The Christian Hope is Far Bigger than You Might Realize
How BIG is your hope?
Do you understand the question? If you’re a confessing Christian, how far does your hope reach, how expansive is it, how much does it include? Does it stop short at business success, at college for your kids, at retirement? Popular prosperity preachers like Joel Osteen, T.D. Jakes, Paula White, and Benny Hinn notoriously sell the Christian hope short by holding hopes such as these forward as the height of the Christian hope.
Does your hope stop at dying and going to heaven? This is bigger than anything prosperity preachers offer, but even this falls short of the supersized hope offered in Scripture.
Consider how Scripture speaks of this BIG hope:
- · According to his promise we are waiting for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells (2 Peter 3:13).
- · For behold, I create new heavens
and a new earth…
(Isaiah 65:17).
- · Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth… And he who was seated on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.” (Rev. 21:1, 5).
- · For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God (Romans 8:19-21).
Process the words you just read! This is no little hope. It is not limited to bodies in the ground and souls in heaven. It involves the renewal of the entire creation! The Christian hope is BIG, captivatingly BIG, enchantingly BIG, even cosmically BIG reaching deep into and around the entire cosmos. From the microscopic molecules quivering around us to the farthest galaxies blazing beyond us to the muscular heart beating within us, God is going to renew it all. The Father means what He says: “I am making All Things New.”
Imagine what this means! Imagine a world in which we are no longer required to bury our dead, a world no longer beset by scarcity, insufficiency, and lack, a world no longer burdened by injustice, oppression, and lies! Imagine a world liberated from sin’s curse and made fresh and new by the glory of God – a newly mown field fresh with the morning dew, a sprightly spring shower washing away winter’s grime, a spirited flock of songbirds gleefully greeting the newness of the morning after a summer storm – spread across the cosmos! God is making all things new!
Consider how this is celebrated in song. Verses two and three of “Joy to the World” celebrate this BIG hope with these words:
Joy to the earth, the Savior reigns!
Let men their songs employ,
While fields and floods, rocks, hills, and plains
Repeat the sounding joy,
Repeat the sounding joy,
Repeat, repeat the sounding joy.
No more let sins and sorrows grow
Nor thorns infest the ground;
He comes to make His blessings flow
Far as the curse is found,
Far as the curse is found,
Far as, far as the curse is found.
Mr. Watts (1674-1748), the hymn’s author, writes of joy to the earth – down to the fields, floods, rocks, hills, and plains. He follows it up by celebrating the far reaches of God’s blessings, blessings that will flow as far as the curse resulting from Adam’s sin is found. And how far does Scripture say the curse has penetrated? Into the very ground itself! The Lord’s coming (both in Christmas and in His second advent) is good news not only for mankind, but even for the sin-cursed ground! It’s going to be set free from the curse!
You are living now where you are going to live forever.
And you’re going to live on it. Appreciate this: you are living now where you are going to live forever. The Christian hope is not to bury our bodies and fly off to a bodiless existence in heaven forever. Yes, such an arrangement is to be preferred over the way things are presently in this sin-cursed world, but it is not to be preferred over a liberated world that has been made new and fresh by God. God has never given up on His creation. He’s going to make it new.
Understanding this and joyfully confessing it changes us. It means we’re not marking time until Jesus “takes us home.” It means we’re living in the home to which Jesus is going to come and make new. Further, as St. Paul points out in 1 Corinthians 15, our present laboring, our works done in our vocations in the name of Christ, to His glory, and in faithfulness to His call, “are not in vain.”
In other words, their value won’t evaporate upon our deaths. Instead, our good works will carry over into the renewal. They will be incorporated into the new creation! N.T. Wright says, author of Surprised by Hope, an insightful book on this topic, writes, “God is going to take everything in this present world that bears the mark of his love, goodness, power, and loving compassion and use it as the raw material out of which the new world will be made.”
Wright explains what this means:
The present bodily life is not valueless just because it will die. God will raise it to new life. What you do with your body in the present matters because God has a great future in store for it… what you do in the present – by painting, preaching, singing, sewing, praying, teaching, building hospitals, digging wells, campaigning for justice, writing poems, caring for the needy, loving your neighbors as yourself – will last into God’s future.
In other words, the Christian hope is BIG, encompassing not only a glorious future on this renewed earth, but infusing the present with eternal meaning and purpose. Our lives matter now and into eternity! This is why the Christian hope is something to get excited about. The Christian hope is something to confess with gusto, to embrace with enthusiasm, and to support with passion. It is not an add-on to an otherwise full life; it is the reality into which all the pieces of our lives fit.
As you move forward in life, do so with a renewed appreciation for the Christian hope and celebrate this simple truth: the Christian hope is BIG. – Pastor Conner
