'For the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for
the manifestation of the sons of God.'--ROMANS viii. 19.
The Apostle has been describing believers as 'sons' and 'heirs.' He
drops from these transcendent heights to contrast their present
apparent condition with their true character and their future glory.
The sad realities of suffering darken his lofty hopes, even although
these sad realities are to his faith tokens of joint-heirship with
Jesus, and pledges that if our inheritance is here manifested by
suffering with him, that very fact is a prophecy of common glory
hereafter. He describes that future as the revealing of a glory, to
which the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be
compared; and then, in our text he varies the application of that
thought of revealing and thinks of the subjects of it as being the
'sons of God.' They will be revealed when the glory which they have
as joint-heirs with Christ is revealed in them. They walk, as it
were, compassed with mist and cloud, but the splendour which will
fall on them will scatter the envious darkness, and 'when Christ who
is our life shall appear, then shall His co-heirs also appear with
Him in glory.'