04.03 Hope through Grace
CHAPTER III
HOPE THROUGH GRACE
"Now our Lord Jesus Christ himself, and God ... hath given us good hope through grace" (2 Thessalonians 2:16). The good hope is through grace. The word rendered good, according to the scholars, means unfailing, bright, genuine, and beneficial. The good hope will not be disappointed; its benefits will be forthcoming in due time. There is no good hope through human merit. All men are sinners and cannot merit anything good from God. In this chapter we want to consider some of the leading characteristics of the Christian hope.
1. It is the hope of the gospel. "And be not moved away from the hope of the gospel" (Colossians 1:23). The gospel, in the power of the Spirit, not only begets faith and love; it also arouses hope. The gospel not only points back to the cross to what Christ did there, it also points to His coming again and to what He will do for us then. On the cross our Saviour bore the guilt of our sins and took them away from us, and He is coming again to take away the shame of sin and restore us to the image of God. With the guilt removed we are now justified; when the shame is removed we shall be glorified. "Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see Him as he is" (1 John 3:2). "When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory" (Colossians 3:4). The believer looks back to the cross as the ground of hope and forward to the fruition of hope.
2. It is the hope of Salvation. "But let us, who are of the day, be sober, putting on the breastplate of faith and love; and for an helmet, the hope of salvation" (1 Thessalonians 5:8). Here salvation is put in the future. There is a very real sense in which we are not yet saved; we only hope to be saved. Hope implies there is an aspect of salvation we do not yet have. "And that, knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of sleep: for now is our salvation nearer than when we believed" (Romans 13:11). Faith brings deliverance from guilt of sin which is justification. Hope is concerned about the deliverance from the shame and annoyance of sin. Our salvation is in three tenses: past, present, and future. The believer has been saved from the guilt and penalty of sin, anathema maranatha so that he is no longer condemned, but justified from all things. "And by him all that believe are justified from all things" (Acts 13:39). He is being saved from the damning power of sin because he is no longer under law but under grace. "For sin shall not have dominion over you: for ye are not under the law, but under grace" (Romans 6:14). And the believer is yet to be delivered from the very presence of sin, because Christ is coming to make him like Himself. "For our conversation (citizenship) is in heaven; from whence also we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ: Who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body, according to the working whereby he is able even to subdue all things unto himself" (Php 3:20-21).
3. It is the hope of righteousness. "For we through the Spirit wait for the hope of righteousness by faith" (Galatians 5:5). While the believer has the righteousness of Christ imputed to him by faith, he still hungers and thirsts after personal righteousness. And this aspect of righteousness is only a matter of hope. The righteousness we now have by faith has a hope attached to it: the hope that we shall be personally righteous, the hope of being perfectly whole.
There is still another aspect of this hope of righteousness: the hope of a righteous society. "Nevertheless we, according to his promise, look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness" (2 Peter 3:13). This earth is filled with unrighteousness, "for the whole world lieth in wickedness" (1 John 5:19). There is unrighteousness in every realm of human activity. There is diplomatic unrighteousness at conference tables where international treaties are treated as scraps of paper. There is political unrighteousness when vital issues are subordinated to party interests. There is industrial unrighteousness, both on the part of labor and management, in which the poor are ground down and robbed of the fruits of their labor. There is social unrighteousness in which a man’s bank account, rather than his character, is made the standard of measurement. There is ecclesiastical unrighteousness when a man’s personality, rather than the truth he lives and preaches is made the controlling factor. There is governmental unrighteousness when, for the sake of taxes, men are licensed to sell alcohol as a beverage and thus do untold harm to millions. Or when the law winks at gambling in the parlor while the gamblers in the alley feel its iron hand. But a better day is coming, for "Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will raise unto David a righteous Branch, and a King shall reign and prosper, and shall execute judgment and justice in the earth. In his days Judah shall be saved and Israel shall dwell safely: and this is his name whereby he shall be called, THE LORD OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS" (Jeremiah 23:5-6).
It is the hope of His calling. "The eyes of your understanding being enlightened; that ye may know what is the hope of his calling, and what the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints" (Ephesians 1:18). "There is one body, and one Spirit, even as ye are called in one hope of your calling" (Ephesians 4:4. Here is a twofold hope: God’s hope and our hope. When God called us with the call of salvation, He had a definite purpose to glorify us and fit us for His holy presence, and since this was to be in the future it is referred to as the hope of His calling. And since the glory to which He called us is future in our realization and enjoyment, it is the hope of our calling. Our calling, like our salvation, may be viewed from three angles. As to the past "But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should shew forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvellous light" (1 Peter 2:9). Concerning the present. "For God hath not called us unto uncleanness, but unto holiness" (1 Thessalonians 4:7). "But as he which hath called us is holy, so be ye holy in all manner of conversation" (1 Peter 1:15). "Who hath saved us, and called us with an holy calling, not according to our works, but according to his own purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began" (2 Timothy 1:9). These verses emphasize our personal obligation to holy living. And as to the future we are told "That ye would walk worthy of God, who hath called you unto his kingdom and glory" (1 Thessalonians 2:12). So the hope of HIS calling is His expectation of finding in us the glory to which He called us. And the hope of OUR calling is our enjoyment of the glory to which he called us. One of these days all of His people shall hear Him say, "Come enjoy the glory I meant for you when I called you."
5. It is the hope of glory. "Christ in you the hope of glory" (Colossians 1:27). "By whom also we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God" (Romans 5:2). J.B. Phillips renders it: "Here we take our stand, in happy certainty of the glorious things He has for us in the future." The man of the world may have more for the present, but the Christian is the only person with a future. The Christian is happy in his hope of being conformed to the image of Christ. The hope of the atheist is that when he dies he will be like the horse or cow in death and be done for. The best hope of some is that when they die they will go to a place called purgatory and after so much prayers and payments and suffering, finally reach heaven. But there is little or no glory to such hopes as these. The glorious hope is that when we are absent from the body, we shall be present with the Lord.
6. It is a living hope. "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which accordig to his abundant mercy hath begotten us again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead" (1 Peter 1:3). Ours is a living hope in a dying world. It is no poor, pale ghost brightening and then fading; fainting and then reviving and then fainting again. The poor worldling has his hopes, but they are dying hopes. The hope of the false professor is a mere illusion. A false hope may give as much pleasure as the true hope while it lives, but all false hopes will die in disappointment. A man puts his hope of heaven in his own character, or good works, or church membership, and is as happy as the man who has no hope except in Christ who put away sin by the sacrifice of himself. But the time will come when the hope of one will come to an end and the hope of the other will be realized in heaven. Every sinner needs to place his hope in someone who will not disappoint him. And such an one is Jesus Christ. "Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved" (Acts 4:12).
7. It is the blessed hope. "Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ" (Titus 2:13). The blessed hope is the hope of Christ’s return. With His return all the things for which the believer longs and prays and struggles will be realized in happy enjoyment. In all earthly hopes there is an element of unrest and uncertainty. He who hopes to become rich cannot be certain that his hope will be realized. He who hopes for continued good health cannot be certain that he will not soon be smitten with some fatal malady.