By Jason Smith

“And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out His love into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, whom He has given us.” (Romans 5:5, BSB)

Hope is something our world desperately needs right now. Widespread suffering and bleak economic projections have left people feeling lost and disoriented. Many feel caught in the perpetual cycle of hearing messages of gloom and doom.

Into this dreary darkness, God wants to shine a ray of hope. I love the chorus of a Switchfoot song that goes, “My heartbeat, my oxygen. My banner, my home. My future, my song. Your hope is the anthem of my soul.” Now, perhaps more than ever, Christians must recognize our anthem really is hope.

The beauty of Christianity is that it heralds a message of spectacularly good news especially for dark and dismal times like the present. The message of Jesus Christ carries a hope that nothing in this world can snuff out. What makes it so unstoppable is that it’s a hope that shines all the brighter as the world looks darker. It’s a message for this world precisely because it is a message that transcends this world. It stands above even a global pandemic and urges every person to listen and believe.

This hope found in Jesus does not rest on the success of political campaigns or how quickly a coronavirus vaccine is discovered – which I pray is very soon. The Bible calls this hope “an anchor for the soul, firm and secure” (Hebrews 6:19, NIV), something strong enough to weather even the fiercest storms. In Scripture, hope is something solid and sure – not a whimsical and flimsy pipe dream. Our “hope of eternal life” will never let us down because the “God who cannot lie” promised this “before time began” (Titus 1:2, BSB). We say things like “I hope it won’t rain on Saturday” or “I hope our team makes the Super Bowl,” but such hopes often ring hollow and really belong to the category of wishful thinking. The Christian hope, on the other hand, “does not disappoint us” (Romans 5:5, BSB).

So what is the Christian hope? Many have supposed that Christianity is about God rewarding the faithful. In other words, Jesus came to save the good, moral, and godly among us. What else could they think? After all, aren’t Christians engaged in a culture war eager to impose a biblical morality on the rest of society? I’ve spoken to many who see it that way.

But… what if Christianity’s message is filled with hope and joy, not because it’s first and foremost about moral reform, but about redemption in Christ. The reason I say it’s not about Jesus saving “the good, moral, and godly” is because the Bible itself says, “For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly” (Romans 5:6). Read it again. Jesus died for the “ungodly” – the immoral, the vile, the perverted.

Does that offend you? Well, it could be that you’ve missed the fact that, according to genuine Christianity, no one is saved except “by grace” (Ephesians 2:8). Grace is a biblical term that means “God’s infinite love to the infinitely undeserving.” The reality is that every last one of us has inherited the brokenness of our first father, Adam. “Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned” (Romans 5:12).

As a human race, we essentially told God to shove off, thinking we could become gods apart from Him. Because of our sinful nature, we all come into this world separated from God and justly condemned. We have all gone wrong, which is why our greatest need is to be reconciled to God and somehow put in the right. But “the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23). God’s moral standard cannot change. “The soul that sins shall die” (Ezekiel 18:20). God loves us dearly, but if He failed to punish our sin, this would lead to the moral order of the universe crumbling to a heap. Justice would be out the window forever. So what is God to do?

There is only one way God could save us while remaining perfectly just. He Himself would have to come and bear the punishment for our sin in our place. This is where the hope of the gospel glows with the brightness of heaven itself. You can probably think of someone you’d be willing to die for. But can you imagine dying for your enemy – for someone who has offended you, insulted you, and devalued you incessantly? Because that’s what Jesus did.

“For one will scarcely die for a righteous person – though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die – but God shows His love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since, therefore, we have now been justified by His blood, much more shall we be saved by Him from the wrath of God” (Romans 5:7-9). To be justified is to be “declared righteous” by God because when Jesus hung on the cross, He took your sin and gave you His righteousness.

The truly astonishing thing is that while we were plotting to become gods in our rebellion against God, God became a man in order to rescue us. “For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by His life” (v. 10).

This is the greatest message of hope our world could ever know. The moment you trust in Jesus Christ and His death for you, you are reconciled to God. From that moment on, “the wrath of God” (v. 9) no longer hangs over your head because you are covered in the grace of God. “Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ” (v. 1)

The Bible says that when you know this peace with God, it changes everything. Your whole world turns upside down… or, rather, right side up. Paradoxically, you can now have tremendous joy in the midst of trials.

“…and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, 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” (vv. 2b-5).

More than that, ours is a “living hope” because Jesus Christ is alive today. This is why Christians celebrate the resurrection of our Lord every Easter. His defeat of death signals to the whole world that the suffering of this world has an expiration date.

Do you see why this is the message of hope the world most needs? Whereas other hopes are dashed on the rocks of adversity, here is a hope that actually is strengthened by suffering. It’s a hope that God is offering you right now, because “Christ died for the ungodly” (v. 6). No matter how badly life looks, the Christian can always have this confidence: Our anthem is hope.

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