15 For the Spirit that God has given you does not make you slaves and cause you to be afraid; instead, the Spirit makes you God's children, and by the Spirit's power we cry out to God, “Father! my Father!”
16 God's Spirit joins himself to our spirits to declare that we are God's children.
17 Since we are his children, we will possess the blessings he keeps for his people, and we will also possess with Christ what God has kept for him; for if we share Christ's suffering, we will also share his glory.
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.
19 All of creation waits with eager longing for God to reveal his children.
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
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.