Because I'm an Heir

Because I’m An Heir
Romans 8:16-25     
August 2, 2026

I. Heirs of God and Joint-Heirs with Christ 

Understanding the truth of Romans c8 is one of the major keys to relating properly to God. Understanding Romans 8 frees us from having to live under the fear of losing our salvation. It liberates us from the tyranny of performance-based Christianity—of always being on the treadmill of having to do certain things or live a perfect Christian life in order to be sure that we haven’t lost our salvation. 

When you look at Romans c8 the whole chapter is about one central theme; v1, “Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” 

We are given multiple reasons why we can be so absolutely sure of that.

• #1, v2 and v4; I am righteous in God’s sight if I’m a Christian.
• #2, v5 and v11; God’s Spirit dwells in me as a Christian.
• #3, v12 and v16; I am a child of God—I am part of His family in a way the rest of the world is not.
• #4, v16 and v17 

“The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, heirs also, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him so that we may also be glorified with Him.” 

• That I am an heir of God—that God has promised me an eternal inheritance as His child—and that means He has no intention of condemning me. 

A. From Children to Heirs 

It’s unfortunate that the King James Bible used the word “if” (And if children) here in v17, because it’s not really giving us the sense of what’s being said. There really is no doubt, there is no conditions in the mind of the God when it comes to this verse. He’s not under any misgivings about whether or not Christians are the children of God. 

This is a first-class condition in the Greek, and what it means is, we’re assuming the reality of this situation. Therefore the way we really ought to translate it is in v14 – 16, that we are, as Christians, God’s children in a way the rest of the world is not—and v17, since we are His children, or because we are His children, we are therefore heirs. 

Sonship immediately conjures up the notion of inheritance. By calling us heirs here, God is confirming to us as Christians that every one of us has been granted an eternal inheritance by God. 

Having an inheritance as a Christian is one of the great themes of the New Testament. 

Just a few of the great verses with this theme; that when we become Christians, when we become children of God, heirs, part of being a child of God is having an inheritance that God promises us when we get to heaven. 

Galatians 3:29 – “And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s descendants, heirs according to promise.” 

Galatians 4:7 – “Therefore you are no longer a slave, but a son; and if a son, then an heir through God.” 

Titus 3:7 – “so that being justified by His grace we would be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life.” 

1 Peter 1:4, “to obtain an inheritance which is imperishable and undefiled and will not fade away, reserved in heaven for you,” 

In other words, nobody can do anything to take it away from you. It’s reserved in heaven just for you if you know Christ. 

B. Joint-Heirs Sharing Both Suffering and Glory 

Look at v17 again; “and if children, heirs also, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him so that we may also be glorified with Him.” 

It’s interesting to me that in talking about our inheritance the very first thing God talks about is suffering. He doesn’t go directly to talk about our inheritance, but He talks instead about suffering. 

I believe one of the reasons is that we really don’t appreciate our inheritance until we lay it alongside our suffering. Or to put it another way, our inheritance doesn’t remove the suffering in our lives. 

And it’s only by understanding our nemesis that we can really understand the inheritance properly. So God starts off by telling us why we suffer so that He can then tell us how God’s going to change that when we get our inheritance. Not while here on this side of heaven.

Being joint-heirs with Christ means we share both the path He walked and the glory He receives. The same future Christ receives is the future already assigned to believers. 

How would your week change if you truly believed you already share Christ’s inheritance? 

• Decision-making under pressure
• Comparison culture
• Fear of falling short
• Enduring absolutely unfair treatment by our Gov’t or others 

C. The Certainty of the Promised Inheritance 

Now how does all that fit into Romans c8?

It fits in as one more reason why you can be absolutely sure as a Christian that you’re never going to be condemned. 

• Why would God promise an inheritance to somebody whom He knows is going to be condemned?
• If God promises you an inheritance in heaven, then our all-knowing God knows that you’re going to get to heaven to claim it.
• And God promises that kind of an inheritance to every single person who trusts Christ, to every single believer in Christ.
• God doesn’t do anything that doesn’t make sense. 

Therefore the inference is inescapable – every believer in Christ is obviously going to get to heaven to claim the inheritance that God promised him. 

If you are sitting here realizing you have never asked Christ into your life, you’re realizing this inheritance isn’t yours.  Think about it! 

This is the fourth great reason in Romans 8 why there is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus. 

Text yourself or make a note in your bible of this line from v17

• “I am a joint-heir with Christ”
• Return to it whenever anxiety or fear of losing your salvation surfaces 

Come back to the security of the inheritance. 

II. Present Sufferings Weighed Against Coming Glory 

A. Two Groanings – Creation and Our Bodies 

We’re going to focus on two reasons God gives us why we suffer.

• One is here in verse 20, “For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it, in hope”
  • By the creation we simply mean the natural creation — the trees and the forest and the streams and the mountains and the animals and the plants and the flowers and the grass—the creation. 

