Updated November 2026
Romans 8:12–25 is an exhortation against legalism. Because God has given us his Spirit, we owe nothing to self-reliance. The Spirit confirms that we are God's children by giving us a grief over our sin and a longing for righteousness, and if we are children, we are heirs. The sufferings of this present time are labor pains, and they are not worth comparing with the glory to come.
Key Takeaways
- Legalism means seeking righteousness through your own resources. It does not mean zeal for holiness or believing in moral absolutes.
- On the outside, the legalist and the non-legalist may look exactly the same. The difference is who you trust.
- Being led by the Spirit is not an impulse or a spontaneous urge.
- We are adopted sons and heirs, not slaves, and our inheritance is holiness.
- Our grief over sin and longing for righteousness is evidence that the Spirit is at work in us.
- Creation groans with us. This life is the labor pains, and we wait eagerly for the new birth coming.
Romans Review
The first five chapters argue that we are justified by faith and not by keeping the law. We've all sinned, God abandoned us to sin and death, no one can be justified by the law, and yet there is a way to be justified: by trusting God to forgive us and make us holy because of Jesus' death on the cross. Abraham and David are our examples, and in chapter 5 we have reason to rejoice because our hope is guaranteed by God's love.
Starting in chapter 6, Paul takes objections. Should we pursue sin so God can forgive more? No, because part of the gift is breaking our bondage to sin. Is there any reason not to sin? Yes: sin still leads to death. Then is the law evil? No, the law did us a wonderful favor by diagnosing our sin. That brings us to chapter 7 and what I call moral paralysis: I desire to be righteous, I agree with the law, I resolve to keep it, and I fail. "Wretched man that I am, who will save me from this body of death?"
Chapter 8 answers that question. Its purpose is to explain why faith in Jesus works when the law didn't. The chapter is really all one thought, so there's no real logical break between the first eleven verses and the rest.
The Spirit Does What the Law Could Not
He gave us the direct answer in the first eleven verses. Faith in Jesus promotes obedience and righteousness where the law couldn't, because the law had no provision for giving us the Spirit of God, while grace does. Left to ourselves, we can't change our sinful nature. We don't have what it takes to produce righteousness. Under the law, that's all we had. We were forced to seek inside ourselves, to try harder, to resolve to do it, and we couldn't.
But thanks to the incredible mercy of God, not only did he justify us and forgive us, he gave us as a seal of that justification the gift of his Spirit. His Spirit has the ability to turn sinful people into righteous people, to make us people who not only want to do good but are now able to do good.
Paul is going to argue that this is a future hope. We are not fully holy and righteous now, but we have a taste of it now, a down payment, and the full inheritance is coming.
An Exhortation Against Legalism
In the rest of the chapter, Paul gives an exhortation against legalism. By legalism I mean trying to be holy on your own, pursuing righteousness through your own resources.
Paul uses the term "flesh" in this chapter to mean everything we are apart from God. The central issue is who you are going to trust to bring about righteousness. Will you trust yourself, or will you trust God?
The Mosaic Law said, look to yourself. Give it your sincere best effort. That's what I mean by legalism. Taking the challenge of the law and saying, here I go, watch me, I'm going to keep it. Paul has been arguing since chapter 6 that we are not the kind of people who can keep the law the way it's meant to be kept, inside and outside, heart attitude and actions and thoughts. That kind of obedience is out of our reach.
Let me tell you what I don't mean by the term legalist. Some people use it to mean a zeal for holiness, as if you shouldn't get too passionate about it. That's not what I mean. I'm not sure you can be too eager for righteousness, but that's not the point here. When I encourage you to avoid legalism, I'm not saying downplay righteousness or take sin casually. I'm saying avoid seeking righteousness through your own self-effort.
Another misconception is that legalism means living a principled life. Some people today, especially as postmodern thinking becomes more prevalent, say there is no right or wrong, everything is relative, and those who claim there are moral absolutes are legalists. That is not what Paul is arguing against. I don't think he would argue against moral absolutes. What he's arguing is that you should not seek holiness out of reliance on yourself. You should recognize what's right and wrong. You should always seek to do right. But not on your own resources.
