Romans 8:22

For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now.

The whole creation ... means all mankind, the word "creation" being the same as that used in all of these verses (see under Romans 8:19). Here the metaphor is that of the labor room in a hospital, only without modern anesthetics. Locke's paraphrase is,

For we know that all mankind, all of them, groan together, and unto this day are in pain, as a woman in labor, to be delivered out of the uneasiness of this mortal state.[42]

As Brunner noted, human beings are not asked if they wish to suffer, they must do so:

No one is asked! ... This expectation of the creature is different from the hope of Christians. (In their case) it is an apathetic, unconscious waiting, a waiting for something better, yet uncertain of its goal. But it is expounded by the apostle according to its true nature. What men actually mean without knowing it, is the goal in Christ which has been given to mankind: divine sonship, freedom, divine adoption, participation in the glory of God.[43]

No adequate description of the groaning of humanity is possible; but all men are aware of it. Millions of hospital beds are freighted with agony and despair. The struggles of humanity are like the frenzy of a savage beast caught in a vicious trap. Tears stain every face, and blood lies upon every threshold. The problem of daily survival presses upon the hearts of millions who are snared in poverty, grounded in the mud and filth of human sin, facing a life of ceaseless want and toil, and, augmenting their wretchedness, is the soul-fever of aching desires which agitate their minds, stifling the nobler impulses, and condemning the unfortunate to the pursuit of goals which, even if attained, turn to dust and ashes in their hands. And to climax all that tragedy of agitation and failure, the very bodies of all people, after attaining some little strength for a day, wither and descend into the rottenness of the grave. Like a wounded serpent that sinks its poisonous fangs into its own flesh people vent the agony of their madness through vicious indulgence of wars and revolutions, only to face with each new generation the unremitting sentence to repeat the old follies, over and over again. The screams of the labor room are an apt metaphor indeed of the human condition, "subjected to vanity."

[42] John Locke, op. cit., p. 332.

[43] Emil Brunner, op. cit., p. 75.