Romans 8:18-30
22 We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. 23 Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies.
Paul uses the vivid imagery of pregnancy and childbirth to describe the church’s waiting for Christ’s return.
Pregnancy involves waiting, anticipation, and discomfort as a mother co-creates new life with God. This process involves morning sickness, swollen feet, sleepless nights, backaches, and numerous bodily changes. It is messy, uncomfortable, and often painful. Childbirth is even more so in the intense labor, acute pain, and upheaval that results in new life.
Paul likens believers to pregnant women, groaning as we wait for “the redemption of our bodies.” Just like an expectant mother carries new life she cannot yet fully see but knows is real and growing, we carry within us the firstfruits of the Spirit, the beginning of the new creation. We also are pregnant with new life.
Like pregnancy, this waiting is neither passive nor comfortable. We groan as we experience the labor pains of a life being transformed and a world being born anew. We feel the tension between the “already” of what Christ has begun and the “not yet” of what we are becoming.
This Advent, you may be groaning under the weight of a difficult year, exhausted by the labor of caring for others, weary in your body and soul, or disappointed in the slow-going nature of your transformation into Christlikeness. You are experiencing the groaning of one pregnant with new life. Such pain is not meaningless. Like labor pains, they signal that something new is being born. And just as no pregnant woman stays pregnant forever, our waiting has an end. This is the hope of Advent: that we who groan are pregnant with glory. That our labor is not in vain. That new creation is coming, as surely as a baby comes after labor.