On the outside, the legalist and the non-legalist may look exactly the same. They may act the same, say the same things, avoid the same activities, pursue the same activities. The difference is who you trust. Am I trusting in my own resources apart from God, or am I trusting in God?
Paul says in Philippians 2: "Work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who is at work within you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure." Walk through your salvation, work it out, seek it, pursue it, but knowing that it is God who is at work within you to bring it about.
So the point of this section is: seek righteousness, long for it, hope for it, try for it, through trusting in God and not your own resources.
Outline of Romans 8:12–39
Let me give you the outline of the chapter before we read it.
- 8:12-14: Paul gives his summary statement. We owe no allegiance to self-reliance, because self-reliance only gains us death.
- 8:15-30:, he discusses two things that are produced in those who trust God, two marks of believers.
- 8:15-25: grief over sin and a longing for righteousness. The Spirit confirms our belief by changing us so that we have an agonizing grief over our sin and a deep longing and hungering and thirsting for righteousness.
- 8:26-30: we have absolute confidence that everything that happens to us is in our best interest, because the Spirit is interceding for us and his work is effective.
- 8:31-39: because our inheritance depends on the activity of God and his Spirit and not our own self-effort, we can have absolute confidence that we'll gain it.
The whole thing makes one point. We don't owe anything to legalism. What will bring about our inheritance, what will bring victory over sin, is to rest in the Spirit of God.
No Longer Obligated to the Flesh
Let's take the passage in sections, starting with verses 12 through 14. "So then, brethren, we are not under obligation to the flesh to live according to the flesh."
This is his summary statement. Because of everything he's just argued in the first eleven verses, because we now have the Spirit of God under grace, he says: stop trusting in yourself. You don't owe anything to legalism anymore. Trusting in yourself to gain holiness will only lead to death in your present experience. Trusting in the Spirit of God is going to lead to life.
You're no longer slaves to sin. You're no longer under obligation to, or prisoners of, the flesh. The opposite is true. You're now under obligation to the Spirit.
This was a direct contradiction of the Judaism of Paul's day. The Jews believed that the way you became righteous was to look deep within yourself and keep the law. You squared your shoulders and just did it. You gave it your sincere best effort, and the law was there to motivate and threaten you if you failed.
Paul says no. All that moral exertion and self-effort required to keep the law is not going to make you holy. It will only result in death. It will make the decay and the restlessness and the cruelty and the sharp tongues and the greed more obvious. And what's more, only those who trust in Jesus and rely on the Spirit of God are actually going to make it.
What It Means to Be Led by the Spirit
In verse 13, Paul talks about putting to death the deeds of the body. He means turning away from and leaving behind the deeds and desires and thinking of our way of life apart from God.
Some people have read that phrase and concluded that the spirit is good and the body is evil, and we're supposed to leave the material world behind. That was actually one of the early Christian heresies. I don't think that's what he's talking about here. The word "body" was often an idiom to refer to yourself, the here and now. So what he's saying is put away the deeds of the here and now, the striving of who we are as sinful, rebellious creatures. We want to be turning away from that and turning toward the Spirit of God.
Verse 14 says, "For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God." What does he mean, led by the Spirit?
Before we talk about what it does mean, here's a warning about what it doesn't mean.
As a new believer, I used to think that being led by the Spirit referred to some feeling or inner impulse or spontaneous urge. If there was a thought I couldn't get out of my mind, I decided that must be the Spirit leading me. I was always looking for some kind of spontaneous nudge.
You've got to be very careful with that. Paul has just spent the first five chapters telling us that we're sinful through and through and that apart from God we are not capable of being righteous. We are still sinful. We are still waiting for our hope to be fully realized, and we can easily deceive ourselves and think that if we want something badly enough, or if we prayed about it and it hasn't gone away, then it must be the Spirit leading us. That is dangerous.
The Story of David and Saul
I was also taught as a new believer that you know the Spirit is leading you when three things line up: you have the desire to do something, you have the counsel of wise and godly friends telling you to do it, and God opens a door.
