Grace and peace to you in the name of Lord Jesus Christ.
Hear the Word of God, from 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 boast in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but 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."
I named my daughter Hope.
I told her a long time ago that, if she ever decided she didn't like her name, she had no one to blame but me. I was determined to name her "Hope."
More than one person has asked me if I named her after a character on the television soap opera "Days of Our Lives." Let me set the record straight: Her name comes from the Bible.
You see, in my opinion the two most beautiful words in the Bible (and in the English language) are "grace" and "hope." John Wesley defined "grace" as God's "free, undeserved favour... man having no claim to the least of his mercies. It was free grace that ‘formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into him a living soul,' and stamped on that soul the image of God, and ‘put all things under his feet' ... For there is nothing we are, or have, or do, which can deserve the least thing at God's hand." As the Apostle Paul writes in our Scripture text for this morning, through Jesus "we have gained access by faith into the grace in which we now stand." And what is the grace in which we now stand? "Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ" (Romans 5.1).
Grace is amazing, indeed.
But, just as amazing is Hope.
The classic definition of "hope" is "to trust in, wait for, look for, or desire something or someone; or to expect something beneficial in the future." John Piper writes that “Biblical hope not only desires something good for the future — it expects it to happen.” Hope is not emotional ecstasy...it is faith-based expectation, grounded in the ultimate reality of the glory of God. That is why the Christian hope never "puts us to shame."
Implicit in this definition is the source of hope: it is not to be looked for outside, but rather located inside. In our morning Scripture text, Paul makes the implicit explicit: "suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope."
Hope is born of character.
Paul makes the bold claim that our struggles and sufferings should be viewed, not as the enemies of hope, but as the building blocks of hope. We can rejoice in our sufferings because they teach us to persevere... to "hang in there" by faith. And, as we hold on through our struggles, our faith is tested and refined...it is proven genuine. Indeed, that is the definition of the Greek word for "character" ("dokime"): "tested and approved as genuine." That proven character goes on to be an internal wellspring of hope for us. How? Because, as Douglas Moo puts it, “Hope, like a muscle, will not be strong if it goes unused." Hope grows when we are forced to look to the future with internal faith instead of trusting in external events or personal resources.
I know that the events in the news this past week have produced in me almost every imaginable feeling EXCEPT hope. Perhaps you, too, have looked outwardly at our society and country and found a profound absence of hopefulness. Where can we discover hope in days such as these? We find it where it has always and only ever been found: we find it in the Christlike character that God has formed and continues to form in us for His glory by the work of His Spirit as we persevere in faith.
Hope is not found around us; hope is found within us. Hope is born of character.
Character matters. It always has. It always will. The times in which we live are the result of too easily forgetting this basic universal reality. We must once again embrace this truth: Christ IN US is the hope of glory (Colossians 1.27). "I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me" (Galatians 2.20). Character produces 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."
If we are in Christ and Christ is in us, nothing in this world can take hope from us...because nothing in this world has given it to us. Our hope is not in political leaders, social media, or cultural trends. In the words of the old hymn, our "hope is built on nothing less than Jesus' blood and righteousness."
That's what makes the word "hope" so powerful...and so beautiful.
And that is why I named my daughter Hope.
The grace and hope of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you always.
Amen.
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