Words of Hope

A Word Study on the Biblical Word "Hope"

Study #47 - The Messianic Hope (Continued)

In our last post we began a consideration of the Messianic Hope that was prevalent prior to the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ.  Our first reference to this hope was a quotation from Isaiah 42:4 that was given in the Gospel of Matthew in which God had declared that this hope in the promised Messiah was to include the Gentile nations as well as the Jewish people (Matthew 12:21).  In a similar way the Apostle Paul quoted from Isaiah in his appeal to the Christian Jews of Rome to accept the "weaker" brethren that had been saved out of paganism:  "And again, Esaias saith, There shall be a root of Jesse, and he that shall rise to reign over the Gentiles; in him shall the Gentiles trust" (Romans 15:12).  Here, as in Matthew 12, the Greek word elpizo (hope) is translated in the King James Version as trust.  This is significant since the following verse continues this message of hope given to the Jew and Gentile alike:  "Now the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that ye may abound in hope, through the power of the Holy Ghost" (Romans 15:13).  This quotation from Isaiah 11:10 comes at the end of a string of texts presented by the Apostle to demonstrate God's intention of including the Gentiles in the hope of salvation offered through faith in Christ Jesus.  The Hebrew text of Isaiah 11:10 states that this promised root (royal descendant) of David's dynasty (the son of Jesse) would be an ensign (flag, banner) to which the Gentile nations would seek and in which they would find a glorious rest (peace).  The Greek Septuagint Version from which the Apostle Paul quotes translated the word seek (Hebrew darash: "to seek with care") as hope (Greek elpizo "to place hope or confidence in").  Likewise the idea of "rallying under a banner or flag" was rightly interpreted to mean "to come under one's rule", thus the Gentile nations would come unto this Son of David and submit to His rule as their Lord and King!  Here we are given three specific aspects of the true Messianic Hope:  The Messiah was to be a scion of David; He would be the rightful Ruler of all people; and salvation was to be found by those who placed their hope in Him (whether Jew or Gentile).  Among the Jewish people the Messianic Hope existed in a number of forms.  Some thought that the Messiah was a designation for the nation itself, others that God Himself was to intervene in a miraculous way to bring the promised redemption to the nation.  Still others looked for some representative of God to be raised up, whether an angel or a man.  Among those who looked for a Personal Messiah some thought that He would be a great Prophet; others a righteous Priest; and still others a warrior King.  Of course we now know that God Himself did intervene in a miraculous way!  "The Word (Who was God) became flesh and dwelt among us" (John 1:14).  The Lord Jesus Christ, born in Bethlehem's manger, was indeed "Emmanuel ... God with us" (Matthew 1:23).  As the God-Man, the Virgin-born Son of God, the Lord Jesus could truly be the Savior of Mankind:  "and thou shalt call his name JESUS: for he shall save his people from their sins" (Matthew 1:21).  And of course we know that He was indeed ALL that the people longed for, and more, for He who is our Savior is also our Prophet, Priest and King! 

Joy to the world! the Lord is come;

Let earth receive her King;

Let every heart prepare Him room,

And heaven and nature sing!

Words of Hope

A Word Study on the Biblical Word "Hope"

Study #46 - The Messianic Hope

We have been considering the close association and relationship between faith and hope in the New Testament Scriptures.  We have seen that while hope is an element of faith it is not strictly equivalent to it.  Our hope as believers in the Lord Jesus Christ is a product or fruit of our faith in Him.  In faith we look back upon what Christ has done and trust in Him in the present to save us from our sins.  In hope we look ahead in anticipation and expectation of all that has been promised to us in our salvation.  As Richard Lenski wrote:

"As to faith and hope, the former embraces salvation as it is present, the latter embraces salvation as what is yet in the future.  Hope rests on faith; faith always bears hope with it." 

