Creation Itself Will Be Set Free
Romans 8:19-21
For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. - Romans 8:19–21
The creation, personified here for literary emphasis, awaits alongside mankind with eager longing for the resurrection of the sons of God, because it too will be redeemed in the day the curse is lifted. In the tradition of the Jewish rabbis and OT prophets, Paul reminds the Romans that creation was subjected to this curse of futility (bondage to corruption), not by its own choice, but as a result of God’s judgment on mankind. He appears to have Genesis 3:17-19 in mind:
And to Adam he said, “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, ‘You shall not eat of it,’ cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”
Paul does not say what this liberation of the creation will look like at the time when it shares in the ‘freedom of the glory of the children of God’, but it is certain that it will be vastly different than it is now, and likely opposite of Isaiah’s description of its presently cursed condition:
Isaiah 24:4–6 (ESV): “The earth mourns and withers; the world languishes and withers; the highest people of the earth languish. The earth lies defiled under its inhabitants; for they have transgressed the laws, violated the statutes, broken the everlasting covenant. Therefore a curse devours the earth, and its inhabitants suffer for their guilt…”
In his Homilies on Romans XIV, Chrysostom explains, “Here Paul’s discourse becomes more emphatic, and he personifies the creation in the way that the prophets do when they speak of the floods, clapping their hands and so on.”
Let the sea roar, and all that fills it; the world and those who dwell in it! Let the rivers clap their hands; let the hills sing for joy together before the Lord, for he comes to judge the earth. He will judge the world with righteousness, and the peoples with equity. -Psalm 98:7–9
Cyril of Alexandria in his Explanation of the Letter to the Romans is also helpful, asserting that,
The creation is waiting for the revelation of the sons of God at some point in the future which is still unknown. Who can know when this will be? But by the secret plan of God, which orders all things for the best, it will come to this end. For when the sons of God, who have lived a righteous life, have been transformed into glory from dishonor and from what is corruptible into what is incorruptible, then the creation too will be transformed into something better.1
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J.-P. Migne, ed. Patrologia Cursus Completus. 166 vols. Series Graeca. Paris: Migne, 1857–1886. Migne PG 74 col. 821. cited by Gerald Bray, ed., Romans (Revised), Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1998), 215. See also 1 Cor 15:54.