‘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.’ (Rom. 15:13)
Dressed in black, a family gathers round a grave. Slowly, the coffin is lowered into the ground. One by one, the mourners gather a handful of earth and let it slip through fingers onto the lid of the plain oak box. The minister speaks: ‘…earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust; in sure and certain hope of the Resurrection to eternal life, through our Lord Jesus Christ…’. For centuries, this was how Anglican Christians buried their dead.
The words of Thomas Cranmer’s Book of Common Prayer, which are really just the words of Scripture, do two pastorally vital things. First, they bring us face to face with the last enemy each of us must meet. Neither Cranmer nor the Bible shield us with soothing lies or convenient distractions. Instead, we are left with stark reality – our tragedy as children of Adam. ‘Dust you are and to dust you shall return’ (Gen.3:19). ‘For all our days pass away under your wrath; we bring our years to an end like a sigh’ (Ps.90:9).
But, secondly, the bitterness of death is soothed by balm that only the risen Christ can give: ‘…who shall change our vile body, that it may be like unto his glorious body, according to the mighty working, whereby he is able to subdue all things to himself’. In the midst of life, we are in death. But in Christ Jesus, death is swallowed up in victory (Isa.25:8; 1 Cor.15:54). And so, although through tears, a Christian graveside is a place of sure and certain hope.
This is the second of a series of articles on the great Christian triad of faith, hope and love. In the first (en, October 2022), we thought about faith. This time, we’ll look at hope. And we’ll begin with that phrase which sounds quite odd to contemporary ears: ‘in sure and certain hope’.
Sure and certain
Sure. Certain. Hope. Surely one of those words is not like the others? Hope seems such a weak word in the face of death. Is there hope? I hope so…
We are accustomed to hearing and using the word in this tentative, uncertain way. ‘The traffic’s bad. I hope we get to the airport on time.’ ‘I really hope Daddy will come home early today.’ ‘I hope Spurs don’t choke again this season.’ But Biblical hope – the Christian’s hope in God – is no mere wish. It is something solid and enduring. It will never disappoint. The ‘hope set before us’ is ‘a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, a hope that enters into the inner place behind the curtain’ (Heb. 6:18-19). The inner place our hope enters is heaven itself (Heb. 9:24), where Christ is seated at God’s right hand, having made His perfect sacrifice for sins (Heb. 1:3; 10:12). Because Jesus has already entered heaven on our behalf (Heb. 6:20), our future – the hope set before us – is guaranteed. It is therefore a strong anchor for our souls. The Christian does not bob about in an unstable present with an even more uncertain future. Even as the gusts of life blow and the waves of history roll, we are anchored to Christ the Rock in heaven for us. Our hope is sure and certain because Christ is sure and certain.
But why is hope so important?
Reaching out for more
Hope is necessary because we don’t yet fully possess what God has promised we shall have. Our lives are imperfect and incomplete. The world can seem a bleak and troubling place. The root of our problems – our sin, our suffering, the agonising imperfection of our existence – is that we are children of Adam. We are bound up with our first father in sin, guilt and corruption. As sinful and corrupt images of God, we are both victims and perpetrators, sufferers and causes, of what the theologian Paul Griffiths calls ‘the devastation’. As children of Adam, we live in a devastated world. And we share his devastated human nature. Our lives, and our world, have been laid waste by sin. And so we long for more.
We long for peace and security. We long for health and strength. We long for truth and commitment. We long for love and intimacy. We long for laughter and joy. We long to calm our anxieties and rest from our strivings. We long for life in the face of death and decay. We are needy creatures, reaching out beyond ourselves, beyond our current experience of life, for something better.
In God’s mercy, goodness and beauty still exist in the world and in our lives. But the beautiful face of life in this creation is deeply scarred by our sin, and God’s just judgment on our sin.
And so our lives are incomplete, and often painful. And the world seems so uncertain. But, in the lovely phrase of the theologian John Webster, the gospel of Jesus Christ moves us into ‘a more spacious and relaxed world’. Because the gospel places a new and better frame around our picture of reality. The gospel gives us hope.