But before Christ came as the Savior of mankind the promise of a Redeemer and the possibility of redemption from the guilt and bondage of sin was all in the future.  Everything in the Old Testament pointed forward to the day when the Messiah would come and actually accomplish all that was foreshadowed in the sacrificial offerings and the Levitical priesthood.  While New Testament believers are justified before God by looking back in faith upon the Christ who has come, the believers under the Old Testament were saved by looking ahead in faith for the Christ who was yet to come.  For this reason, the faith of the Old Testament saints has often been described as their Messianic Hope.  For them, their faith was indeed inseparable from their hope and expectation of a future Messiah.  We have noted that the word "hope" is actually quite rare in the Gospel accounts, perhaps due to the fact that the message of the Gospel was designed to prove that this promised Messiah had actually come, and that "hope" or "expectation" was to give way to "faith" and "trust" in the now present Messiah, the Lord Jesus Christ.  But the Messianic hope was indeed quite strong among the Jewish people at the time of our Savior's Advent even though there were conflicting and even erroneous views among the rabbis and scribes as to the nature of that hope and the identity or nature of the Messiah.  H. E. Dana, in his book entitled The New Testament World, noted that: "At the dawn of the Christian Era no other element held a larger place in Jewish life at large than this Messianic expectation. Whatever of hope the future contained was associated with it.  It was the vital center of Jewish religion ... It was the preserving salt of Jewish religious life, and did more than any other historical cause in preparing an audience for Jesus."  We hope to look at the various forms this Messianic hope took during the days of our Lord in future posts.  It is truly an enlightening study for this time of year as we approach the Christmas season.  One of the first references to "hope" in the New Testament deals with this Messianic Hope - the expectation of a coming Redeemer:  "Behold my servant, whom I have chosen; my beloved, in whom my soul is well pleased: I will put my spirit upon him, and he shall show judgment to the Gentiles ... And in his name shall the Gentiles trust" (Matthew 12:18,21).  Here the Greek word elpizo (hope) is translated in the King James Version as trust.  In the context, Matthew was quoting from Isaiah 42:1-3 to show that the Lord Jesus in His message, ministry, and methods was fulfilling in detail this prophecy of the Messiah.  It is significant to note that this prophecy was one of many that extended the Messianic hope of the Jewish people to include the Gentile nations.  The promised Messiah was to be sent, not to the Jewish nation only, but to the whole world.  While this was a hard concept for many among the Jews to accept, God had made this fact abundantly clear:  The provision of salvation and spiritual redemption through the coming Messiah was to be offered to people of all nations because all people need to be saved from their sins.  Even apart from God's special revelation to Israel in the Old Testament Scriptures, the hope for a Messiah was often expressed even in the pagan world.  The details the Messianic hope were different, but the desire was the same.  The prophet Haggai had referred to the Messiah as "the desire of all nations" (Haggai 2:6).  Again we may quote Dana:  "The Messianic hope was by no means peculiar to Judaism. The history of religion discloses that in varying forms it appears in the majority of the ancient religions ... Jesus of Nazareth was the culmination and highest expression of a noble hope which was all but universal in the ancient religious mind."  We may attribute this in part to the dispersion of the Jews throughout much of the world.  Wherever the Jewish people went they took the hope of the Messiah with them.  This may help to explain how the "wise men" of the East knew about the Messiah who was to be born in Bethlehem and that a "star" was to herald His birth.  The prophecy of Isaiah had declared that "the isles shall wait (Hebrew yahal) for his law."  Matthew, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit interprets this and translates it accordingly.  Lenski explains as follows:  "The inhabitants of the islands were Gentiles.  To wait for is to hope.  And Torah ('law') is his Name ... 'the revelation' which makes Christ (or God) known to men ... This waiting and hoping expresses the great need of Christ on the part of the pagan world.  In the whole world the heathen find nothing that can save them; their only hope is Christ" (emphasis mine).  The message of Christmas is that this Promised Hope has come in the incarnate Son of God who was born as a baby in Bethlehem!  Have you put your hope and trust in Him?