The creation, God says, didn’t volunteer for suffering—but God did it to the creation. It was done by Him who subjected it in hope, because the creation itself shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption. 

That’s why you get –

• Weeds in your garden
• That’s why there are hurricanes and tornadoes and floods
• That’s why there are viruses and bacteria
• That’s why there are illnesses and diseases and aging 

Voltaire, the great French atheist, wrote: “The whole world is but an empire of destruction. It abounds with wonders, but it also abounds with victims. It is a vast field of carnage and contagion. Every species is without pity pursued and torn to pieces. I wish I had never been born into it.” 

You see, the natural world is a cruel place. It’s a vicious arena. 

Look what it says in v21, that the creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God. 

God put it under a curse, and as long as God decides to keep it under the curse it will stay under the curse. And it’s under the curse now. 

When did God do that? God did that right back in Genesis 3 in the Garden of Eden when Adam and Eve sinned. We need to change the bad habit of blaming or questioning God, but rather simply blame Adam. 

v22, For we know that the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now. 

As Milton said, all creation sighs to be renewed. That’s cause number one of our suffering, we live in a cursed world. And that is a cause that affects Christians and non-Christians alike. It doesn’t make a difference whether you’re a Christian—you still live under the curse because you live on this earth. 

Sickness and sorrow and hardship and pain and aging and death—these are the standard struggles of life. Life is hard. And the older I get the more I realize how hard life really is. The reason it’s hard is because we’re living in a vain, corrupt, cursed creation. Blame Adam, please don’t blame God. 

v23, And not only this, but also we ourselves, having the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our body. 

Now – He’s talking about Christians. What this verse is telling us is that as Christians we have a second reason why we suffer—a reason that the rest of the world and the rest of the creation knows nothing about, a reason that is unique to Christians. 

And that is that we may be redeemed souls, but we live in an unredeemed body. Having to fight with this body, having to battle with this body, having to do never-ending conflict with this body in order to try to live for Christ. 

The Spirit of God lives within us and drives us to holiness and drives us to righteousness, and everywhere we go to get there this old body stands in the way and does everything it can to oppose us and stop us and frustrate us. 

That is a second reason for suffering that we have that the rest of the world does not have. So many times God says that causes us to groan as we battle out the never-ending combat with this old body. 

This suffering is one that the unsaved world will never know, and one that in many senses makes it more difficult to be a Christian in this world than to be a non-Christian. 

The only kind of suffering unbelievers have to worry about is dealing with a cursed world. We’ve got additional suffering to fight against. 

B. The glory that will be revealed and the hope that sustains 

I’m sure glad that the Bible didn’t stop there. I’m sure glad Romans 8 doesn’t at that point say, “the end,” because if it did that would be kind of depressing, wouldn’t it? 

I’m sure glad that God goes on to tell us that in spite of the fact that we have these two reasons why we suffer, when God gives us the fullness of our inheritance—when we come into the full possession of our inheritance—God, as part of that inheritance, is going to remove and rectify and deliver us from both. 

Romans c8 makes it clear that we are redeemed souls living in unredeemed bodies. Yet there is coming a day when God will complete our salvation, when God will give us the full possession of our inheritance, and one of the promises of our inheritance is that we will get redeemed bodies to go with our redeemed souls. That’s a great promise, isn’t it? 

We had two of our church brothers in Christ go home to heaven Thursday and Sherri and I had the privilege to be with them and their loved ones at two separate hospitals.  We came face to face with this truth about suffering and inheritance. While one received their inheritance in heaven, including new bodies and no more disease, their spouse remains to grieve in this world filled with suffering. 

What kind of body is this going to be? 

1 Corinthians 15:42, So also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown a perishable body, it is raised an imperishable body; 

It’s not going to be subject to sickness, decay, disease, heart attacks or aging. 

It’s also going to be a powerful body—no weariness to it, no fatigue, no aches, no pains, no insomnia. It’s also, the Bible says, going to be an immortal body (1 Corinthians 15)—death won’t be able to touch it. 

And best of all, it’s going to be a spiritual body—in other words, it’s going to have no sin nature. It’s going to cooperate with us when we try to live for God, adapted to righteous living. When is that going to happen? 

God is not only going to glorify our old bodies and make them different, but God is going to glorify this old earth and make it different. 

Revelation 21: “And I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away… and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain, for the former things have passed away… and there shall be no more curse.” 

2 Peter 3:10, But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, in which the heavens will pass away with a roar and the elements will be destroyed with intense heat, and the earth and its works will be burned up. 

It’s going to be great to get a new earth where righteousness dwells—a world not under the curse. There’s going to be a cleansing of this creation. Creation is going to be set free from its bondage to the curse and to corruption, and God is going to recreate it—paradise regained—for us to live in. 

