THE GOD OF HOPE
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"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." Romans 15:13
From a meditation upon God as the God of love, we pass, by an easy transition of thought, to a meditation upon God as the God of Hope. These two titles are beautifully harmonious. Where there is divine love to man, there is divine hope for man. God's love assures me that I may hope in Him for everything that love can give, for all that belongs to Him is mine. Once assured that I have a home in His heart, I feel that I may repose in every perfection of His nature. What good may we not expect from Him who is love, and who has demonstrated that love in the transcendently great and precious gift of his son? If He has so loved us, what else will not such love bestow of present blessing, and of future good? We have but to know, by the witness of the Spirit, our present standing in Christ, thus to be brought into the experience of present peace, joy, and hope; and to be equally assured that, far away beyond the region of sin and sorrow, there awaits us a heaven where faith is turned into sight, hope is lost in fruition, and love bathes the soul in its boundless sea of bliss.
The present title of God, the "God of hope," is peculiarly expressive and endearing to the believing mind. His title as the God of love, has especially to do with our present. His title, as the "God of hope," has to do with our future life. The first, assures us of a salvation now- a present pardon, a present acceptance, a present adoption; the other, leads our thoughts onward and upward, and paints its rainbow-tints upon our solemn and eternal future, assuring us of a certain and full salvation to come. As the God of love, I dwell forever in His heart; as the God of hope, I shall dwell forever in His heaven. Let us proceed to examine the import of this remarkable title of God, and then the blessings flowing therefrom, as invoked by the prayer of the apostle; "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."
God is the God of essential hope- that is, hope in Him is an inherent element, a part of His essence. He is Hope itself. Of no other being can this be affirmed. The hope that springs up in the soul of all other intelligences, human or angelic, is a communicated thing, a passion extraneous from themselves. It is a beam flowing from God, as a ray of light from the sun, as a jet of water from the fountain. But hope in God, is as part of His nature-it is God Himself; He would not be God were He not the "God of hope." Hope, in Him, is a duality which no vicissitude can change, no cloud shade, no object eclipse. Thus, from God all intelligent beings receive the inspiration of their hope. A few particulars will illustrate this.
God is the Author of NATURAL hope. He has mercifully constituted man the creature of hope. What a wise provision, what a beneficent bestowment is this! What sustains man amid the toils, the troubles, and disappointments of the present life? It is hope. What quickens his intellectual powers, makes in him the spirit of enterprise, impels him onward in the accomplishment of great purposes, sustaining him amid toils the most exhausting, soothing him in trials the most severe, and bearing him up beneath reverses and disappointments the most crushing and bitter?
It is hope. The pole-star of hope fixing his eye, what labor will he not undergo, what sufferings will he not endure, to what privations will he not submit? Extinguish hope in the human heart, and you have enthroned grim despair, like a demon of darkness, upon the soul. Life has lost its sweetness, the creature its attraction, the world its charm, and all the future of the soul is shrouded in midnight gloom.
Hope, in man has been variously defined. Divines have discoursed of its nature, orators have declaimed of its influence, poets have chanted its pleasures, and even artists have symbolized its beauty. It has been described as the oxygen of the soul, as the last ray the cloud obscures, as the lighthouse pouring its golden beams over life's ocean, as the firstborn offspring of reason. It is at once man's kindest friend and his greatest foe. It keeps him from sinking in the bosom of the waves, and yet often allures him on to depths in which there is no standing, and to rocks from which there is no rescue; and so, by its promises and its flattery, plunges its too confiding victim into irremediable ruin and despair.
And yet, natural hope is God's kind and beneficent gift to man. It sits perched on the warrior's crest, it illumines the captive's cell, it lightens the slave's chain, it sustains the spirit of the exile, it strengthens the couch of languor, soothes the bed of suffering, and lulls to balmy repose the subject of mental disquietude and bodily disease. The hope of success in toil, of deliverance in difficulty, of return from exile, of recovery from sickness; in a word, the hope of realizing some future good, imparts its inspiration to man, feeds the lamp that cheers him onward, tints with prophetic ray the clouds and shadows that drape life's tomorrow.
"What is hope? The beauteous sun
Which colors all it shines upon.
The beacon of life's dreary sea,
The star of immortality.
Fountain of feeling, young and warm;
A day-beam bursting through the storm.
A tone of melody, whose lute
Is, oh! too sweet for earth!
A blossom of that radiant tree,
Whose fruit the angels only see.
A beauty and a charm, whose power
Is seen, enjoyed, confessed each hour.
A portion of the world to come,
When earth and ocean meet-
the last overwhelming doom."
