What do you hope for?

Sometimes—all too often, actually—I’m not sure what to read next for my personal Bible reading. So the other day I resorted to the tried-and-true “flip open the Bible randomly” method. I came to Colossians. Hadn’t read that lately. And I’ve been reading the gospels more than the rest of the New Testament recently, so it sounded good.

I quickly came to these verses: “We always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you, because we have heard of your faith in Christ and of the love you have for all his people—the faith and love that spring from the hope stored up for you in heaven…” (Colossians 1:3-5).

I was immediately struck by the phrase, “the faith and love that spring from the hope…” Hope actually precedes faith.

Wow. I’m not sure I’ve really thought of it that way.

Elsewhere Paul says that the most important things are faith, hope, and love, and that the greatest is love (1 Corinthians 13:13). Love is what matters. Jesus says we need to love God and love our neighbors—the Great Commandment.

And Jesus also says that the important thing is to believe in him, to have faith (see John 6:29 or even John 3:16). In the church, this is what we tend to focus on: having our beliefs all in order.
And so it’s easy for me to overlook hope. After all, isn’t the main thing to help people believe the right things? And if we want to please God and all get along, isn’t encouraging people to love each other really important?

So what’s the big deal about hope?

Here in Colossians, Paul is saying that hope makes faith and love possible. Without hope, people won’t particularly be moved to believe in Jesus. Without hope, loving God and loving others isn’t a compelling concern. Without hope, I might as well live for myself and not be bothered about faith and love.

I recently had a conversation with a guy who understood the basic Christian doctrines but wasn’t compelled by them. He’s a decent guy, but simply didn’t feel like Christianity had much too offer him. He didn’t need it.

As I reflect on that conversation now, I see that at least part of the deal for him was that Christian faith was presented as just so many ideas to be accepted. Hope wasn’t part of the equation. There was nothing to look forward to. Believing in Jesus is then reduced to a matter of the intellect, or a matter of duty, or worse, a matter of guilt.

We need a robust Christian hope. Not just a “I get to go to heaven when I die” hope. Yes that’s part of it. A big part of it. But Christian hope is so much more. It’s a hope that defines our future as well as our present. It leads to faith and it leads to love.

What is our hope? Try this: check out chapters 2–3 of the book of Revelation. You’ll find seven short letters to Christians, and each ends with a promise that gives a glimpse of the hope we have in Christ. See if that gives you an idea of what Christian hope really is all about.