Groaning… in hope
The Apostle Paul understood that life involves suffering. We groan and long for something better (Rom.8:18-25). Not only Christians, but the whole of creation groans. But creation groans in hope – it waits to be set free from its bondage to corruption due to human sin (Rom.8:21). Christians also groan in hope. We groan as we long for our adoption as sons (Rom.8:23). We groan to be like Christ, our perfect Older Brother (Rom.8:29). We groan, longing for our bodies to be redeemed and to be raised to eternal life (Rom. 8:23).
It is a glorious hope! When we are raised, creation itself will be set free to fulfil its purpose (Rom.8:20-21). We will see it shining in all its glory as it sings of its glorious creator (Pss.96:11-13; 98:7-11;104). If majestic mountains, and rolling hills, and mysterious forests are thrilling now, how will our hearts soar when we see them freed from corruption? If roaring oceans, rustling leaves, purring kittens, honking geese, are lovely now, what symphonies will they sing when we are raised from the dead?
We long for health and strength. On that day, eternal life and health will be ours. We crave friends and friendship. On that day, we shall be friends with God and with each other without end. If you seek freedom you will be free from sin. If you long to escape the ruts and boredom of life, your life shall be forever fresh and new. If it is rest and peace you desire, this newness won’t unsettle you, but will endlessly delight as you rest in tranquillity and peace.
Our blessed hope
And yet, for all the wonder of a world renewed, these creaturely delights will just be whispers and glances of our true delight.
There will be so much good when Christ returns, so much to ravish us. But above and behind and around and in and beyond all these little goods will be the Good of goods – the Source, Redeemer, Lover and Goal of all that is good. For what we really long for is what Paul describes as ‘our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Saviour Jesus Christ’ (Titus 2:13). He – Jesus – is our hope (1 Tim. 1:1).
In the past ten or 15 years, there has been a mostly healthy move among evangelical Christians to recognise that our great heavenly hope is not the hope of a disembodied existence. The Biblical hope is not that our souls will go to heaven when we die, but that we will be raised (1 Cor. 15). Heaven will descend to earth, and we will enjoy the glories of a new heaven and a new earth (Rev. 21). Our hope is earthy, tangible, physical. But for all that this is wonderfully true, I worry that we have become distracted by these delights. Distracted from our one true delight, the Delight of delights, without whom all other delights would turn to dust – God Himself.
Throughout the Bible, for all the loveliness of God’s creation, and the promise of a perfectly renewed creation, the great hope that God offers us is nothing more, and nothing less, than Himself. The heart of God’s covenant commitment to us is this: ‘I will be your God and you shall be my people’ (Lev.26:12; Jer.31:33; Rev.21:7). The eternal purpose of God in election, the reason Christ died to redeem us from our sins, the promise sealed by the Spirit in our hearts, the fruition of all our hopes and dreams, is just this: that as God’s dearly loved, eternally adopted sons and daughters by grace, we shall see His face.
This was Job’s hope in all his affliction: ‘I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last he shall stand upon the earth … and in my flesh I shall see God’ (Job 19:25-26). This is what God promised through Isaiah, once sin and judgment passed: ‘Your eyes will behold the King in his beauty’ (Isa.33:17), the Lord God Himself (Isa.33:22; cf. 6:1-5). This is what the Lord Jesus Himself promises to those who are pure in heart: ‘they shall see God’ (Matt.5:8). It’s in the presence of the Lord that we shall find fulness of joy (Ps.16:11). And when wake from the sleep of death, we shall see His face and be satisfied with His likeness (Ps.17:15).
And so the book of Revelation describes the wonders of the new creation – a marriage feast, a radiant city, the spring of the water of life, the tree of life with its fruit that heals the nations, the kings of the earth entering with all the honour and glory of the nations. But the heart and crown of everything is this: ‘The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him. They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. And night will be no more. They will need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever’ (Rev.22:5).
This is the content of our hope: God Himself, when Christ appears in glory. And it is sure and certain, because it rests on a sure foundation.
