‘For we were delivered within confident expectation, but confident expectation being seen is not confident expectation, for who confidently expects for what he sees? 25 But if we are confidently expecting and eagerly expecting what we are not seeing, we eagerly await by means of steadfast endurance’, (Romans 8 v 24, 25).
‘For we were delivered within confident expectation’, (verse 24). When God brings Christians forth they do indeed enter into deliverance guaranteed by the Messiah. But the culmination and end result of this deliverance will come about in the future, at the end of the present age, when the Messiah will return as King of kings to commence the Millennium Reign. They are delivered away from divine condemnation and they are brought forth at this present time as a new formation. But this is within confident expectation of the completion of their deliverance in the future, that will see ‘the full ransom and release of their body’, (verse 23), when they will be changed in an indivisible moment of time and penetrate the air to enter into the heavenly realm.
But of course, at this present time Christians do not directly observe this end result of their deliverance with their physical eyes. The very definition of ‘confident expectation’ is that they cannot presently see what is expected. Who confidently expects something that they can already see and observe? But if Christians are eagerly expecting something that they cannot directly observe with their own eyes, they eagerly await by means of steadfast endurance. Christians steadfastly endure in their expectation of that which is certain and real. Despite the present suffering, (verse 17, 18), Christians ‘remain under’ eager expectation of the end result of their deliverance, ‘the full ransom and release of their body’.
