Jesus also, that he might sanctify the people with his own blood, suffered outside the gate. Therefore, let us go forth to him outside the camp, bearing his reproach. For we have no continuing city here, but we seek one to come.
Select a thought to read by choosing a collection, the month, and then the day:
It is too late for you to hope to read this because you already ARE reading it. You might have hoped to read it before you started, but you cannot hope to do so now. Your hope is gone because the reality is here.
This is simple logic, but it is important to understand the concept. If you already possess something, then you cannot hope for it. Hope exists only where there is an absence of something desired. Once that something is possessed, all hope for it is gone.
Paul explained this simple truth in Romans 8:24-25: "For we are saved by hope, but hope that is seen is not hope." Who hopes for something he sees? "But if we hope for that which we do not see [salvation], then with patience do we wait for it."
Paul is telling us in this verse that salvation is our hope and that having hope helps us to patiently do the will of God and obtain that hoped-for salvation. Jesus taught the same thing in other words when he said, "In your patience possess ye your souls." And at another time he said, "He who shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved."
How is it that hope saves us, as Paul taught? Hope leads us to salvation because it causes us to live as God demands, so that our hope will come to pass. This is what John described in his first epistle when he said, "Every man that hath this hope in him purifies himself even as He is pure." It is the possession of hope for salvation that impels us to eschew evil and to do the will of God. Hope of eternal life inspires us to endure difficult times with patience and faith. Hope for eternal life in a better world saves us from being overtaken by the pleasures of this one.
Jesus, the Son of God, is our hope, and he is "alive forevermore". And because he lives, those who trust in Jesus will not be disappointed. When we were sinners, we had no hope. We were "strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope, without God in the world" (Eph. 2:12). But now, in Christ Jesus, we have hope of eternal life. This hope in Christ is not "wishing in Christ"; it is the result of a real experience of receiving Christ, the baptism of the holy Ghost. "Christ in you," Paul wrote, is "the hope of glory", and Christ enters into our hearts when we receive the holy Ghost.
With this simple truth in mind, answer this important question: If we are already saved, as millions of Christians claim, what then is our hope? Remember, Paul taught that what we already possess, we cannot hope for. Who hopes for what he already has? No one but a fool. The difference between sinners and saints is not, as some Christian bumper stickers suggest, that saints are saved. The difference between saints and sinners is that saints have hope. Saints are those in whom Christ, the "hope of glory", lives.
In his sermon in 1975, Preacher Clark proclaimed, "I'm an unsaved preacher." What he meant by that was that he was still alive on earth, that he still had hope in Christ Jesus, and that Jesus had not returned yet to bring salvation to his faithful people. He did not say, "I'm a hopeless preacher." He had hope of being judged worthy by God of salvation at the Final Judgment. That is the way wise men view salvation; not as something already possessed but as something confidently hoped for.
But only some (believers in Jesus) living on earth now have any hope of escaping that wrath when it comes. What a valuable possession, to possess hope of escaping the coming wrath of God and living with Christ in Paradise forever! Hope is a precious possession, and all who truly appreciate that hope of eternal life hear the words of Peter, who exhorted the saints of his day to "gird up the loins of your mind, and hope to the end for the grace [salvation] that is to be brought unto you at the revelation of Jesus Christ."