Sermon Excerpt:I don’t know or remember how many of us are the firstborn children in our families, but being the firstborn is not that big of a deal in our time. In our post-Freudian age, usually people bring up the idea of being firstborn because they want to talk about the psychology of a firstborn person; otherwise it’s just a curiosity. In comparison with the ages past, we are a strange lot. It used to be that being the firstborn was a very big deal, indeed. The firstborn would inherit the family estate, if there was one. He was certainly saddled with the responsibility of keeping the family going should something happen to the parents, of assuming the family farm or business, and being the protector of his sisters, to be sure they were treated well and married well. In a royal family, it was the firstborn who would inherit the crown. Being firstborn had a lot to do with a person’s life.
Well, however people may think of being firstborn in the world today, we Christians are in a family that has a brother who is the firstborn, and his role is very important indeed; we are looking to him for everything. Jesus is the firstborn of the people of God, and he became the firstborn on the day of his resurrection.
In Rev. 1:5, we read of Jesus, “who is the faithful witness, and the first begotten of the dead, and the prince of the kings of the earth.” He is the first born from the dead because he is the first of all of us who will be raised from the dead, like he was, on the last day.
We also read in Colossians 1:18, “And he is the head of the body, the church: who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead; that in all things he might have the preeminence.” He is our head, he is our beginning, he is our firstborn – again, the firsborn from the dead; the first everlastingly raised, flesh and bone, from the dead. Therefore, he has all the right of our respect and honour as such.
We have another place where Jesus is called the firstborn in our lesson this evening from Romans 8. You will remember verse 29: “For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren.” Now this is very interesting. Paul says that Jesus’ being the firstborn is tied together with our lives in a particular way. He says that Jesus will be the firstborn at the Resurrection because his brothers, his family members, have been conformed to his image. This means that God’s plan is not merely to collect a bunch of people together so that they can be his family, with Jesus their firstborn brother. No. God’s plan is to do more than that. He wants to so work in our lives that we will actually share our firstborn brother’s image, so that we will not simply be in the number of his family, but bear his own likeness as well. We will be his brethren in a very real way.
What does it mean to be in the likeness of Christ? Well, it can mean many things, but what does it mean in Romans 8? First remember that the main theme of the chapter is the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives: 14: “For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God.” The Spirit not only identifies us as the children of God by his presence in our lives, he makes us the children of God. And how does he do that? He prays in us and through us. He leads us to call upon God as our Father and to call upon him especially for a particular concern: to call upon him for the fulfillment of his purpose for this world, for the creation as a whole. Paul says that our sufferings in this life, as the children of God, are a joining together with the sufferings and groaning of the whole creation. We and all the earth long for the day when the new age will come, in which all will be renewed and sorrowing and sighing will flee away. 22: “For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now. 23: And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body.”
What does it mean to have the Spirit? Paul says it means we experience his firstfruits. Elsewhere in Scripture, we find these firstfruits are many, but here the experience of his firstfruits is groaning; groaning for our full redemption. And the Spirit helps us with this groaning, with prayers that we can’t find words for. We just long. We just groan. And God, who sees our hearts, knows what we are feeling and hears that prayer, a prayer for the great day when our firstborn Brother will fulfill all his family duties to us completely. Everything that is his responsibility to fulfill as our firstborn brother, he will perform; all will be new, the whole creation and we who will live there.
It is in this groaning of the Spirit, in this praying and hoping and waiting, that we are made into the image of Christ. Did he not groan for these very same things? Did he not weep at Lazarus’ tomb? Did he not weep and sweat and groan in the garden of Gethsemane? Did he not groan on the Cross of Calvary? Yes he did, and his groanings were all for these very things we have been talking about. He groaned and suffered and died that the very desires the Spirit gives to our hearts might be fulfilled. He groaned, and still groans, that the whole creation will be renewed and that we might be his brethren on that wonderful Resurrection Day. He groaned that we might know his love and never, ever, be separated from it, but that we might mutually, he and we, enjoy his love, and the love of His Father, together for ever. That is truly something to be called wonderful!
It is as we learn these things, it is as we experience these things, it is as we are changed by these things, into people who understand God’s purpose and who long for it, who are willing to groan for it in prayer and suffering, that we become like the Son of God, that we really look like his family.
Our likeness with Christ is therefore a likeness of vocation. We are involved in the divine purposes with our lives as he was and is involved. And as we are involved, so God our Father is very deeply involved. Indeed, the whole world is involved with the fulfillment of our vocation in Christ. That is why Paul says what he says in v. 28: “And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.” Everything in our lives, under God’s amazing and powerful providence, is in some way connected with the fulfillment of all those things for which we groan.
Do we believe that? It is because Christ is risen that He is our firstborn elder brother and we belong to him. It is because he is risen from the dead that all the promises of God – not just this one here in Romans 8:28, but all - are secured for us; that all the promises of God are “yea” and “amen” in Christ Jesus. Yes, we groan! But all our groaning, be it the groaning of earthly sufferings, the groaning of persecution, or the inner groanings of the Holy Spirit, they are all gilded with the finest everlasting gold. As Paul says in verse 18: “For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.” Let us therefore be those who have this hope. Let us rejoice in the goodness of God in our lives, even in our sufferings, and let us ever more praise with adoration our firstborn brother who makes all things worthwhile: Jesus Christ, our Lord.Image: painting by Goodman, from www.allposters.com
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