Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer.
-- Romans 12:12
It doesn’t take long to look around the world, into the present darkness and evil that surrounds us, and conclude that we have little reason to hope. We all experience pain and suffering. Peace and safety are hard to come by. Injustice, sorrow, sickness, poverty and violence are all alive and well.
But The Word became flesh and dwelt among us (John 1:14). When Jesus stepped onto the scene, hope was made possible. The advent of Christ ushers in hope.
When we trust the work of Christ on the Cross for salvation, we are saved by faith (Ephesians 2:8). Given that hope is faith in the future tense, we, as believers, have hope, we possess it and it is ours for the taking. It is at the root of our saving knowledge, understanding and belief in Christ. And if we believe that Christ bore the weight of our sin on the cross and defeated death in His resurrection, Peter says that we are born into a living hope, a hope in Jesus’ victory on our behalf, no matter the trials and tribulations of this world.
Having been justified, we rejoice in the hope of God’s glory, even in the midst of suffering. In fact, as believers, suffering produces hope, because we know that despite our present troubles, God’s love has been poured out on our behalf in Christ. As His followers, life will be difficult, but our hope is not at the mercy of our circumstances and our perspective is not limited to what is seen, but is wrapped up in the truth of the Gospel for all eternity. We have hope and can hope because it has been given to us in Christ.
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