Hope seems always to be the least understood of the famous trio of “faith, hope, and
love” (I Corinthians 13:13). What is hope, and what role ought hope to play in the
Christian life?
Advent, it turns out, is the perfect season in which to ask about hope.
In everyday parlance, hope is an uncertain aspiration. If we know something good is
coming our way, that’s one thing. If we merely hope it’s in our future, that’s quite
another.
Christmas presents, for instance. Most kids North America, as in many other places
around the world, are sure they are going to get something good for Christmas.
Whether they get the particular gift they hope for, however, is far less than certain.
Maybe, maybe not. That’s hope.
When the Apostle speaks of faith, hope, and love in I Corinthians 13, he focuses on love
as “the greatest” of the three. Love, however, depends on both faith and hope.
Faith in Biblical terms is an attitude of trust, and pre-eminently trust in God. It is the
basic posture of the wise human (the fool simply says there is no God). We recognize
that God is great and God is good, so it makes sense to commit ourselves to God. Faith
is that ongoing decision to depend on God, walk with God, do God’s will, and accept
whatever God sends as ultimately for the best.
Love in Biblical terms is caring for the other, seeking the other’s welfare, whether it be
loving God, loving our neighbour, or loving the rest of creation. The divine command to
love isn’t the command to summon up warm feelings of affection for strangers or even
enemies—as if we could. It is to encounter strangers or even enemies and to try to
bless them however we can.
What, then, about hope? Hope in Biblical terms is not merely optimism, not merely a
sunny disposition that somehow things will work out right. Hope in the Bible is not
looking for silver linings in otherwise horrible events, nor is it simply choosing to believe
that things will work out when they seem manifestly not to be working out.
Hope in the Bible—whether the hope modeled by Abraham or the hope modeled by
Paul—is distinctly Jewish. By that I mean it is distinctly both historial and prophetic. And
by that I mean that hope means both looking back and looking forward so that one looks
differently at the present.
The people of God in the Bible are constantly told to remember. Remember what God
has promised, yes, but also remember what God has done. Talk, after all, is cheap—at
least, without performance. But Yhwh promised to make a nation out of one man,
Abraham, and he did. Yhwh promised to rescue a nation under one man, Moses, and
he did. Yhwh promised to deliver Israel through one man, Gideon, and he did.
“I am Yhwh your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery,” begin
the Ten Commandments. Over and over again, the ancient prophets remind Israel that
God can be trusted now because of what God did then. Israel can hope in God—as the
psalmists keep telling themselves and the rest of God’s people to do—because of what
God has done in the past.
Indeed, “’I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans to prosper you and
not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future’” (Jeremiah 29:11). We can hope
in God now also because of what God has promised to do in the future.
Advent & Christmas Spiritual Reflections (Free!)
These short biblical reflections encourage and guide us to prepare ourselves as we also prepare for the celebration of the first and second comings (“advent”) of Jesus.
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The Bible is a story with a happy ending—that never ends. In the Old Testament, the
story ends with the messianic kingdom of everlasting shalom. In the New Testament,
the story ends with the messianic kingdom of everlasting shalom embracing the whole
world. The hope God promised through Jeremiah is envisioned by John in the last two
chapters in the Bible. In that glorious passage believers find a compelling vision of what
is to come, a vision that reaches back to console our fears, stiffen our resolve, and
energize our efforts.
Hope is the stem that connects the root of faith to the flower and fruit of love. Hope
directs our living, day by day, on the basis of where we have been, and what God has
done for us and in us. Note: not just in the Bible, but in each of our lives. Each Christian
should keep a written treasury of God’s work in our lives to regularly remember.
Hope also directs our living, day by day, on the basis of where we are going, and what
God will do for us and in us. We do well to cultivate a vivid and lively sense of what
living in the era to come will really be like, since, as the Bible makes clear, that life to
come will make entirely worthwhile whatever we experience now.
This hope, furthermore, is not wishful thinking. It is not merely an effort of will, not a
choice of the spiritually heroic. Biblical hope is, so to speak, merely logical. See what
God has done and said in the past, and what God has promised to do and say in the
future. Then just act—and hope—accordingly.
Yes, in faith, hope, and love there is a crucial element of will. We each choose—and
choose daily, even hourly—whether to trust God, hope in God, and love as God
commands us to love. But hope is not merely the adoption of a positive mental attitude.
It is not fundamentally our accomplishment.
Hope instead is most basically a gift: the gift of receiving from God the testimony of the
past and the prophecy of the future. Hope is a function of our relationship with God: an
entailment of all we know and experience as we walk with God when filled with the Holy
Spirit.
Hope simply makes sense. And in that sense our hope in God is more certain, more to
be counted on, than anything we currently see and touch in our world. We can rely on
God more than on anything and everything on which we normally set our hopes and
dreams: such as, say, our banks, or our governments, or even our loved ones.
Hope is expectancy.
I not only expect to get something from God on Christmas
morning, but I expect to get the best from God every morning.
Christians look back especially to the first advent of Jesus and see God giving us the greatest gift he could. We likewise look forward especially to the second advent of Jesus and see God giving us all the rest:
“He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also,
along with him, graciously give us all things?” (Romans 8:32).
That is the hope of Advent and of Christmas—and it is Christmas every day for the
properly hopeful Christian.
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