Romans 8:22 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

For we know that the whole creation Ever since the first apostacy of our nature from God; groaneth Suffers a variety of miseries; and travaileth Συνωδινει, literally, is in the pains of childbirth, to be delivered from the burden of the curse; until now To this very hour, and so on to the time of deliverance. “According to some commentators, the words πασα η κτισις denote the whole creatures of God, animate and inanimate, which, as they were cursed for the sin of the first man, may, by a beautiful rhetorical figure, be represented as groaning together under that curse, and earnestly wishing to be delivered from it. Such figures indeed are not unusual in Scripture. See Psalms 96:12; Psalms 98:8. Nevertheless, Romans 8:21, where it is said that the creature itself shall be delivered, &c., into the glorious liberty of the children of God; and the antithesis, Romans 8:23, not only they, but ourselves also, show that the apostle is speaking, not of the brute and inanimate creation but of mankind, and of their earnest desire of immortality. For these reasons, and especially because (Mar 16:15) preach the gospel, παση τη κτισει, means, to every human creature, I think the same expression in this verse, and η κτισις in the preceding verses, signify mankind in general, Jews as well as Gentiles. The same expression, also, Colossians 1:23, signifies every human creature.” Macknight.