"Hope is not a course of action." That's a military axiom, one my Tac Officers drilled into my head at both the Infantry Officers Basic and Advanced Courses. It means that you need to have a plan, you need to know what you're going to do instead of just hope things bounce your way.
But in a spiritual sense, hope is the only effective course of action we have.
Romans 15:8-13 describes the basis of all hope for me. It points out that the only way a non-Jew like me came to be part of God's family is through the sacrifice of Jesus, and God's mercy in extending that sacrifice to cover my crimes.
That hope is different than the hope my Tacs were talking about, though. Worldly hope is a very iffy thing; it rests on something vague and unknown, something chancy. It's basically reliance on luck.
But the hope we have in Jesus isn't at all chancy. This is the most definite, most knowable thing in the universe. All the work has already been done, by God in orchestrating the master plan and by Jesus in making the sacrifice. Our spiritual hope is looking forward to the concrete fact of our own glorification. We have hope for every hard circumstance because we know, with absolute certainty, that having put our hope in Christ, in the end we win.
That's why verse 13 is one of my favorite blessings: "May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope."
The source: the God of hope. The blessing: joy and peace, if I believe. The power core: the Holy Spirit Himself. And the outcome? I will abound in hope.
Not just have hope - abound. That means a whole bunch of hope, that means all the hope I can use with some left over to share. There is no day so bad, no night so dark, no storm so violent, no desert so dry that I can't walk through it with shoulders squared and head up, completely confident. Because the one leading me is no less than the King of all of time and space.
Romans chapter 5:1-11 is some of my favorite context around hope. Interesting too that hope is described here as a fruit of character, which in turn is spawned by suffering. Is it possible to have a true hope apart from suffering? At least concerning the suffering produced in my life by my own sin, the sure hope of glorification is becoming more precious to me every day that is added to my earthly existence. This is, after all, the destiny promised for each of us in Christ in Romans 8:29-30. For now, we patiently endure....
ReplyDeleteGood point on hope and suffering. In fact, is there a point to hope without it?
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