And yet how insensible is the unrenewed man of his obligation to God, even for the natural hope with which He has inspired him! In the folly of his atheistic outcry, "there is no God," he pauses not to reflect upon the misery into which he would instantly plunge were God to extinguish this merciful inspiration within his heart. "Oh that man would praise the Lord for His goodness, and for His wonderful works to the children of men."
My reader, are your circumstances trying? are your resources lessening? are clouds gathering? and do you find yourself tempted to succumb to despondency and despair? There is hope for you in God! All other sources and gleams of hope may have expired, but God is the "God of hope," and in His power and love, in His word and faithfulness, you may hope, even against hope. Take heart, then, and look up. Never yield to despair while there is hope in God. If things look discouraging, and prospects are gloomy, there is one Being to whose providence you may always turn with the full assurance of hope, that in His divine love and infinite resources, you will find compassion, support, and help.
Job reminds us that, "men see not the bright light that is in the cloud;" seeing it not, they succumb to despair. There is no pure, unmixed evil in our history. God's judgments are tempered with mercy. There is always, through His goodness and love, a precious pearl in sorrow's cup; and when that cup has been drank, and its bitterness is past, we shall find it undissolved, all the purer and more precious by the sanctified dealings of Him who, as a refiner and purifier of silver, purifies His people as gold and silver are purified, that they may offer unto the Lord an offering in righteousness.
Thus there are always some softening, mitigating circumstances in our deepest, sorest trials, something that tells of God's love and speaks of future hope. Oh, it is not all night with those who love God, nor even with those who do not love Him. When the sun sets, the moon rises; and when the moon is hidden, the stars shine out; so that, if earth is dark, heaven is light, and the night is all the more glorious for the very splendor which the darkness reveals.
Thus far we have spoken chiefly of natural hope in man, for which he is indebted to the power and goodness of God. But God is the Author of a higher, more spiritual, and immortal hope than this– the good hope, through grace, of eternal life, in and through the Lord Jesus Christ, and made known to us by His gospel. It is in this sense the apostle, in the passage upon which this chapter is based, speaks of God as the God of hope. We can know nothing of God as the God of hope but as He is made known to us in Christ. Out of Christ, there is no hope of salvation for man in God. Man lost all hope in himself when he sinned, and all hope in God when, for that sin, he was driven out of paradise, to he henceforth a fugitive and wanderer on the face of the earth, dark despair enthroned upon his brow. But, even before his expulsion from Eden, hope- the hope of salvation- trembled upon the dark cloud which shrouded that paradise of purity and bliss, in gloom. "From now on, you and the woman will be enemies, and your offspring and her offspring will be enemies. He will crush your head, and you will strike his heel." Here the first promise of a Savior, the first dawn of hope for sinners. This promise Goal fulfilled, and this hope mall realized when "God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life."
When the Lord Jesus, the Sun of Righteousness, made His advent into our world, the sun of hope rose with Him. The hope of salvation which faintly dawned in paradise, which shone brighter and brighter through the Mosaic, Patriarchal, and Prophetic dispensations, now burst upon mankind in meridian splendor. Christ had come, the long-promised Savior, and now, upon those who had sat in the region and shadow of death, a great light had risen– the light of life, the hope of salvation, the glory of God's forgiving love, in the face of Jesus Christ. Thus, there is not one ray of hope in God for a lost sinner outside of Christ.
He is, indeed, the God of hope, an infinite ocean of hope, boundless, fathomless, but it flows to the sinner only through one channel, it darts its beams only through one medium- Jesus the Savior, Christ the crucified One. Not a ray of hope emanates from His mercy, or from His goodness, or from His love, or from His power, but as it shines through the darkness and the suffering of the cross, in upon the soul prostrate in penitence and faith at its foot. With what fullness and glory does the atoning work of Christ appear, when seen in this light, as revealing the God of hope to sinners, who, tremblingly expected, and justly deserved, nothing but eternal despair. Let us now show more explicitly in what sense God is the God of hope to those who truly and humbly believe in the Lord Jesus Christ.
There is the hope of JUSTIFICATION in God through Christ. The Scriptures of truth set forth the obedience of Christ to the law, as constituting the righteousness of God unto all and upon all those who believe. Thus, "by the obedience of One many were made righteous." "Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believes" -mark, the end of the law." He traveled in His obedience to the end of all its precepts, to the end of all its commands, and to the end of all its curse. As a condemning law, as a justifying law, as a life-giving law, Christ, by His personal and full obedience, traveling to its utmost limit of requirement, made an end of it; as such, He abolished it; and he who believes in Christ; accepting in faith, Christ's righteousness as his justification before God, fully answers the end for which the law was given.