I'd like to share the story of David and Saul because it directly contradicts that theory. You can find this in 1 Samuel 24.
Saul was king of Israel, but Samuel had anointed David as the next king. And in this section, Saul is trying to kill David. This goes on for years as Saul pursues David through the wilderness. At this point in the story, David and his men are hiding in a cave when Saul comes in to relieve himself. David's men say, "This is the day the Lord has made. Go take his life."
Consider the situation. David knows he's the rightful king. He's been anointed by God's prophet and yet he's fleeing for his life before this wicked man. I assume he had more than an urge to act. He probably had an intense burning desire built by years of seeing Saul's wickedness. In addition, he had godly men urging him forward, saying, "David, this is the day the Lord has made. God has delivered Saul into your hands." And the door was wide open. Saul was standing before him, literally, with his pants down, vulnerable and unsuspecting.
Most people would look at that and say, "Yep, that's the Spirit leading. You feel like doing it, you have the counsel of godly friends, and God drops the opportunity in your lap."
And yet David says no.
He refuses to be led by circumstances or his own desires. Because he says, "I'm led by the Word of God." The scriptures teach that whoever lays a hand on God's anointed will incur God's wrath, and Saul is still God's anointed. Saul's life is in God's hands, not mine. So he cuts off a corner of Saul's robe to show that he could have killed him, but he does not lay a finger on him.
If David had been looking for God to lead him through impulses or circumstances, he would have killed Saul. But he had a better source of wisdom: God's revealed Word.
Whenever you have an impulse or a spontaneous urge or a thought you can't get out of your mind, evaluate it in light of the scriptures. Come back to the Word. If you bypass your mind, you're on dangerous ground. The best way to be led by the Spirit is to study what he has to say. Read the Bible, meditate on it, learn it inside and out. Don't trust your emotions, don't trust your desires, don't trust your circumstances. God wrote it down for us to read. The Spirit never leads us by bypassing our minds or our wisdom. Think it through. But think it through biblically.
That's what David did. He evaluated his desires, his counsel, and his circumstances in the light of God's revealed Word. Because he'd studied it and knew what it said about laying a hand on God's anointed, he knew what he should do.
So being led by the Spirit is not some kind of impulse or spontaneous urge. Paul is going to argue through the rest of this chapter that being led by the Spirit is a normal, ongoing process of being convicted of our sinfulness, grieving over our sinfulness, and longing for righteousness.
Sons, Not Slaves
Verse 15 says: "For you have not received a spirit of slavery leading to fear again, but you've received a spirit of adoption as sons by which we cry out, Abba, Father."
What changes when we get the Spirit? We now approach God as an adopted son and not a slave.
A little background about adoption in Paul's day. In Roman culture, a wealthy patron would designate someone to be his heir and would place him as a son. It was a legal reality. This is the person who is going to inherit. And in Roman culture they received that inheritance when they came of age, around 14, while the benefactor might still be alive.
We have an intimate personal relationship with God our Father, but that's not what Paul is emphasizing here. He's emphasizing our legal status. We are now designated as children of God, chosen to be heirs of his promises, no strings attached, no conditions, no reason to fear like a slave.
The contrast he's making is between the slave who enters the room with eyes downcast and bows before the master and calls him "master," versus the child who runs in to throw herself into the master's lap, throws her arms around his neck, and calls him "daddy."
We don't have a spirit of slavery leading to fear. We have a spirit of adoption by which we can approach the Father with confidence and love and approval, knowing that he is our daddy. He is legally responsible for us. He has a stake in making us into the people we should be. A slave he can sell off at any moment, but the child he's responsible for.
His point is this: we have become heirs, and if we are heirs, we stand to gain the inheritance, and that inheritance is righteousness.
Heirs of God, Fellow Heirs with Christ
Look at verses 16 and 17.
"The Spirit Himself bears witness 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 in order that we may be glorified with him."
Why is he emphasizing that we are heirs? Because the heir will inherit holiness. If we are children, we are heirs, and if the content of our inheritance is holiness, we will receive it. So give up legalism. Give up trying to earn it on your own, because you're going to inherit it. Now that you can throw your arms around the master's neck and call him daddy, you are heirs. God will give you holiness. It's guaranteed, it's coming.
