For the earnest expectation of the creation waits for the manifestation of the sons of God.
Read Chapter 8
Cyril of Alexandria
AD 444
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. .
The expectation of the creature. He speaks of the corporal creation, made for the use and service of man; and, by occasion of his sin made subject to vanity, that is, to a perpetual instability, tending to corruption and other defects; so that by a figure of speech, it is here said to groan and be in labour, and to long for its deliverance, which is then to come, when sin shall reign no more; and God shall raise the bodies, and united them to their souls, never more to separate, and to be in everlasting happiness in heaven. (Challoner)
Waiteth for the revelation of the sons of God. That is, for the time after this life, when it shall be made manifest that they are the sons of God, and heirs of the kingdom of his glory. Several interpreters understand all creatures whatsoever, even irrational and inanimate creatures of this world, which are represented as if they had a knowledge and sense of a more happy condition, of a new unchangeable state of perfection, which they are to receive at...
But this would be in accordance with what has been written, he says: "And the creation itself groaneth together, and travaileth in pain together, waiting for the manifestation of the sons of God.".
When, therefore, he says, the entire Son ship shall have come, and shall be above the conterminous spirit, then the creature will become the object of mercy. For (the creature) groans until now,
God is rich in all things, and everything is his. It is therefore fitting that the creation itself, having been restored to its primeval condition, should without restraint be under the dominion of the righteous. .
For the creature has been subjected to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him who hath subjected the same in hope; since the creature itself shall also be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the sons of God."
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.
