Now is the Time for Hope
When the highly-educated, well-traveled Pliny—a first-century Roman aristocrat and politician—was confronted with the death of a beloved friend, he wrote the following:
What I need is something new and effective which I have never heard or read about before. For everything I have heard or read … is powerless against grief like this.
Despite his considerable intellectual and material resources, Pliny was hopeless in the face of inexplicable sorrow.
As I write these words, Ukraine is fighting for its survival as a free nation, and the world teeters on the brink of World War III. Meanwhile, none of the usual sources of anxiety have disappeared: pandemics, terrorism, environmental decay, cancer, heart attacks, automobile accidents, crime, and poverty. Anyone who wishes to worry will not be lacking in source material. Yet amid so much that is wrong, scary, and tragic, Christians are called to hope. In fact, Christians are called to “overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit” (Rom 15:13). This surprising invitation is grounded in the simple truth that God is for us, and that nothing can ultimately harm those who are loved by God (Rom 8:31-39). More specifically, God has demonstrated His love and power through the death and resurrection of Jesus (Rom 4:24—5:11). In other words, we now have what Pliny so desperately needed, something “new and effective.” We have hope.
Before going further, we should explore why hope is so essential. The reason goes to the heart of human nature. Human beings are irreducibly future-oriented creatures. Imagine for a moment that by some act of God, you become aware that within six weeks your closest friend will die. This revelation will dramatically alter your experience over the next six weeks. You will undoubtedly be sad and distressed. You might struggle to eat and lose weight. You will likely be distracted at work and exhausted at home. All of this will happen simply because you have become aware of an unavoidable future circumstance. Your knowledge of the future will inevitably shape your experience of the present. Such is life as a human being.
Hope is the Christian virtue that enables us to live into the future with joy and peace. Here, we should note that the Biblical idea of hope differs sharply from contemporary English usage. When we say that we are “hoping” for something, we frequently mean that we are longing for something quite uncertain. “I hope it doesn’t rain tomorrow,” is usually stated when someone thinks rain is likely. “Hope” often enters our vocabulary when we are in the midst of doubt and fear: “I just hope she recovers,” we say, when recovery is not at all a given. While nothing is inherently wrong with these expressions, they do not help us to understand Biblical hope.
To hope in Biblical terms is “to look forward with confidence to that which is good and beneficial.” It is an “expectation of a divinely provided future.” Thus, Biblical hope is more like waiting than it is wishing. And although it is unseen, it is by no means uncertain (Rom 8:24-25). This is why hope serves as an “anchor for the soul” (Heb 6:18-19), holding us steady in turbulent waters. Neither a vague desire for things to be better nor a sunny disposition that looks on the brighter side can secure the soul.
Purely human optimism, however pleasant it may be, eventually runs ashore on the rocks of painful human experience—not everything works out well in this life. Biblical hope, however, is grounded in the revelation of God’s power and goodness. Thus, we embrace a confident and joyful anticipation of the future—a future that is guaranteed by the God who loves us—without denying the painful experiences of our present life.
Our hope is most clearly established by the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. As Timothy Keller has said, after being swallowed by death, Jesus “blew a hole out of the back of it.” Death no longer has the final word for Christians. In fact, Jesus has “destroyed death.”
Apart from this knowledge, however, we are left to flounder with our own pitiful resources, trying to convince ourselves that we are safe in a seemingly unsafe world. We distract ourselves with pleasures and pretend that the world is not so bad after all. This strategy works only until we, like Pliny, encounter one of the many dark realities of life. Then we need “something new.”
Renowned theologian Karl Barth saw this problem well and is worth quoting at length:
Nothing, absolutely nothing, can one do who is fated to this life of sin and death, with its thousandfold festering needs; nothing can one do to amend it; nothing fills up this vacuum…. Resurrection—not progress, not evolution, not enlightenment, but a call from heaven to us: “Rise up! You are dead, but I will give you life.” That is what is proclaimed here, and it is the only way that the world can be saved. Take away this summons, and make something else of it, something smaller, less than the absolute ultimate, or less than the absolutely powerful, and you have taken away all, the unique, the last hope there is for us on earth.
On Sunday, gathering to sing and preach and pray, we do so as those who know the “last hope” of all the earth. Yet we do so with joy because this last hope is a sure hope, an unfailing promise, a glimpse into the future given by the One who controls it. We need not pretend that life is easy nor that sadness is illusory. We need only prepare for a future in which “the Lord alone will be exalted” (Isa 2:11), in which “the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as waters cover the sea” (Isa 11:9), and in which everything sad will at last “come untrue.”
Luke has been involved in pastoral ministry for many years now, learning to follow Jesus and serve the Lord alongside his wife and four children. He is now a teaching minister at Irving Church in Irving, TX.