly thereafter describes the creation awaiting liberation from “the bondage of corruption,” he has already supplied the redemptive categories within which that language should be heard.

Here again the distinction between Adam and Sinai must be maintained without allowing it to dominate another section. Corruption does not originate at Sinai. Sin and Death do. Nor is Torah itself corruption. Israel’s covenant creation was formed under an administration in which the already-existing Adamic problem was exposed and intensified through the commandment. The Mosaic order could condemn Sin but could not impart the Life necessary to defeat it. The body is Mosaic in covenantal formation; the Sin and Death enslaving it are Adamic in origin.

The Creation Was Subjected “in Hope”

The words “in hope” are therefore indispensable to Paul’s argument. Israel’s covenant history under Torah was never intended to terminate in Torah. The creation was moving toward Christ. The promised Seed would come. The Spirit would be poured out. Slaves would become sons. Children would receive their inheritance. Bondage would give way to liberty. What the Law could not do, God would accomplish through His Son.

This also explains why the language of groaning and travail follows naturally in verses 22–23. As established in Section IV, Paul’s movement from “the creation” to “the whole creation” broadens the horizon into the Jew-Gentile world of the apostolic gospel, while he then sets alongside that wider groaning the “we ourselves” who possessed “the firstfruits of the Spirit.” There is no reason to reproduce that argument here. What matters at this stage is that Paul has explained the redemptive condition from which liberation was expected: the old covenant creation stood within the Adamic reign of Sin and Death, under an administration that exposed the problem but could not supply its final remedy.

This is why the physical-cosmos interpretation has difficulty accounting for the actual movement of the passage. Paul does not move from plants, animals, earthquakes, and biological decay to a prediction that matter will someday cease deteriorating. He moves from Sin and Death to Spirit and Life; from bondage to adoption; from children to heirs; from suffering to glory; from the manifestation of the sons to the liberation of creation; and from groaning to redemption. The conceptual world is redemptive from beginning to end.

Nor does Covenant Creation solve the problem by pushing this covenant creation backward into Genesis. The argument requires the opposite historical movement. Adamic Sin and Death are already present before the Law. Israel is later formed as a covenant creation at Exodus-Sinai. That creation is subjected under a temporary Mosaic administration “in hope.” Christ then enters that history, accomplishes what the Law could not do, gives the Spirit of adoption, and brings the covenant people toward the liberty and glory promised to the sons of God.

Israel Only likewise fails by confusing the historical origin of the covenant creation with the final boundaries of the redeemed people. Israel was indeed the covenant creation formed at Exodus-Sinai. But it does not follow that only Israel according to natural descent could ever participate in the promised liberation. Paul’s own movement from Abraham’s seed to Jew and Gentile in Christ, from circumcision and uncircumcision to new creation, and from bondage to a common inheritance expressly denies that inference. The historical priority of Israel establishes the source and structure of the promises; it does not exclude the Gentiles whom those promises themselves anticipated.

The additions developed above make that conclusion even stronger. The first Exodus itself will show that covenant participation was never reducible to Jacob’s physical descendants, while the greater Exodus expressly incorporates Jew and Gentile by the Spirit into one body. The new creation does not reveal that every apparent Gentile was secretly an Israelite according to the flesh. It establishes a covenant identity in Christ in which circumcision and uncircumcision cease to determine inheritance. That is why Galatians can move without contradiction from “Abraham’s seed” and “heirs according to the promise” to the declaration that what avails in Christ is “a new creature.”

The progression is therefore straightforward: Adam explains the origin of Sin and Death; Sinai explains the covenant creation subjected under Torah; Christ explains the entrance of righteousness, Spirit, and resurrection Life; the Great Commission explains the incorporation of the nations into the Messianic sphere; and the approaching consummation explains the creation’s liberation from bondage into glory. Nothing needs to be moved backward into Genesis, nothing in Paul’s argument requires the promised liberation to be moved thousands of years beyond the apostolic expectation established earlier in this article, and nothing permits the Gentiles participating in that liberation simply to be reclassified as ethnic Israelites.

The language has also become unmistakably Exodus-shaped. A covenant creation is in bondage. Its members groan. God’s children receive the Spirit. Slaves become sons. Sons are led toward inheritance. Redemption is awaited. Bondage gives way to liberty and glory. Israel’s covenant creation began through an Exodus from bondage; its final liberation would likewise take the form of a second and greater Exodus.

