Paul is not, then, proposing a Christian version of Stoicism. He is offering a Jesus-shaped picture of a suffering, redeeming providence, in which God’s people are themselves not simply spectators, not simply beneficiaries, but active participants. They are ‘called according to his purpose’, since God is even now using their groaning, at the heart of the world’s pain, as the vehicle for the Spirit’s own work, holding that sorrow before the Father, creating a context for the multiple works of healing and hope. Such God-lovers are therefore shaped according to the pattern of the Son: the
...more
