Key Verses
Psalm 33:17–22
17 The war horse is a false hope for salvation, and by its great might it cannot rescue. 18 Behold, the eye of the Lord is on those who fear him, on those who hope in his steadfast love, 19 that he may deliver their soul from death and keep them alive in famine. 20 Our soul waits for the Lord; he is our help and our shield. 21 For our heart is glad in him, because we trust in his holy name. 22 Let your steadfast love, O Lord, be upon us, even as we hope in you.
Romans 8:24–25
24 For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? 25 But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.
Romans 15:12–13
12 And again Isaiah says, “The root of Jesse will come, even he who arises to rule the Gentiles; in him will the Gentiles hope.” 13 May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope.
1 Corinthians 13:13
So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.
1 Thessalonians 1:3
remembering before our God and Father your work of faith and labor of love and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ.
See Also
Psalm 33:17–18
17 The war horse is a false hope for salvation, and by its great might it cannot rescue. 18 Behold, the eye of the Lord is on those who fear him, on those who hope in his steadfast love,
Acts 23:6
Now when Paul perceived that one part were Sadducees and the other Pharisees, he cried out in the council, “Brothers, I am a Pharisee, a son of Pharisees. It is with respect to the hope and the resurrection of the dead that I am on trial.”
Acts 24:14–15
14 But this I confess to you, that according to the Way, which they call a sect, I worship the God of our fathers, believing everything laid down by the Law and written in the Prophets, 15 having a hope in God, which these men themselves accept, that there will be a resurrection of both the just and the unjust.
Acts 26:6–8
6 And now I stand here on trial because of my hope in the promise made by God to our fathers, 7 to which our twelve tribes hope to attain, as they earnestly worship night and day. And for this hope I am accused by Jews, O king! 8 Why is it thought incredible by any of you that God raises the dead?
Romans 4:18
In hope he believed against hope, that he should become the father of many nations, as he had been told, “So shall your offspring be.”
Romans 5:2–5
2 Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. 3 Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, 4 and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, 5 and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.
Romans 12:12
Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer.
Romans 15:4
For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, that through endurance and through the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope.
Galatians 5:5–6
5 For through the Spirit, by faith, we ourselves eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness. 6 For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything, but only faith working through love.
Ephesians 1:18
having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints,
Ephesians 2:12
remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world.
Colossians 1:4–5
4 since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love that you have for all the saints, 5 because of the hope laid up for you in heaven. Of this you have heard before in the word of the truth, the gospel,
Colossians 1:23
if indeed you continue in the faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel that you heard, which has been proclaimed in all creation under heaven, and of which I, Paul, became a minister.
Colossians 1:27–28
27 To them God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. 28 Him we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom, that we may present everyone mature in Christ.
1 Thessalonians 4:13
But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope.
1 Thessalonians 5:8
But since we belong to the day, let us be sober, having put on the breastplate of faith and love, and for a helmet the hope of salvation.
1 Timothy 1:1
Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by command of God our Savior and of Christ Jesus our hope,
Titus 1:1–2
1 Paul, a servant of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ, for the sake of the faith of God’s elect and their knowledge of the truth, which accords with godliness, 2 in hope of eternal life, which God, who never lies, promised before the ages began
Titus 2:13
waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ,
Hebrews 3:6
but Christ is faithful over God’s house as a son. And we are his house, if indeed we hold fast our confidence and our boasting in our hope.
Hebrews 6:18–20
18 so that by two unchangeable things, in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled for refuge might have strong encouragement to hold fast to the hope set before us. 19 We have this as a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, a hope that enters into the inner place behind the curtain, 20 where Jesus has gone as a forerunner on our behalf, having become a high priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.
Hebrews 11:1
Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.
1 Peter 1:3
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,
1 Peter 1:13
Therefore, preparing your minds for action, and being sober-minded, set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.
1 Peter 1:21–22
21 who through him are believers in God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory, so that your faith and hope are in God. 22 Having purified your souls by your obedience to the truth for a sincere brotherly love, love one another earnestly from a pure heart,
1 Peter 3:15–16
15 but in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect, 16 having a good conscience, so that, when you are slandered, those who revile your good behavior in Christ may be put to shame.