Words of Hope

A Word Study on the Biblical Word "Hope"

Study #45 - Saved Unto Hope

Last time we began to explore the close link between faith and hope in the New Testament.  We closed with a few Scripture references that place these two concepts in close proximity and with a quote from Griffith Thomas that attempts to distinguish between them.  The primary difference between faith and hope seems to be that hope deals essentially with the future.  It is by definition the expectation of future good; and yet it is an anticipation that is based on our faith in God and His Word.  And so faith and hope are indeed inseparably linked.  So much so that hope becomes a part of the very definition or description of faith:  "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen" (Hebrews 11:1).  In this classic Scriptural definition of "faith" we are told that faith is the very substance or more literally "ground" or "confidence" of the things we hope for (i.e. the good things we expect to receive from God in the future, based on His Word who is "a Rewarder of them that diligently seek Him").  In other words, by faith we confidently expect to receive those things not yet received (yet hoped for) and are fully convinced concerning those things we cannot see (yet being convinced by the evidence of the reality of the unseen world of God, angels, and heaven, etc.).  Saving faith is the very foundation of Christian hope and yet hope (confident expectation) is at the very heart of saving faith!  The distinction between faith and hope seems even less discernible when we read in the book of Romans the statement, "For we are saved by hope ..." (Romans 8:24).  At first glance this seems to parallel the familiar Gospel message of Ephesians 2:8, "For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God."  There are some who would claim that "hope" in Romans 8:24 is used as being synonymous with "faith".  This may be the way the King James translators understood it here (as well as in Hebrews 10:23 where they translated "elpis" hope as "faith").  In the Greek text of the New Testament however we find a subtle yet significant distinction between these two statements of Romans 8 and Ephesians 2.  Without trying to be too technical, we should note that there is no preposition "by" preceding "hope" in the Greek text of Romans 8:24.  The noun "hope" is simply written in what is called the Dative Case as the object of the verb "saved".  Now the Dative Case may at times express the idea of means and would be translated using the preposition "by".  This is aptly called "the dative of means" for those who wish to explore it further.  But the Dative Case may also simply express reference (most often as the indirect object of the verb).  For example, Romans 6:2 states that "we are dead to (i.e. with reference to) sin."  Romans 8:12 reminds us that the Christian is no longer a debtor "to the flesh" (i.e. with reference to our flesh).  And so we may understand Romans 8:24 as actually saying that we are saved with reference to hope.  This understanding helps to avoid confusing faith and hope.  Faith is indeed the means of our receiving salvation, grace being the grounds or basis of it.  Thus we are saved by grace and receive this gift of salvation through faith.  But we are saved unto hope!  In fact the definite article ("the") precedes the word "hope" in the Greek text which indicates that a particular hope is in view here, not just hope in general, or a subjective feeling of hope, but a real, objective hope based on the promises of God.  Try reading through Romans 8:15-23 noting the future things that have been promised to the believer in Christ and then read verse 24 as a sort of concluding thought:  "for we have been saved for this very hope"!  This passage is full of the "things hoped for" and those things "not seen" as yet:  our inheritance as the heirs of God; the glory that shall be revealed in us; the manifestation of the sons of God; the glorious liberty of the children of God; the adoption; the redemption of our body; for all the things we "groan for" and "wait for"; these are the things we are saved to receive one day, these are the things that comprise the hope for which we have been saved!  We are not in heaven yet.  We still must live in a fallen world.  We are not glorified yet.  We still must live in corruptible bodies.  We are not completed yet.  Our flesh still wars against the Spirit and the Spirit against the flesh.  We have no problem groaning under the limitations and physical afflictions of the present time, but how much do we really groan for the glorification that is promised to us in our resurrection?  It is the future hope that we have because of our salvation that enables us to patiently endure the trials of this life and world (vs.17,18).  There is much more awaiting us than what we have already received!  The Holy Spirit Himself is given as the "firstfruits" of the fuller "harvest" of our future glorification awaiting us in Christ.  This is truly an unseen hope and yet one we may confidently expect to receive:  "But hope that is seen is not hope: for what a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for?  But if we hope for that we see not, then do we with patience wait for it" (Romans 8:24,25).  We can, with the Spirit's help and intercession, patiently endure any trial, any hardship, any suffering God permits in our lives knowing that there is something better to come, something incomparably better to hope for, for we have been saved unto hope!

