Our society has come through—or, to be more accurate, is in the process of coming through—one of the most bizarre and unprecedented times I can ever remember. Working around the restrictions and limitations surrounding the coronavirus is a reality I never dealt with in the course of my ministry. And the cost has been steep—there have been health costs, economic costs, and academic costs. The social disruption, with sporting events/live shows/group gatherings canceled … restaurants/stores/workout facilities closed … schools having to transition to online learning on the fly, has been massive. Most of us either know someone who either tested positive for the virus or who passed away because of it.
I’m so tired of every night on the news hearing statistics about the number of cases and deaths like it’s some awful game where we’re keeping score. It’s a season that has taken a tremendous toll, and we can use hope.
Hope is one of the key elements of the Christian faith. Romans 15:13 says, “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.” As a pastor, I felt like one of my primary responsibilities was to be a purveyor of hope. For hope breathes life into people. It keeps us going and enables us to hang in there when things get tough. It’s what makes it possible to approach the day with a sense of expectancy and eagerness—to endure problems, persevere, and not give up. With hope you can look recession/fear/uncertainty/a pandemic square in the eye and be convinced in your heart that better days are ahead because God is at your side.
But hope by definition involves uncertainty—for if we already had it, we wouldn’t have to hope for it. Hope means there’s an unsettledness about what’s out there—there’s some ambiguity on the horizon. Hope is more than a wish, for a wish doesn’t cost us anything. Hope pushes us and energizes us. It acts! And it’s more than optimism. Optimism is more of a personality trait—a predisposition to expect things to turn out favorably. Hope, on the other hand, is a Christian virtue that encompasses optimism but is rooted in something deeper. Hope, as someone once said, is the ability to work for something because it is good—not just because it has a chance to succeed. Hope is not the conviction something will turn out the way we want it to so much as it is the certainty that something makes sense regardless of how it turns out … that with God our efforts will have meaning and value no matter how things look or play out.
This manner of hope—this ability to continue to put one foot in front of the other in spite of the numerous temptations to drop out or hang it up—is not something we can conjure up or manufacture. It’s an “imported commodity”—i.e., it’s something that comes from outside of ourselves. True hope is the byproduct of an intimate and transforming relationship with God. Paul prayed that “the God of hope would fill you … so that you’ll overflow with hope”—not that “the God of optimism would fill you so that you’ll overflow with optimism.” Hope is different. Hope is more substantive. Hope transcends circumstances.
Hope is one of the things that sets the Christian faith apart. In the surrounding world of Jesus’ day people didn’t think very highly of hope. When you understand the prevailing mindset of the day, you’ll get a sense of just how revolutionary the words of Scripture are and how breathtaking our impact on the surrounding world can be when we live lives characterized by hope.
A big issue in the ancient world—and it’s a big issue for us, too—is “How do we deal with suffering?” How are we supposed to handle it when we’re at Point A and are moving toward Point B and something—illness/poverty/a recession/a pandemic—robs us of the future we’re pursuing? Ancient writers said that, for the most part, you needed to learn to count on yourself—that desiring/wanting/hoping just set you up for heartbreak. That’s why, in ancient Rome, a common practice in moral education involved constructing a “hardship list.” People would write a catalog of sufferings they might go through so they could train themselves to stop hoping for something and allow reason to prevail. To hope for any other outcome, or expect any other result, was to set yourself up for disappointment.
The ancient world, however, placed value on friendships and relationships as they could help to ease the burden and weight of suffering. And they held one of the noblest of all acts was the willingness to suffer/sacrifice/even die for your friends. But they also said if you were to do that, the beneficiary must be a person of great value—they must be worthy of your suffering. To die for someone who was unworthy was to play a sucker’s game.
Additionally, you shouldn’t allow someone else’s misery or discomfort to disturb your own tranquility. You must dissociate yourself from people if their brokenness or condition created internal trauma for you. The goal was to become so autonomous and self-reliant that nothing ever phased you. If you did, you won the ultimate honor. You conquered! In fact, the word for conquer in the Greek language is the word nikao which is the etymological root for the word behind the company name Nike.
In the ancient world, to conquer meant to overcome life’s internal opponents … fear, worry, anxiety, and dread. Hope was considered a sign of weakness. It was either proof of frailty or an indicator you had a defective understanding of the situation.