Thus, the meaning of the apostle evidently is, that Christ was the termination of the law, its scope, its fulfilling and accomplishment, "for righteousness to every one that believes." And now there is the hope of justification with God through Christ the Lord, our righteousness. Christ's obedience to the law has made it righteous on the part of God to justify the ungodly. It is now His supreme delight, as it is His sole prerogative, legally and justly, without any violence to His government, or shadow upon His character, to acquit, no, to justify the sinner who believes in Jesus.
Christ has made it so honorable, yes, righteous, on the part of God to reveal Himself as the God of hope to the guilty and condemned, that it is written, as with a sunbeam, upon the inspired page, "It is God who justifies!" What a glorious hope then, is this! The hope of a righteous and full acquittal from present and eternal condemnation, through the imputed righteousness of Christ. This hope have all the saints; for all who believe in Him are justified from all things from which they could not be justified by the law of Moses.
My reader, this hope may be yours. If, seeing you renounce the worthlessness of your own righteousness, you are led to enfold yourself by faith in the all-justifying righteousness of the Savior, then you pass from the dreary region of condemnation into the sunshine of a present, free, and changeless justification before God. With the advent of this hope of acceptance in your soul; will be a "peace passing all understanding," and a "joy unspeakable and full of glory." Rest not lentil you attain it. One believing look at Christ, and the shadows of guilt and condemnation which drape your soul, will dissolve into the bright dawn of a hope that Christ has espoused your cause, has become your Surety, has paid your debt, and that you pass out of the court of God's justice not only acquitted, but justified; not merely without blame, but "unblameable and unreproveable in His sight." Oh, how divine, perfect, and glorious must be the righteousness of Christ, which can thus so fully and freely justify such vile, guilty sinners, as we! "Therefore, since we have been made right in God's sight by faith, we have peace with God because of what Jesus Christ our Lord has done for us."
There is also the FORGIVENESS OF SIN in God through Christ. The forgiveness of sin is one of the divinest and most kingly prerogatives of God. To pardon with perfect satisfaction to divine justice; to forgive sins of the greatest number, and guilt of the grossest turpitude, without a stain upon the holiness of His character, or a shadow upon the glory of His name, was a problem in the administration of His moral government, the solution of which He alone was able to supply.
The gift of His co-equal and co-eternal Son, to die an atoning death, to offer Himself as a sacrificial victim to divine justice, fully met the otherwise insurmountable difficulties of the case. What in this matter was impossible with man, was possible with God. The entire scheme of human redemption is, in every part, impressed with the finger of God. If any expedient ever bore the visible and exclusive stamp of God's mind, it is this. Who but Jehovah could have devised a plan of salvation that would involve not the slightest compromise of the Divine glory? The more a spiritual, reflecting mind studies the whole economy of redemption, the more profound will be the conviction that a Divine heart alone could have conceived, and a Divine mind alone could have planned, and a Divine power alone could have executed, the scheme that saves fallen man. But how precious is the hope of pardon of which God in Christ is the Author and the Giver! No truth illumines the pages of inspiration with greater brightness than this– "There is forgiveness with You, that You may be feared." "Who is a God like You, that pardons iniquity, and passes by the transgressions of the remnant of His heritage?" "You are a God ready to pardon."
Since Jesus has shed His most precious blood, it is now glorious on the part of God to dart a ray of the hope of pardoned sin into the darkest, vilest heart that ever wept, and sobbed, and confessed at His feet. Approach, O sin-distressed, guilt-burdened one! there is the hope of forgiveness for you in God. He delights in mercy. And since He can forgive all your transgressions for Christ's sake, and be glorious in the eyes of angels and of saints in so doing, do you think that he will spurn you from His throne of grace, if you but acknowledge your transgressions, with the hand of faith resting upon the head of Christ, the sin-atoning lamb of God?
How real and effectual, then, must be the sacrificial work of Jesus, thus to have unsealed a spring of Hope in God for guilty men! Who will question the vicarious nature of His sufferings, the atoning design of His death, contemplating it in this convincing light? In no other way can the holy Lord God, consistently with His righteousness, reveal Himself to sinners as the God of hope. All other hope is a fallacy. All hope in the abstract mercy of God, or in the fancied meritoriousness of man, is a false and vain hope, which must inevitably and irretrievably plunge its subject into shame and everlasting contempt. Your hope, then, my reader, lies in your taking hold of Christ the eternal life of your soul. Not a ray gleams forth from any other source but the cross of Christ. Here there is hope for the vilest wretch, the chief of sinners, but only here! The dark shadow of despair is lost amid the effulgence of hope which bathes in unclouded sunshine the cross of Calvary. All who stand beneath the divine bow which spans this sacred hill, may uplift their eyes to God as their reconciled Father, and to heaven as their future and eternal home, with a full-orbed and unclouded hope. This suggests another thought.
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