So how does the Spirit bear witness with our spirit? He says through suffering with Christ, and that suffering is evidence that we are children of God.
What kind of suffering does he have in view here? I think he has in mind the anxious longing we have to be set free from our sinfulness and to be made righteous. The grief over our sins and the longing to be righteous. Because he goes on to talk about creation longing for the same thing, and what creation is longing for is being set free from the futility and the corruption and the brokenness of life.
I don't think he's talking so much about trials and tribulations like he was in chapter 5, the external pressures of the world, but more the psychological, the emotional, the inward struggle of wanting to be righteous, longing for it, and not having it yet. Going back to what he talked about in chapter 7, the moral paralysis.
It's the kind of suffering that young children endure between Thanksgiving and Christmas. When our kids were little, it was like exquisite torture to count off the days. They knew they had to wait for this wonderful, glorious day, but it seemed so long. That's the kind of suffering Paul has in mind here. We have a taste of what's to come, we have glimpses of righteousness, and yet we still live in a broken world and we're still broken people. We have that longing to receive our full inheritance, and we have this grief over our sinfulness and where we are now.
That longing, that kind of ache for something you don't yet have, is evidence that the Spirit is at work in you. If God's Spirit is at work in you, you can know that by seeing this grief over your sinfulness and this longing for righteousness. And if you see that, then you know you are a child of God. If you're a child of God, you're an heir. And if you're an heir, you will be made holy.
So give up self-reliance.
The Sufferings of Today Are Not Worth Comparing
The obvious question is why does the suffering have to be so long and so hard? Why doesn't God just zap us into righteousness? Why do we have to endure years of longing to be righteous when we're not?
Paul's answer isn't really "why" so much as "it's worth it."
Look at verse 18: "For I consider that the sufferings of the present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed to us."
The sufferings of today are hard and long, but they're not even worth comparing to the glory that's coming. When all is said and done, we'll be glad we did it. When we get to the other side, when we cross that finish line, we will look back and say it was worth it. As hard as the agony and the frustration was, it was nothing compared to what we've gained.
Paul repeats this theme in 2 Corinthians, where he describes our current life as "momentary light afflictions" not worthy to be compared with "the eternal weight of glory." Keep in mind that for Paul, his momentary light afflictions included being stoned, being beaten several times, being imprisoned twice, being shipwrecked, going without food and sleep at various times, losing his reputation, and ultimately being beheaded. That doesn't sound like a momentary light affliction. And yet Paul says you can't even put it on the same scale as the eternal weight of glory.
Creation Groans for the Same Thing
Paul goes on to argue that we share this longing with creation itself, and he uses the analogy of childbirth. Just like a woman in labor focuses on the birth that's coming and not the pain of the present, he's encouraging us to focus on the new age to come and not the suffering of the here and now.
Look at verses 19 through 22.
"For the anxious longing of creation waits eagerly for the revealing of the sons of God, for the creation was subjected to futility not of its own will, but because of him who subjected it in hope 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. For we know that the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together till now."
Creation shares this longing with us. Despite all the intricate beauty and design and structure and balance of this world, it is falling apart. It's broken in the same way we're broken. It takes energy and effort to keep it going. What physicists call entropy, where everything is running out of energy and breaking down. Creation groans for glory just like the children of God.
When he talks about "the glory to be revealed," I think he means made actual, made manifest. The revealing of the sons of God is the time when the sons of God are actually made glorified and perfect.
Just as creation hopes for the age to come when our glory is revealed, so we ourselves do not yet have what it takes to be completely holy. That's our inheritance that's coming, and we long for it the same way.
The Down Payment of the Spirit
Verse 23: "Not only this, but 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. For in hope we have been saved, but hope that is seen is not hope. For why does one hope for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, with perseverance we wait eagerly for it."
