Romans 8:23 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

And not only they The unenlightened and unrenewed part of mankind; but we ourselves also, who have the first-fruits of the Spirit Because first-fruits signify the best things of their kind, some think that the apostles, and such as possessed the most excellent spiritual gifts, are spoken of in this passage. But as the privileges described Rom 8:24-26 equally belong to all, it seems more probable that the apostle speaks of believers in general, who had the gifts of the Spirit bestowed on them as first-fruits, or as the earnest of those greater virtues and spiritual endowments, which they shall enjoy in heaven. Even we groan within ourselves Under many remaining imperfections, and a variety of miseries; waiting for the adoption For the public and open display of our adoption; to wit, the redemption of our body From dust and death to glory and immortality, when our heavenly Father shall bring us forth before the eyes of the whole world, habited and adorned as becomes his children. Persons who had been privately adopted among the Romans, were often brought forth into the forum, and there publicly owned as the sons of those who had adopted them. So at the general resurrection, when the body itself is redeemed from death, the sons of God shall be publicly owned by him in the great assembly of men and angels. Thus our Lord, Luke 20:26, terms those who shall be accounted worthy to obtain the heavenly world, the children of God, because they are the children of the resurrection; they being hereby manifestly shown to be his children. The apostle therefore had good reason to call the redemption of our body from death, the adoption. Besides, it is that by which the saints are enabled, as the children of God, to inherit the kingdom of their Father.