But there is one feature of that Exodus pattern that now requires much closer attention. The first Exodus did not consist solely of Jacob’s physical descendants. A mixed multitude came out of Egypt with Israel. The stranger could enter the covenant and become “as one born in the land.” Caleb the Kenizzite would become a striking example of covenant incorporation and inheritance. Later Jewish tradition could speak of a converted Gentile proselyte as newly born or newly created. When Paul then describes Gentiles receiving a circumcision “without hands,” passing through baptism into resurrection Life, becoming new creation, and sharing the inheritance of the saints, he is not abandoning the Exodus pattern. He is bringing it to its Christological fulfillment.

The baptismal correspondence now sharpens that transition. The first Exodus company was baptized unto Moses, stood to behold Yahweh’s salvation, believed Yahweh and His servant Moses, and moved toward the promised inheritance. In the greater Exodus, believing Jew and Gentile are baptized by one Spirit into one body, stand by faith in Christ, receive circumcision without hands, are raised with Him through faith, and move toward resurrection inheritance and glory. The type and antitype are not identical, but the direction is unmistakable: Moses gives way to Christ, bondage to liberty, fleshly covenant distinctions to the new creation, and the first inheritance to the greater inheritance of the children of God.

That is the next stage of Paul’s redemptive argument.

Conclusion: From the Groaning Creation to the Greater Exodus

The argument of Part 7A has brought us to an important point. Romans 8 does not require us to choose between Covenant Creation and a futurist renovation of the physical universe. Paul’s own redemptive chronology provides the better alternative. Adam explains the entrance of Sin and Death. Israel is subsequently made and formed as Yahweh’s covenant creation through the Exodus and Sinai. Torah enters that already Adamic world, exposes and intensifies the problem of transgression, but cannot impart the resurrection Life necessary to overcome Death. Christ accomplishes what the Law could not do, gives the Spirit of Life and adoption, and brings the covenant story toward its promised liberty and glory.

This preserves the distinctions Scripture itself gives us. The original creation remains where Genesis places it. Adamic Sin and Death remain prior to Moses. Israel’s covenant creation remains where Deuteronomy 32 and Isaiah 51 place it—in the historical formation of Zion through the Exodus-Sinai covenant. The New Covenant creation can therefore fulfill and replace that Mosaic heavens and earth without requiring us to reinterpret Genesis 1 as Sinai. Covenant Creation moves the later covenant creation backward into Genesis when Scripture moves redemptive history forward from Adam to Moses and from Moses to Christ.

At the same time, the traditional futurist interpretation of Romans 8 moves in the opposite wrong direction. Paul does not describe a material universe waiting thousands of years for its liberation. His categories throughout Romans 5–8 are Sin and Death, condemnation and righteousness, flesh and Spirit, bondage and adoption, suffering and glory, Death and resurrection Life. The glory associated with the liberation of creation was not merely certain; it was “about to be revealed” (Rom. 8:18). The creation was eagerly waiting, the whole creation was groaning “until now,” and the Spirit-bearing saints were themselves groaning as they awaited the consummation of their adoption.

The language of “the whole creation” also shows where the history was moving. The apostolic gospel was going outward from Israel into the nations. Jesus commanded the gospel to be preached to “all creation,” and Paul could declare within his own ministry that it had been proclaimed “in all creation under heaven” (Mark 16:15; Col. 1:23). The direction is not backward from Sinai into Genesis but forward from Israel into the nations. The covenant story that began with Israel was reaching its Messianic goal in the worldwide proclamation of Israel’s Messiah.

Yet Paul carefully distinguishes the whole creation from those who possess “the firstfruits of the Spirit.” The whole creation and the redeemed body are therefore related, but they are not identical. The gospel reaches the widened Jew-Gentile human creation; within that creation the Spirit identifies those who belong to Christ. This distinction becomes decisive because Paul immediately tells us what these Spirit-bearing believers were awaiting: “the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body” (Rom. 8:23).

We have therefore reached the point where the question must change. Part 7A asked, What is the creation that groans, and what is the bondage from which it awaits liberation? Part 7B must ask, What is the body that awaits redemption, and who belongs to it?

The answer begins where Israel’s covenant creation itself began—with the Exodus.

That connection is not incidental. Isaiah 51 joins covenant creation to Exodus redemption. The God who divided the sea, redeemed His people, planted the heavens, laid the foundations of the earth, and said to Zion, “Thou art my people,” established Israel’s covenant world through an Exodus from bondage. It should therefore not surprise us that Paul describes the consummation of that covenant history in equally Exodus-shaped categories: bondage, groaning, children, adoption, inheritance, redemption, liberty, and glory. The covenant creation established through the first Exodus was approaching its final liberation through the second and greater Exodus.