So—against this backdrop, listen to these words from the apostle Paul … subversive words that flew in the face of the conventional thinking of the day and turned the world on its ear. “We also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us” (Romans 5:3-5). Most people of Paul’s day would have nodded approvingly at the notion that suffering produces perseverance and perseverance produces character. But when Paul said that character produces hope, that’s where they’d have gotten off the bus. For they believed hope ultimately lets you down. Hope will sooner or later disappoint or frustrate you. To subscribe to hope is to buy into in a mirage.
Part of the reason ancient people didn’t embrace the idea of hope is because they didn’t believe in a purposeful universe. It didn’t make sense to live with hope if the surrounding world, as the ancients believed, is an aimless, purposeless series of ups and downs. But the Bible teaches something very different—that this world is the product of a loving God and has intentionality etched into its very fabric. While it can feel a bit indiscriminate and haphazard at times—while it has its share of violence, injustice, and oppression to it—the universe got off to a good start. “In the beginning, God created …”. In other words, this world is fundamentally good and we’re headed someplace. Everything won’t always be as it is. One day it will all be set right. For the God of hope hasn’t given up on His creation, and He hasn’t given up on the human race. He found a way through, and the means by which He did it is not only brilliant but stunning.
Paul continues, “You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:6-8). Why does hope not disappoint? It’s not because things always turn out the way we want, or because we’ve conquered our emotions and overcome the unwanted obstacles of life through reason and self-control. Hope doesn’t disappoint is because Jesus, as an act of complete and utter grace, chose to sacrifice His life for sin-soaked and sin-stained people like me and you. He didn’t die for virtuous, laudable, and worthy people. He died for messed up, wayward, and sinful people—folks that are out of sorts and don’t have it together … folks like us. Which means the answer to human suffering is not isolated, self-sufficient, all-powerful reason. The answer to human suffering is sacrificial, risky, courageous love. And that love is not the product of naive idealism or blind optimism. It’s something that finds its deepest expression in the character and heart of God.
There’s a literary term called the pathetic fallacy where writers attribute certain emotions to nature—a fierce, angry wind connotes anger … a violent, churning sea implies cruelty … the sprinkle, patter of rain signifies grief. And in Romans 8, the apostle Paul uses this device when he talks about creation “groaning”—an action that signifies struggle and toil … the kind of thing we know all too well. For we understand the hardship and challenge of life in a fallen world. We know what it’s like to groan under the burden. And we know what it’s like to lose hope. We can’t always transcend the emotional load of our circumstances like the people of Jesus’ day tried to do. We run out of steam and have nothing left.
Paul continues his thought and says, “In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans” (Romans 8:26). This is a revolutionary thought—that God groans alongside us when we groan. Instead of being an aloof, detached, and indifferent being who is uninterested and preoccupied, God relates to us as a friend and supports us in our weakness—in fact, His willingness to suffer on our behalf was so complete that He performed the ultimate heroic act and paid the ultimate price.
And because God did what He did, listen to what can happen: “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? … No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8: 35, 37-39). The ancients said a conqueror was one who maintained his or her personal tranquility in the face of an impersonal, hostile world. But Paul says, “No! We are more than conquerors!” And I’m convinced that’s not just catchy language he’s using there. This is more than the memorable turn of a phrase. His choice of words is quite deliberate—we’re not merely conquerors, but we’re more than conquerors! Not through our willpower … or stamina … or because we live triumphant, pain-free lives and have it all figured out. We are more than conquerors because of what Jesus did on our behalf. None of the things on the hardship list he spells out in the final few verses of Romans 8 can invalidate or exclude us from the deep love and personal interest God has for us.
This is the ground of hope! This is the view of human history that captivated people’s hearts, dazzled their imaginations, and ultimately overwhelmed the ancient world. And this reality continues to transform and revolutionize the human race. For a day is coming when death, sin, pain, and guilt will be conquered and all groaning will come to an end. Everything that’s misaligned and out of sorts will be set right. So—we nurture hope. We keep hope alive! We work in hope. We play in hope. We pray in hope. We live in hope. We speak in hope. We go to bed and sleep in hope. We strive to become authentically, deeply hopeful people. And we find that as we live life defined and distinguished by hope, it grows.
“Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade” (1 Peter 1:3-4a).