Words of Hope

A Word Study on the Biblical Word "Hope"

Study #65 - The God of Hope

We wanted to pick up where we left off in our last post with a reference to Romans 15:13 - "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."  We have considered the subject of "abounding in hope" found in this verse in a previous post (3/9/2014).  It is evident from this verse that God is the Source or Origin of the believer's hope - apart from God there is no true hope in this life or in eternity.  Those who are "without God" are without hope in the true sense of the word (Ephesians 2:12).  But this verse also speaks of God as the Object of the believer's hope - the One in whom we hope as well as the One from whom we are given hope.  This brings us back to the distinction we attempted to make in our last post between the possession of hope (our subjective hope) and the placement of hope (our objective hope).  And so we wanted to pursue this aspect of hope a little further.  There is at least one verse in Scripture that combines our "having" or "possessing" hope with the "placement" of our hope in God, or more specifically in Christ Jesus:  "If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable" (I Corinthians 15:19).  As believers we have hope, but only because we have hope in Christ!  It is evident from this verse that the believer's hope in Christ is a reality "in this life" but that it also extends beyond this life to our resurrection and glorification in eternity.  Some might piously state in the context of the relatively easy life of modern American Christianity that they would gladly live for Christ even if there was no heaven or hell, but in the context of the almost daily sufferings of the first century Christians the Apostle Paul spurned the idea of any hope that was not eternal!  How miserable was his earthly life compared to my own, but how joyful was his eternal hope in Christ!  Try reading the end of the chapter with that thought in mind and rejoice with Paul as he writes, "But thanks be unto God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ" (I Corinthians 15:51-58).  Yes, our hope is real because Christ is real; Our hope is eternal because Christ is eternal; Our hope is certain because it is centered in Christ!  There are three prepositions used in the Greek New Testament to describe this placement of hope in the Person of Christ as our Lord and our God:  unto (eis), upon (epi), and in (en).  We do not state this in order to make some artificial distinction between believing in Christ versus believing on Christ as some have done (while such a distinction may be made in certain contexts it is not based upon the choice of the Greek preposition alone).  But we should note that all three prepositions are employed by the Holy Spirit to emphasize the various aspects of our hope in Christ (not just for the sake of variety).  According to Thayer's Greek Lexicon we may observe the following distinctions:

1)  hope directed toward God (expressed by the preposition eis) - "... that your faith and hope might be in (Greek unto) God" (I Peter 1:21).  This distinction is lost in the English translation.  Other verses include II Corinthians 1:10 and I Peter 3:5 where the Greek word hope (elpis) is translated as "trust".

2)  hope placed upon God (expressed by the preposition epi) - "And every man that hath this hope in him (that is, in Christ) purifieth himself, even as he (Christ) is pure" (I John 3:3).  Again the distinction is lost in the English translation.  The point of the verse is not that we have a hope within us (which is also true), but that we have our hope placed upon the Lord Jesus Christ.  Again we found two more verses with this preposition where the Greek word hope (elpis) is translated as "trust" - I Timothy 4:10; 6:17.

3)  hope resting in God (expressed by the preposition en) - "If in this life only we have hope in Christ ..." (I Corinthians 15:19).  Which brings us back to where we began!  But if these statements were not plain enough, the Apostle Paul gives us one more statement that makes it unmistakeably clear that our hope is found in Christ alone, by way of his own personal testimony of faith as expressed in I Timothy 1:1 (made even more forceful by omitting the added italicized words of the KJV):

Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ

by the commandment of God our Savior,

and Lord Jesus Christ,

Our Hope