A sure foundation
The foundation of our hope is God Himself. Without Him, our longings for a better world would just be wistful dreams. But God is ‘the God of hope’ (Rom.15:13). And therefore, when the Psalmist wavered and felt downcast, he urged himself to ‘hope in God … my salvation and my God’ (Pss. 42:5, 11; 43:5).
We know that God is the God of hope because of His promises, which never change. In Titus 1:2, Paul tells us three things about God’s promises. First, they have their origin in God Himself, before the world was even created. Secondly, God never lies. In fact, it’s impossible for Him to lie (Heb.6:18). His character is so utterly truthful that He can never go back on His word. Thirdly, what He promises is eternal life. The God who can never lie promised us, even before we’d been created, that He would give us eternal life. And so our hope is absolutely guaranteed.
This doesn’t mean that our subjective experience of hopefulness never wavers. We get buffeted by life. We get worn down by our sinfulness and frequent failures. Our eternal rest can seem so far away. But in those situations, we can take encouragement from our father Abraham (Rom.4:16-21). God promised Abraham that he would be the father of many nations. But in old age, with a body that was as good as dead, and an elderly barren wife, Abraham still had no son. But not even this could make him lose hope: ‘In hope he believed against hope’ (Rom. 4:18). Why? Because he gave glory to God, fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised’ (Rom.4:21). When our hope wavers, this is what we should do: give glory to God. Remind ourselves that whatever obstacles seem to be in God’s way, they’re nothing. He can do whatever He has promised. And He has promised to raise us from death and give us eternal life.
Which seems an extraordinary promise. Until we remember that God’s promises have already been fulfilled. In a very real sense, we no longer have to wait for God to keep His promise to defeat death and give us eternal life. He has kept His word already, by raising Jesus from the dead. ‘Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled and unfading’ (1Peter 1:3-4). Christ is risen, and therefore death is defeated. His resurrection was a type of ‘new birth’ from the grave. By faith in Him, we are also born again to eternal life. And therefore, because we have a living Saviour, our hope is a living hope. God kept His promises by raising Jesus from the dead. And so we are already alive in Christ, and receiving the outcome of our faith, the salvation of our souls (1 Peter 1:9).
In what remains of this life, we may experience all kinds of trials (1 Peter 1:6). And one day our family and friends will gather round our grave and grieve our death. But we will not really be dead. Just asleep (1 Thess. 4:13), already in the presence of our Saviour (2 Cor.5:6-8; Phil.1:23), where we will rest and wait for the resurrection of our bodies.
Christ is risen! Not even death can thwart the promises of God. Because Christ died for us, is risen and at the Father’s right hand interceding, nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus (Rom.8:31-39). Question 37 of the Westminster Shorter Catechism summarises this great hope with stunning beauty. ‘The souls of believers are at their death made perfect in holiness, and do immediately pass into glory; and their bodies, being still united to Christ, do rest in their graves, till the resurrection.’ Even the tears of a Christian graveside are embraced by the victorious presence of God in Christ.
The gift of hope
Hope, then, comes from the God of hope – the God who keeps His promises, the God who has already raised His Son from the dead. But how does this hope become my hope? This too is a gift of God. The God of hope is the one who fills us with all joy and peace in believing. And He does this so that ‘by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope’ (Rom.15:13).
We are not able to produce hope in ourselves. But the Holy Spirit is the one by whom God raised Jesus from the dead (Rom. 8:10; 1 Peter 3:18). The same Holy Spirit brought us to life in our new birth (John 3: 5-8; Titus 3:5-6). In doing this, He gave us the hope of eternal life. And now, by His great power, He continues to cause us to ‘abound in hope’.
Hope in God is not a matter of clinging onto God’s promises in our own strength, as our knuckles whiten and our muscles ache. Hope is the loving work of God the Holy Spirit in our hearts. ‘Hope does not put us to shame’, says Paul. It will never disappoint or humiliate us. Why? ‘Because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us’ (Rom.5:5). We have not yet received our inheritance. But the unshakeable reality of our hope has been guaranteed by Jesus’ resurrection from the dead. And its presence in our lives – our ability to rejoice in hope of the glory of God (Rom.5:2) – is guaranteed by the Spirit’s presence in our lives, flooding our hearts with the love of God. He is the ‘guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it’ (Eph.1:14).
