Loving Like God

Returning once again to Romans 8:20, why would The Creator frustrate His own creation? Having frustrated it in hope, what was He hoping for? Romans is careful to tell us that neither the creation nor created things were responsible for the frustration, but the Creator Himself. When did this happen? What happened? Why?

Romans 8:24 asks the question, “Who hopes for what they already have?” To frustrate a creation, one must first have a creation, so the creation must have already been created at the time it was subjected to frustration. It must have been before “the fall.” The frustration was already in the garden before “the fall,” and was a contributing factor leading to “the fall.”

What was God hoping for, which is to say, What was it He did not already have? Why did He neglect to create what He was hoping for? Was it an oversight on The Creator’s part? We think not. It could only be there must have been something The Creator could not create – something He was hoping for that frustration could facilitate.

The answer is at once simple and profound. Any thoughts? :-)

Hebrews 11:1 tells us that “Faith is the substance of things hoped for…”

Hope is the raw material without which faith has nothing to work with – to make substantial. Elsewhere we are told that this “… faith works by love…” :-) (It doesn’t work without love either.)

What I want to focus on here by way of introduction is the matter of hope. What are you hoping for or more importantly, what is God hoping for? Wouldn’t it be nice if we could all get on the same page as God where this matter of hope is concerned? In the next day or so, I would like to take a look at hope from the vantage point of Romans 8:20

“For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope…”

What is God hoping for? :-)