The God of Hope

by Jim Ward

Nobody could pack a passage quite like the apostle Paul. Take, for example, Romans 15:13 – “Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.” There are enough ideas in this verse and its context to keep us occupied for a long while.

Perhaps the greatest internal danger to the early church was the constant threat of a Jew/Gentile rupture. Centuries of distrust and animosity were no small barrier to peace and harmony among disciples of Christ, a fact of which Paul, the apostle to the Gentiles, was keenly aware. Consequently, he constantly wrote about and promoted the solidarity shared in Christ by these two segments of society. Jesus, he insisted, had died in order to “reconcile them both to God in one body through the cross, thereby putting to death the enmity” (Eph 2:16). When he gathered funds from Gentile saints for the aid of needy Jewish saints in Judea, he emphasized their interdependence. “For it pleased those from Macedonia and Achaia to make a certain contribution for the poor among the saints who are in Jerusalem. It pleased them indeed, and they are their debtors. For if the Gentiles have been partakers of their spiritual things, their duty is also to minister to them in material things” (Rom 15:26-27).

This is the context of Romans 15:13. It serves as a sort of culmination of a long section dealing with the unity which God has created between Jews and Gentiles, and the mutual endeavor which they are to make in behalf of maintaining that unity (cf. Eph 4:1-7). Of course, the Jew/Gentile dichotomy aside, other factors often contributed to a divisive spirit. At Corinth, for example, the problem was plain, old-fashioned carnality, a carnality so great that they turned even the gifts of the Spirit into an occasion of envy and strife (1 Cor 12). In Rome “strong” disciples were at odds with “weak” disciples over scruples involving eating meats (Rom 14:2-3) and observing certain days (vv. 5-6), a rift that likely had some relationship to the Jew/Gentile distinctions.

When Paul finally urges the strong “to bear with the scruples of the weak,” to “please his neighbor for his good, leading to edification,” and to “receive one another” (Rom 15:1, 2, 7), he appeals to the example of Christ, who “did not please himself” (v. 3) and who “also received us” (v. 7). Next, he ties this all to Christ’s redemption of the Jew first and then theGentiles: “Now I say that Jesus Christ has become a servant to the circumcision for the truth of God, to confirm the promises made to the fathers, and that the Gentiles might glorify God for His mercy” (vv. 8-9). He then quotes four verses (Psa 18:49; Deut 32:43; Psa 117:1; Isa 11:10) which speak prophetically of the mission of Christ to the Gentiles. The Isaiah passage (Rom 15:12) says, “There shall be a root of Jesse; / And He who shall rise to reign over the Gentiles, / In Him the Gentiles shall hope.”

Finally, in verse 13, building upon the word hope in verse 12, the apostle identifies the God who shaped centuries of human history, who brought his Son into the world through Jewish bloodlines, all for the purpose of redeeming Jew and Gentile alike, as the God of hope. Romans is in fact a book of hope, touching upon the subject in chapters 4, 5, 8, 12, and 15. “Hope does not disappoint” (5:5); it is the confident expectation of the glory of God (5:2); “we eagerly wait for (the object of our hope) with perseverance” (8:25). Hope anticipates the certain return of Jesus Christ to gather his redeemed people, both dead and living, to be with him forever (1 Thess 4:13-18). It is hope in which we are saved (8:24) and in which we continue to rejoice (12:12). Every Christian lives “in hope of eternal life which God, who cannot lie, promised before time began” (Titus 1:2). In Romans the chief witness of this hope is the outworking of God’s plan to redeem Jew and Gentile. This is the message the “God of patience and comfort” (Rom 5:5) has “written for our learning, that we through the patience and comfort of the Scriptures might have hope” (5:4).

Finally again, in verse 13, on behalf of his readers, Paul appeals to this one, true, living God of hope for the joy and peace that heaven alone can give, and to which we can aspire only “in believing.”

There is a joy and a peace available to God’s people and to them alone, in spite of the circumstances of their lives. It is the joy and peace that moved Paul and Silas to sing hymns at midnight in a prison cell (Acts 16). It is the joy and peace by which Jesus discounted the shame of the cross (Heb 12:2) and said “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do” (Lk 23:34). It is the peace that Jesus bequeathed to the early disciples when he said, “Peace I leave with you, My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid” (Jn 14:27 ).

And only through this comfort and peace can believers “abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.”

May the God of hope grant you and your family joy, peace, and hope in the New Year.

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This page was last modified on January 5, 2007