The way the Holy Spirit creates and sustains our hope is very simple: He does it through the word of God. For if it’s by the Holy Spirit that we abound in hope (Rom.15:13), it’s in the Holy Scriptures that we find God’s own words ‘written for our instruction, that through endurance and through the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope’ (Rom.15:4).
If we want to abound in hope, it won’t just happen out of the blue. We must return again and again to the reading and preaching of the Bible, in prayerful dependence on the Holy Spirit to give us hope through the precious promises of God. The psalmist knew this. And so he prayed: ‘My soul longs for your salvation; I hope in your word’ (Ps.119:81).
The promise of the Father, the resurrection of the Son, the gift of the Spirit: this is the unshakeable foundation of our hope – the God of hope.
Keep going!
In the New Testament, the Holy Spirit draws out many applications of the great reality of Christian hope. But we’ll finish with just one. The hopeful Christian perseveres.
In my article on faith, I drew attention to the way that New Testament connects faith, hope and love (1 Cor.13:13; Col.1:4-5; 1 Thess.1:3). But sometimes ‘hope’ drops out of the triad and is replaced by ‘endurance’ or ‘steadfastness’ (1 Thess.3:6, 8; 1 Tim.6:11; 2 Tim.3:10; Titus 2:2; Rev.2:19). Think of the endurance of a marathon runner, as she hits ‘the wall’, with the finish line still miles away. Endurance is her steady determination just to keep putting one foot in front of the other, in the hope of the finishing line, the medal, the warm bath and the cold beer.
It’s not an accident when ‘endurance’ replaces ‘hope’ alongside faith and love. After all, it was for the joy set before Him that Jesus endured the cross (Heb.12:2). His steadfast willingness to suffer the shame of the cross for us was motivated by His hope of glory. Hope and endurance belong together, because hope produces endurance. Paul speaks of ‘the steadfastness of hope’ (1 Thess.1:3). And when he calls God ‘the God of hope’ (Rom.15:13) and also calls Him ‘the God of endurance’, who through the Scriptures gives us hope (Rom.15:4-5).
The hopeful Christian is marked less by giddy excitement and more by steady endurance. In the power of the Spirit, we plod cheerfully through life, dealing as faithfully as we can with whatever God places before us today, confident that the best is yet to come.
So, whatever you are enduring, consider Jesus, who for the joy set before Him, endured the cross, and is now seated at the right hand of the throne of God (Heb.12:2). Consider Jesus, risen from the dead, who ever lives to intercede for you (Rom.8:32; Heb.7:25). Consider Jesus, in whom all God’s promises are Yes and Amen (2 Cor.1:20). Consider Jesus, our blessed hope, who one day will appear again in glory (Titus 2:13). Consider Jesus, and carry on.
Further reading
If you’d like to think more about what Christian hope is, here are three recommendations for further reading.
Something Old: of Godefridus Udemans, The Practice Faith, Hope, and Love (Reformation Heritage Books, 2012). A rich and very practical book that covers faith and love as well as hope. A 17th-century classic from the Dutch ‘Second Reformation’, translated into accessible modern English.
Something New: Mark Jones, Faith. Hope. Love: The Christ- Centered Way to Grow in Grace (Crossway, 2017). 58 short, practical chapters, full of Biblical content (chapters 18–30 are on hope).
Something Stretching: ‘Hope’ in Confessing God John Webster, (Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2005; reprinted 2016), pp. 195–214. All the chapters in this, and Webster’s later collections of essays, are demanding, but repay careful reading. He treats hope in its full theological setting: who the trinitarian God is, what human existence is, and therefore what it means for us to hope in Him.
Matthew Mason is Assistant Director of the Pastors’ Academy, teaches ethics at London Seminary, and is Director of Crosslands Cultivate. He is one third of the Church Podmatics podcast.
