[8:18] I consider that what we suffer at this present time cannot be compared at all with the glory that is going to be revealed to us.
[8:19] All of creation waits with eager longing for God to reveal his children.
[8:20] For creation was condemned to lose its purpose, not of its own will, but because God willed it to be so. Yet there was the hope
[8:21] that creation itself would one day be set free from its slavery to decay and would share the glorious freedom of the children of God.
[8:22] For we know that up to the present time all of creation groans with pain, like the pain of childbirth.
[8:23] But it is not just creation alone which groans; we who have the Spirit as the first of God's gifts also groan within ourselves as we wait for God to make us his children and set our whole being free.
[8:24] For it was by hope that we were saved; but if we see what we hope for, then it is not really hope. For who of us hopes for something we see?
[8:25] But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.
[8:26] In the same way the Spirit also comes to help us, weak as we are. For we do not know how we ought to pray; the Spirit himself pleads with God for us in groans that words cannot express.
[8:27] And God, who sees into our hearts, knows what the thought of the Spirit is; because the Spirit pleads with God on behalf of his people and in accordance with his will.
[8:28] We know that in all things God works for good with those who love him, those whom he has called according to his purpose.
[8:29] Those whom God had already chosen he also set apart to become like his Son, so that the Son would be the first among many believers.
[8:30] And so those whom God set apart, he called; and those he called, he put right with himself, and he shared his glory with them.