We cannot do better than to lay hold of some of the New Testament
descriptions of it. We recall first that great designation 'A good hope
through grace.' This hope is no illusion; it does not come from fumes of
fancy or the play of imagination. The wish is not father to the thought.
We do not make bricks without straw nor spin ropes of sand on the shore
of the great waste sea that waits to swallow us up. The cup of Tantalus
has had its leaks stopped; the sieve carries the treasure unspilled. The
rock can be rolled to the hill-top. All the disappointments, fallacies,
and torments of hope pass away. It never makes ashamed. We have a solid
certainty as solid as memory. The hope which is through grace is the
full assurance of hope, and that full assurance is just what every other
hope lacks. In that region and in that region only we can either say I
hope or I know.
Another designation is 'A lively hope.' It is no poor pale ghost
brightening and fading, fading and brightening, through which one can
see the stars shine, and of little power in practical life, but strong
and vigorous and not the least active amongst the many forces that make
up the sum of our lives.
It is most significantly designated as 'The blessed hope.' All others
quickly pass into sorrows. This alone gives lasting joys, for this
alone is blessed whilst it is only anticipation, and still more blessed
when its blossoms ripen into full fruition. In all earthly hopes there
is an element of unrest, but the hope of the Gospel is so remote, so
certain, and so satisfying, that it works stillness, and they who most
firmly grasp it 'do with patience wait for it.' Earthly hopes have
little moral effect and often loosen the sinews of the soul, and are
distinctly unfavourable to all strenuous effort. But 'every man that
hath this hope in Jesus purifieth himself even as He is pure,' and the
Apostle, whose keen insight most surely discerns the character-building
value of the fundamental facts of Christian experience, was not wrong
when he bid us find in the hope of the Gospel deeply rooted within us
the driving force of the most strenuous efforts after purity like His
whom it is our deepest desire and humble hope to become like.
Let us remember the double account which Scripture gives of the
discipline by which the hope of the Gospel is won for our very own. On
the one hand, we have 'joy and peace in believing, that we may abound in
hope.' Our faith breeds hope because it grasps the divine facts
concerning Jesus from which hope springs. And faith further breeds hope
because it kindles joy and peace, which are the foretastes and earnests
of the future blessedness. On the other hand, the very opposite
experiences work to the same end, for 'tribulation worketh patience, and
patience experience, and experience hope.' Sorrow rightly borne tests
for us the power of the Gospel and the reality of our faith, and so
gives us a firmer grip of hope and of Him on whom in the last result it
all depends. Out of this collision of flint and steel the spark springs.
The water churned into foam and tortured in the cataract has the fair
bow bending above it.
But this discipline will not achieve its result, therefore comes the
exhortation to us all, 'Gird up the loins of your mind, be sober, and
hope to the end.' The hope of the Gospel is the one thing that we need.
Without it all else is futile and frail. God alone is worthy to have the
whole weight and burden of a creature's hope fixed on Him, and it is an
everlasting truth that they who are 'without God in the world' also
'have no hope.' Saints of old held fast by an assurance, which they must
often have felt left many questions still to be asked, and because they
were sure that they were continually with Him, were also sure of His
guidance through life and of His afterwards receiving them to glory. But
for us the twilight has broadened into day, and we shall be wise if,
knowing our defencelessness, and forsaking all the lies and illusions of
this vain present, we flee for refuge to lay hold on the hope set before
us in the Gospel.
'ALL POWER'
'Strengthened with all power, according to the
might of His glory, unto all patience and
longsuffering with joy.'--COL. i. 11 (R.V.).
There is a wonderful rush and fervour in the prayers of Paul. No parts
of his letters are so lofty, so impassioned, so full of his soul, as
when he rises from speaking of God to men to speaking to God for men. We
have him here setting forth his loving desires for the Colossian
Christians in a prayer of remarkable fulness and sweep. Broadly taken,
it is for their perfecting in religious and moral excellence, and it is
very instructive to note the idea of what a good man is which is put
forth here.
The main petition is for wisdom and spiritual understanding applied
chiefly, as is to be carefully noted, to the knowledge of God's _will_.
The thought is that what it most imports us to know is the Will of God,
a knowledge not of merely speculative points in the mysteries of the
divine nature, but of that Will which it concerns us to know because it
is our life to do it. The next element in Paul's desires, as set forth
in the ideal here, is a worthy walk, a practical life, or course of
conduct which is worthy of Jesus Christ, and in every respect pleases
Him. The highest purpose of knowledge is a good life. The surest
foundation for a good life is a full and clear knowledge of the Will of
God.
Then follow a series of clauses which seem to expand the idea of the
worthy walk and to be co-ordinate or perhaps slightly causal, and to
express the continuous condition of the soul which is walking worthily.
Let us endeavour to gather from these words some hints as to what it is
God's purpose that we should become.