“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His abundant mercy has begotten us again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead …” (1 Pet. 1:3, NKJV)
As promised this teaching will attempt to offer definitions of grace, faith and hope that are founded on the Word. In our excursion of coming to an understanding of the true agents of change in our lives, we looked at the working of grace within believers. We then said that you and I need to follow God’s definition of these core faith concepts, not the perverted reformulations that tradition has made us comfortable with. It is absolutely possible that the inherent power in the Word becomes powerless through our inherited thoughts concerning it. Jesus’ warning in Mark. 7:13 (NKJV): “(you are) making the word of God of no effect through your tradition”, should consistently be used as the measure with which we test whether our beliefs have been adopted from tradition, or whether it passes the test of authenticity of the Word.
The last of the three concepts forms such an absolute foundation that it should be dealt with first – the enigmatic word hope.
In the previous teaching we pointed out that many believers absolutely misinterpret Heb. 11:1, and thus they think that they can randomly hope for anything and that God will miraculously work through this blind faith in providing what they want: “the confident assurance that what we hope for is going to happen”, as the NLT popularly, yet inaccurately, translates it.
Especially in Charismatic circles we find that the ridiculous notions of the prosperity gospel (see the teaching of Day 161) has led to a perversion of the term ‘hope’. It is often confused with carnal desire and lust for easily attaining worldly goods that believers harbour. It sounds too much like Janis Joplin’s prayer-song, “Oh Lord, won’t you buy me a Mercedes-Benz … I’m counting on you, Lord, please don’t let me down.” Most believers “ask and do not receive, because you ask amiss, that you may spend it on your pleasures” (James 4:3).
If hope, according to Heb. 11:1, is the substance of faith (as many other translations, like for instance the BBE, CAB, DRB, amongst others, suggest), it does not mean that everything we hope will automatically be made a reality if we have faith. In my opinion any believer who pastes a photograph of a shiny car on their fridge, daily proclaiming that they already own it in the spirit, as the prosperity gospel suggests, is severely misled.
Let us then define the term hope within a Biblical context.
When in 1 Cor. 13:13 Paul summarises the entire gospel of Jesus Christ in only three words, hope is one of them. It is thus paramount that we understand the term correctly. Rom. 8:24 makes it clear: “we were saved in this hope”. Therefore others look at believers and “asks you a reason for the hope that is in you” (1 Pet. 3:15), as we do after all have “the confession of our hope” (Heb. 10:23). Hope is not only the primary substance of faith, but also of our calling (Eph. 1:18; 4:4). Unbelievers are however completely devoid of this hope. (Eph. 2:12; 1 Thess. 4:13).
Thus: when 1 Tim. 1:1 personifies Jesus Christ as “Hope”, the Biblical understanding of hope becomes clear. See 1 Pet. 1:1 – “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His abundant mercy has begotten us again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead …” Within the Biblical context hope is centred around Jesus Christ, as Joel 3:16 (KJV) prophesied: “but the LORD will be the hope of his people”. Realise this: He is a “living hope” (1 Pet. 1:3)! It is thus not, as according to the GNB-translation, that He fills us with hope – He IS the hope in us, “the hope of life” (Murdock). Please selah about this – it has enormous implications.
Through the process of becoming born-again “God hath regenerated us unto a living hope” (Rotherham), therefore WEB translates it as “God became our father again”. Scripturally hope is defined again and again as that which we gain through Jesus Christ WITHIN us, and the fact that through being born-again you are part of the bloodline of Christ (Matt. 1:16; Gal. 3:16), based on the eternal seed of God (1 Pet. 1:23).
The Hebrew word for hope or expectation is tiqvâh. It is found 34 times in the Old Testament, including in the following examples, as illustration:
- Turn back, my daughters, go—for I am too old to have a husband. If I should say I have hope …” (Ruth 1:12)
- “Chasten your son while there is hope …” (Prov. 19:18)
- “I will give her her vineyards from there, and the Valley of Achor as a door of hope …” (Hos. 2:15)
It is then very insightful that the other two times the word tiqvâh is used, it means line, but specifically in the following two contexts of Gideon and Rahab:
- Joshua 2:18 – “when we come into the land, you bind this line of scarlet cord in the window through which you let us down, and unless you bring your father, your mother, your brothers, and all your father’s household to your own home.”
- Joshua 2:21: “Then she said, ‘According to your words, so be it.’ And she sent them away, and they departed. And she bound the scarlet cord in the window.”
Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible explains that this scarlet cord is not an ordinary piece of coloured cord, but typologically points to much more: “The ‘line’ or cord was spun of threads dyed with cochineal: i. e., of a deep and bright scarlet color. The color would catch the eye at once, and supplied an obvious token by which the house of Rahab might be distinguished. The use of scarlet in the Levitical rites, especially in those more closely connected with the idea of putting away of sin and its consequences (compare e. g., Lev. 14:4, Lev. 14:6, Lev. 14:51; Num. 19:6), naturally led the fathers, from Clement of Rome onward, to see in this scarlet thread, no less than in the blood of the Passover (Ex 12:7, Ex. 12:13, etc.), an emblem of salvation by the Blood of Christ; a salvation common alike to Christ’s messengers and to those whom they visit.”
Since Rahab is specifically mentioned in the genealogy of Jesus (Matt. 1:5) it is thus of great importance that we realise that this line of scarlet cord is seen in symbolic terms, a clear pointer to Jesus’ (symbolic) umbilical cord throughout the ages!
But remember – the word means exactly the same as the word hope! That which Rahab offered was the heartbeat of hope for man, the opportunity to be attached to the umbilical cord of Jesus, in other words: to be born from Him. Within that genealogical inheritance lies our calling in Christ (Eph. 1:18), and this includes “the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints”. This is hope! Col. 1:27 (ASV) aptly states it as follows: “Christ in you, the hope of glory”. But take note: this not only in Jesus, but the fullness of the Christ becomes your hope.
- Selah: Explain to someone what the word hope
- Read: 1 Kings 12-14 and 2 Chr. 10-12.
- Memorise: 1 Kings 13:26.
