What Is Hope?
Not Mere Wishful Thinking
We often say in a trivial fashion, “Hope you feel better, hope is works out.” There is no certainty in the result, just wishful thinking. This isn’t sinful by any means, but it is hollow.
The only hope the world can offer you lies in blind, unguided circumstances. In other words, apart from the Christian worldview there is no such thing as hope.
This is why in Ephesians 2, the Apostle Paul refers to our B.C. life (Before Christ) as being “separated from Christ … having no hope and without God in the world,” (2:12, ESV). Non-Christians have no hope in the world and no hope in eternity.
Our hope must be in another world, a heavenward hope.
Defining the Biblical Hope
Biblical faith is grounded in Scripture. Biblical hope is grounded in reality, what is known.
Faith comes from reading the Word, hope comes from remembering the Word. The Christian hope has a distinct flavor of certainty.
John MacArthur once said, “Faith accepts, hope expects.” Christian hope is sure. Hebrews 6:19 refers to it as an anchor for the soul.
Do you ever turn on the faucet and say, “Hopefully the water is wet.” Why not? The nature of water is to be wet! We expect the water to be wet. Our expectation is bound to truth and reality. The Christian hope expects what we know by faith, not what we feel by feelings.
Therefore, Christians alone have the hope of redemption. The Scriptures say we have a hope that does not put us to shame (Romans 5:5).
Enlarging our Hope
Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord and “our hope,” (Titus 1:1, ESV). The hope of the Christian goes as deep as the grave and covers all that Christ is exalted over. Jesus is our only hope before the Father and beyond the grave.
The Christian hope is as steady as Christ is enthroned.
How can we enlarge our hope? Plunge yourself into the ocean of God’s hope made manifest: in the Word!
The riches of God’s hope is in the treasury of His Word. His choice jewels are in the cabinet of the Scriptures!
Do you have this hope in days of dark clouds? Sickbeds? Hospitals? Tragedy? Hope sustains, because hope is a Person (Titus 1:1).
Hopelessness does not exist in a Christ-exalted world.
Thus, do not hope in your hoping, hope in your Christ.