The first fruits of the Spirit is the Holy Spirit, the down payment of our inheritance, the same thing he talks about in Ephesians 1. The Spirit is a pledge, a seal that God has chosen us and justified us. We groan within ourselves, we have this agony over our sinfulness, this longing to be holy, the mourning that Jesus talks about in the Beatitudes, the hungering and thirsting for righteousness, that soul-wrenching despair of knowing you're sinful and seeing the pain and suffering it causes and wanting to be freed from it.
What are we waiting for? We're waiting eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.
The Roman custom was to legally designate the person who would receive the inheritance when they came of age. Paul is saying we're groaning within ourselves, looking for that time when we actually receive the full inheritance. He's not saying we haven't been adopted yet. We have been adopted, we have been made part of God's family, but we haven't realized that adoption in full. We don't yet have the full inheritance that comes with being adopted. So we're waiting eagerly for it, until we come of age.
A Note on the Redemption of the Body
Some people have used the phrase "our adoption as sons, the redemption of our body" to argue that we already have everything it takes to be righteous now. The problem, they say, is that we're still trapped in this sinful body, so what we're looking forward to is a new body that catches up to the perfection we already have inside.
I don't think that's what Paul is talking about here. I think the redemption of the body defines the timing of our full inheritance, not its content. The two things happen simultaneously. At the point when we receive our full inheritance, we will also receive a new body. I don't think Paul would argue that you have all the holiness you're ever going to get and you're just waiting for a new body. He would argue you have a taste, a down payment, but it's not until the age to come, when you get a fully redeemed and glorified body, that you will also receive your full inheritance.
He also makes it clear in verses 24 and 25: "For in hope we have been saved, but hope that is seen is not hope. For why does one also hope for what he sees? But with perseverance we wait eagerly for it."
If you had what it takes to be holy right now, if you had your inheritance already, why would you still be hoping for it? You don't hope for what you already have. We've been saved in hope, and with perseverance we're waiting eagerly for it. I think that's one of the clearest statements in the Bible that we don't yet have our inheritance, that our holiness is not a full present reality but a guaranteed hope set before us.
What This Means for Us
If all this is true, what should it mean to us? This section puts life in perspective. It gives you the proper expectations for this life.
First, this life is the wilderness. This life is the labor pains. It's hard, it's tragic, it's going to hurt. We should expect suffering. We have a taste of the life to come, but we're not at the banquet yet. We shouldn't expect the health, wealth, and fulfillment gospel. I think that's heresy. God promises us groaning and suffering and labor pains in this life.
We're still sinful. We shouldn't be surprised when we sin or when others sin against us, and we should be quick to forgive both others and ourselves, because this is who we are now. Yes, we have higher expectations for Christians, but we shouldn't be surprised when they fail to meet them, because we're all still waiting for our inheritance to come.
On the other hand, we have no reason to fear the future, because we have hope. Yes, this life is hard and it's labor pains, but eventually we're going to cross that finish line. We're going to get to the new world order.
Think about the Exodus. The Israelites were let out of Egypt, but Moses didn't come and say, "Okay, let's go," and they all packed up and it was easy. They had to go through Pharaoh hardening his heart and making their lives harder, through all the plagues, the frogs and the locusts and the angel of death. It got harder as they went. But they were let out. They had no reason to fear the future because God was going to lead them.
That puts life in perspective. We don't need to fear the stock market crashing or world traumas or the disasters and tragedies, major and minor, in this life, because we know the age to come is coming. And yes, the labor pains may get harder and closer together, but that signals that the new age is on its way.
So what do we do? We set our hearts on heaven. We wait eagerly. Notice how many times "eagerly waiting" and "hoping" are repeated through this passage. That's really Paul's point. We focus on the age to come the way a woman in labor focuses on the baby that's coming, and we endure whatever God gives us with patience, knowing that joy beyond our wildest dreams is on the way.
As Paul said, the sufferings of this age aren't worthy to be compared to the joy that's coming. When we get our inheritance, we're going to look back at this and say it was worth it. We'd do it again in a second.
Yes, this life will be hard. We shouldn't be surprised. And yes, we have every reason to hope, and we should wait for it eagerly.
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Season 2, Episode 12
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