Words of Hope

A Word Study on the Biblical Word "Hope"

Study #44 - Faith and Hope

As we continue in our study of Biblical "hope" as expressed in the Scriptures, we find that the word "hope" is often linked with the word "faith" in the New Testament.  This is not very surprising since we found a strong link between "hope" and "trust" even in the Old Testament, especially in the translation of the Hebrew words "batah" and "hasa".  While "batah" is translated as "trust" around 100 times in the Old Testament and "hasa" around 30 times, both of these words are often translated by the Greek word "hope" (elpizo) in the Greek version of the Old Testament known as the Septuagint.  In a similar way the Greek verb "elpizo" is translated with some form of the word "trust" nearly 20 times in the King James Version of the English Bible and the noun "elpis" is translated by the word "faith" only once in Hebrews 10:23:  "Let us hold fast the profession of our faith (elpis) without wavering; (for he is faithful that promised;)", the context having just spoken of drawing near "with a true heart in full assurance of faith" (vs.22).  And so there is a strong connection between the concepts of "hope" and "faith" or "trust" throughout the Bible.  And yet as we enter into the New Testament we are made aware of a distinct difference between these two words.  It is striking to find out that in the four Gospel accounts of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John combined we find the Greek word for "hope" only five times, three of which are translated as "trust" in the KJV:  1) Matthew 12:21 - the Messianic prophecy of the Gentiles placing their hope in the Christ; 2) Luke 6:34,35 - the Lord's instructions concerning lending without hoping to receive anything in return; 3) Luke 23:8 - the curious hope of Herod who wanted to see Christ perform some miracle; 4) Luke 24:21 - the dashed hope of the two disciples on the road to Emmaus; and 5) John 5:45 - the misplaced hope of the Jews which they had centered in Moses.  Of these five occurrences only the Messianic hope of the Gentiles and the expectant hope of the two Emmaus Disciples may be classified with a true Biblical hope that is associated with trusting faith.  We will take a look at this Messianic hope in a future post, but this is a key to understanding the shift of emphasis in the Gospels away from hope and toward saving faith:  The Messiah that was hoped for had now come!  Now the time to believe and trust in the One who was the Desire of Nations had come!  Once that faith in the Promised One was established in the Gospels, we once again find hope and saving faith closely united in the Epistles:  

Romans 4:18-20 - "Who against hope believed in hope, that he (Abraham) might become the father of many nations ... And being not weak in faith ... He staggered not at the promise of God through unbelief; but was strong in faith, giving glory to God."

Romans 8:24 - "For we are saved by hope: but hope that is seen is not hope: for what a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for?"  (We may also include here I Thes.5:8 and Titus 1:2; 3:7 as well).

I Corinthians 13:13 - "And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity."

Hebrews 11:1 - "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen."

I Peter 1:21 - "Who by him do believe in God, that raised him up from the dead, and gave him glory; that your faith and hope might be in God."

We will continue to look at this close connection between faith and hope next time and will spend some time commenting on these passages and others like them. But for now we will close with the observations on faith and hope made by Griffith Thomas:

                                       "Faith looks backward and upward, hope looks onward;

                                        Faith accepts, but hope expects;

                                        Faith is concerned with Him who promises, but hope is occupied

                                        with the good things promised;

                                        Faith appropriates, but hope anticipates."