You can read Isaiah 11… it’ll tell you that the wolf lies down with the lamb… the lion will lie down next to the baby calf… the lion’s going to eat straw like the ox… the child can go out and play on the snake’s den… they shall not hurt nor destroy anymore in My holy mountain. 

We as Christians delivered from having to live in a cursed world. As glorified people we’re going to get a glorified earth to live on for all eternity—a world of tranquility, a world of harmony, a world of incredible beauty, a world wherein righteousness lives. 

Summary –

• The creation that we live in is under a curse and it groans, but we are promised a release from a cursed world. 

• We who are Christians still live under the effects of that curse because we live not only in a cursed world but we live in bodies that are under the sin nature thanks to Adam, but we are promised a glorified body to live in and a glorified earth to live on. 

That’s what God said. And all we can say is, “Come quickly, Lord Jesus.” 

In the meantime we have to ask a question: What good is all this? Even if I believe it…The wait seems too long… 

I’m alive now. I’ve got to live with this now. You didn’t tell me how this is going to deal with my sufferings. All you told me is it’s going to remove it. You didn’t explain to me how this helps with my sufferings now. 

Look at v18, For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed to us. 

Paul said, “I am persuaded, I am convinced, I am absolutely sure—“that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that shall be revealed in us.” 

The Bible realizes that we’re going to have suffering. The Bible never presents Christianity as not having sufferings anymore. Anybody who tells you, based upon the Bible, that when you became a Christian your sufferings are over—he/she’s lied to you. Don’t you believe it. 

The Bible says exactly the opposite. Jesus said that in the world you shall have tribulation. In the world you’re going to have trouble. You’re going to have suffering—not only because the world is still cursed, but you’re still living in an unredeemed body. 

I can only pray when someone tells me they are mad at God for hurt in this world.  Our alternative, rejecting Him, is filled with eternal pain and suffering. 

What the Bible does offer, however, is hope for the future. Christians are people who are acutely aware of a division in time, and the division in time is right here in v18; some things are happening in this present time, and other things are happening in the time to come—in eternity. 

Christians understand God is offering so much to us, not in this present time but in the time to come—in eternity, in the afterlife. 

You say, “well, that’s future state?” I love an image of a poster I saw – a little poster that says at the top, “Work for the Lord,” and under it, “The wages may not be great, but the retirement benefits are out of this world.” And that’s the great promise of Christianity. That’s the great hope of being a Christian. 

The great hope is not that God won’t help us here – now — He will and does — but there will still be pain and there will still be suffering. The great hope and truth of the Christian is that when we’re done with this life, when it’s over, what God has promised us, what God has given us by way of an inheritance, is not worthy to be compared with the sufferings. 

Study Paul’s life and this truth will come alive for you. 

What God is telling us is that the way we need to get through the sufferings of this world is to keep our eyes focused on the glory that shall be revealed in us. 

You need to put them on scales. You need to weigh them one against the other. Suffering of this world on the scale looks so heavy—but that’s because you have nothing on the other side of the scale. 

Now take the Word of God and you put that on the other side of the scale, that scale goes down hard because of the great riches God has promised us. 

For the non-Christian, the sufferings of this world are going to look like heaven compared to what they’re dealing with on the sulfuric shores of hell. If you’re here and you’re not a Christian, may I say, please don’t claim verse 18 unless you’re a Christian. 

Hebrews 12:2-3, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.

For consider Him who has endured such hostility by sinners against Himself, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart. 

Jesus eyes were on the joy God had promised Him on the other side of the cross. 

2 Corinthians 4:16-18, Therefore we do not lose heart, but though our outer man is decaying, yet our inner man is being renewed day by day. For momentary, light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison, while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal. 

Most people live from one point of hope to another point of hope… and in between they can deal with all kinds of crud because they’re looking at that point of hope.

• A housewife
• An employee 

And we have the greatest point of hope in the whole universe that God gives us, and that is our inheritance when we get to heaven.

• Some of us here are terminally ill.
• Some of us here are handicapped in some way.
• Some of us wake up every morning with pain.
• Some of us are grieving over lost ones.
• Some of us are parents—particularly single parents—and it’s a struggle just to make it from one day to the next. 

I’m not telling you it’s wrong to have some future points of hope on this earth that help you get through, what I’m saying is; over and above and superior to every one of them is the point of hope God offers you when you get to be with Him. And if you’ll keep your eyes on it the way you keep your eyes on the world’s solutions and candy… God will give you the strength. 

The message of Romans 8:18 is, if you’re struggling, hang on. If you’re struggling, stay in there, because it’s only temporary. Because God has something great out there for you. He has this inheritance, and it will be worth it all when you see Jesus. 

v24-25, For in hope we have been saved, but hope that is seen is not hope; for who hopes for what he already sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, with perseverance we wait eagerly for it. 

When suffering feels heavy, pause and name one specific unseen reality from these verses such as — 

• My body will be redeemed”
• Creation itself will be set free