Living Hope

By Jared Green     Hope is a word we use often in our daily vocabulary. We hope that the wait is not too long at the restaurant. We hope the weather does not cancel our plans. We hope our favorite sports team wins this weekend. Hope, when used that way, is simply wishful thinking. While I may hope that the above things happen the way I want them, I have no way of ensuring short wait times, good weather, or a Kentucky Basketball win.     Biblical hope, on the other hand, goes a step beyond wishful thinking. Hope is a word used often in the Bible to talk about our salvation and eternal home. No passage makes that clearer than 1 Peter 1:3-5. Paul teaches that those of us who are in Christ have been “born again to a living hope” (v. 3). This hope is more than wishful thinking. As a matter of fact, to view biblical hope as simply wishful thinking is to discredit the power of our salvation in Christ Jesus. Biblical hope carries the idea of confident assurance that is rooted in the promises of God. According to Paul, we are hoping in “an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you” (v. 4). True hope is the confident assurance that heaven is my ultimate inheritance. As John writes, through Jesus, we can know that we have eternal life (1 John 5:13).     In what, then, is our hope rooted? How are we able to move from wishful thinking to confident assurance? The answer is found in the whole of Paul’s teaching: 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, kept in heaven for you, who by God’s power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time (1 Peter 1:3-5).     Through God’s mercy and our faith in Jesus, we have been born again to a living hope. A hope that is rooted in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. In his resurrection, Jesus defeated the power of sin and death. In his resurrection, Jesus made possible freedom from the bondage of sin for all those who, through faith, receive God's rich mercy. Those of us who have been born again—that is, through baptism (John 3:5; Romans 6:3-4)—should be confident that Jesus has secured our heavenly home through the power of his resurrection from the dead. May we never hope for our salvation the same way we hope for warm weather. For our hope is confident assurance, rooted in God’s promises, and secured by the power of the resurrection. God loves you, and so do I.

- Jared Green preaches the Calvert City Church of Christ in Calvert City, KY.  He may be contacted through the congregation's website: http://www.calvertchurchofchrist.com