1 John 3:1–3
1 See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him. 2 Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is. 3 And everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure.
OBJECT of HOPE
A corollary of putting one’s hope in God is refusing to place one’s final confidence in the created order. All created things are weak, transient, and apt to fail. For this reason it is futile to vest ultimate hope in wealth (Pss. 49:6–12; 52:7; Prov. 11:28), houses (Isa. 32:17–18), princes (Ps. 146:3), empires and armies (Isa. 31:1–3; 2 Kings 18:19–24), or even the Jerusalem temple (Jer. 7:1–7). God, and God only, is a rock that cannot be moved (Deut. 32:4, 15, 18; Pss. 18:2; 62:2; Isa. 26:4) and a refuge and fortress who provides ultimate security (Pss. 14:6, 61:3; 73:28; 91:9). An accurate summary of the OT emphasis is found in Ps. 119:49–50.
BIBLICAL IDEA of HOPE VS SECULAR
Very naturally such hope, even when it appears to be justified, is transient and illusory; and it is remarkable how often it is qualified by poets and other writers by such epithets as ‘faint’, ‘trembling’, ‘feeble’, ‘desperate’, ‘phantom’. The Bible sometimes uses hope in the conventional sense. The ploughman, for example, should plough in hope (1 Cor. 9:10), for it is the hope of reward that sweetens labour. But for the most part the hope with which the Bible is concerned is something very different; and in comparison with it other hope is scarcely recognized as hope. The majority of secular thinkers in the ancient world did not regard hope as a virtue, but merely as a temporary illusion; and Paul was giving an accurate description of pagans when he said they had no hope (Eph. 2:12; cf. 1 Thes. 4:13), the fundamental reason for this being that they were ‘without God’.
Where there is a belief in the living God, who acts and intervenes in human life and who can be trusted to implement his promises, hope in the specifically biblical sense becomes possible. Such hope is not a matter of temperament, nor is it conditioned by prevailing circumstances or any human possibilities. It does not depend upon what a man possesses, upon what he may be able to do for himself, nor upon what any other human being may do for him. There was, for example, nothing in the situation in which Abraham found himself to justify his hope that Sarah would give birth to a son, but because he believed in God, he could ‘in hope’ believe ‘against hope’ (Rom. 4:18). Biblical hope is inseparable therefore from faith in God.
HOPE vs TRANSIENT JOYS
The existence of this hope makes it impossible for the Christian to be satisfied with transient joys (Heb. 13:14); it also acts as a stimulus to purity of life (1 Jn. 3:2–3) and enables him to suffer cheerfully. It is noticeable how often hope is associated in the NT with ‘patience’ or ‘steadfastness’. This virtue is vastly different from Stoic endurance, precisely because it is bound up with a hope unknown to the Stoic (see 1 Thes. 1:3; Rom. 5:3–5).
FAITH, HOPE, LOVE
What is perhaps more remarkable is the frequent association of hope with love as well as with faith. This threefold combination of faith, hope and love is found in 1 Thes. 1:3; 5:8; Gal. 5:5–6; 1 Cor. 13:13; Heb. 6:10–12; 1 Pet. 1:21–22.
GROUND, ACT, OBJECT of HOPE
It is helpful to distinguish among the basis of hope, the object of hope, and the activity of hoping. In both Hebrew and Greek the noun forms tend to express the ground or basis of hope, that by reason of which one hopes. This is not the same as the immediate object of hope. These objects are sometimes specified, especially in passages where eschatological concerns are the focus, but the frequent omission of an apparent object suggests that the ground or guarantee of hope is the decisive factor. The verb forms, on the other hand, emphasize the human response, activity, or attitude to that foundation.
PRISONERS of HOPE
These expectations were shattered in the Exile (Ezek. 37:11), and while the hope of restoration to the land of promise continued, the prophets began to emphasize the expectation of a Messiah who would redeem his people. Israel’s true situation, as the prophets realized, is summed up in the curious phrase “prisoners of hope” (Zech. 9:12), for even in the midst of captivity—to their own folly and to foreign conquerors—God’s people endure in the hope of salvation “because of the blood of my covenant with you” (v. 11).
