Hope

There is a car in the parking lot where I work that has an Obama bumper sticker on it that reads "got hope?". Now I could take off right now and blog about putting your hope in God and not a man, but that's too easy. I've been seeing that car every day for weeks and I've really been thinking about the word "hope" and what it means. I've come to the conclusion that the modern concept of hope is not consistent with the biblical concept.

In the modern context, when someone says they are hoping for something there is always an element of doubt. For example, "I hope she comes tonight" really means "I want her to come tonight, but there's a chance she won't". Or if someone says "I hope that isn't true", they are saying "I don't want it to be true, but there is a chance it is true". Now contrast that with what we find in Romans:

Romans 5:1-5 Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.

This scripture has always sort of thrown me for a loop and here's why. I can understand that suffering produces perseverance (i.e. endurance) for it most certainly does - I can understand that perseverance produces character, which it also most certainly does - but why is the end result that character produces hope? But maybe the reason I didn't understand it was that I was looking at "hope" in the modern context.

The Greek word used in these verses is "Elpis". Look at what it means:

joyful and confident expectation of eternal salvation

Do you see the difference? We tend to use the word hope today precisely because there is an element of doubt in the outcome of what we desire. But in the New Testament, the word hope carries no hint of doubt, but a confident expectation of what the outcome will be. With that definition, the following phrase makes much more sense.

... suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope.

That is why we can rejoice when we run into problems and trials, for we know that they help us develop endurance. And endurance develops strength of character, and character strengthens our confident expectation of salvation. Or to put in another way, the more we suffer the more confident we are in the outcome. Now that's a blog for another day.