But the first Exodus also raises a problem that Israel Only cannot avoid. Israel did not leave Egypt as an ethnically sealed company. A mixed multitude went up with them. The stranger could enter Israel’s covenant life and share its covenant privileges. Most strikingly, Paul can address Christians at Corinth—including genuine Gentile believers—and speak of the Exodus generation as “all our fathers” (1 Cor. 10:1). Covenant ancestry is being defined through participation in the redemptive history fulfilled in Christ, not through biological descent alone.

Paul then says that these fathers were “all baptized unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea” (1 Cor. 10:2). They stood before the sea, were commanded, “Fear ye not, stand still, and see the salvation of the LORD,” passed through on dry ground, and believed Yahweh and His servant Moses (Exod. 14:13, 22, 31). Their baptism unto Moses signified identification with the covenant mediator, his leadership, and the deliverance God accomplished through him. The water itself was not the instrumental cause of their salvation; Israel passed through the sea on dry ground.

That pattern reaches its greater fulfillment in Christ. The New Covenant people are commanded to stand by faith, stand in grace, stand in the gospel, and “stand fast” in the liberty of Christ. They receive circumcision “made without hands.” They are buried and raised with Christ “through the faith of the operation of God.” And where the first Exodus generation was baptized unto Moses, Paul declares of the New Covenant people, “For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles” (1 Cor. 12:13).

This is where the argument of Romans 8 begins to open into the larger Pauline doctrine of resurrection and Israel’s salvation. If Jews and genuine Gentiles are baptized by one Spirit into one body, then the “redemption of our body” cannot be interpreted independently of the Jew-Gentile composition of that body. Romans itself will carry us from “the redemption of our body” (Rom. 8:23), through the remnant and Gentile ingrafting of Romans 9–11, to “life from the dead” (Rom. 11:15), “all Israel shall be saved” (Rom. 11:26), and finally the explicit declaration, “we, being many, are one body in Christ” (Rom. 12:5).

Part 7B will therefore follow the Exodus pattern from Moses to Messiah and from Israel into the nations. We will examine the mixed multitude, the stranger, baptism into Moses, the command to stand, spiritual circumcision, Spirit baptism, genuine Gentile incorporation, and the one body in Christ. These are not side issues added to Romans 8. They answer the question Paul himself has placed before us.

The creation has been identified. Its bondage has been explained. Its liberation belonged to the glory that was “about to be revealed.”

Now we turn from the groaning creation to the redemption of the body—from the first Exodus to the greater Exodus, from baptism into Moses to baptism by the Spirit into Christ, and from “our fathers” to the one Jew-Gentile people in whom Israel’s resurrection promises reach their Messianic fulfillment.

[1] Kenneth L. Gentry Jr., Before Jerusalem Fell: Dating the Book of Revelation (Tyler, TX: Institute for Christian Economics, 1989), 141–42.

[2] Phillip G. Kayser, “Did Jesus Really Come Soon?,” sermon on Revelation 22:12, October 28, 2018, Biblical Blueprints. Kayser specifically applies Romans 8:18 to something glorious “about to happen” and identifies a resurrection among the events of that first judgment.

[3] Kayser, “Did Jesus Really Come Soon?,” discussion of Romans 8:18 and 13:11–12.

[4] Phillip G. Kayser, “The Two Resurrections,” sermon on Revelation 20:4–6, August 12, 2018, Biblical Blueprints. Kayser explicitly distinguishes a first-century bodily resurrection from another bodily resurrection at the end of history.

[5] Phillip G. Kayser, Ransom Paid: Does the Bible Limit the Atonement? (Biblical Blueprints, 2009), 4.

[6] Gary DeMar, Last Days Madness: Obsession of the Modern Church, 4th rev. ed. (Powder Springs, GA: American Vision, 1999), 225.

[7] Gary DeMar and Kim Burgess, The Hope of Israel and the Nations: New Testament Eschatology Accomplished and Applied, vol. 1 (Powder Springs, GA: American Vision, 2023), 222.

[8] Peter J. Leithart, Revelation 1–11, International Theological Commentary (New York: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2018), 25–26.

[9] John Lightfoot, Henry Hammond, John Gill, Crellius, Le Clerc, and John Locke represent historical non-cosmic interpretations of Romans 8:19–23; their precise identifications of the “creation” differ and should not be treated as interchangeable.

[10] Gary DeMar and Kim Burgess, The Hope of Israel and the Nations: New Testament Eschatology Accomplished and Applied, vol. 1 (Powder Springs, GA: American Vision, 2023), 222. Burgess identifies the “creation” of Romans 8:19–21 with the Jews, “the whole creation” of verse 22 with the Gentiles, and those possessing the firstfruits of the Spirit in verse 23 with Christians.