I want to start with a word that has great importance in the Bible but generally involves a meaning not carried through in English translations. In I Thessalonians Paul is trying to comfort Christians who are worried because some members of their group have died before the Lord has returned. In 1 Thessalonians 4:13-16 he admonishes them, \u201cdo not grieve like others who have no hope\u201d [\u1f10\u03bb\u03c0\u03af\u03c2]. Today some who hear this message might feel more indicted than comforted, because they think that having real hope is a faith challenge\u2014\u201cDo I have enough hope in God?\u201d they ask themselves.![\"\"](\"http:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/csart\/files\/2018\/09\/A-grade-150x123.png\")
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When I taught college occasionally a student trying to impress me with their genuine need to bolster their GPA would say, \u201cI hope to make an \u2018A\u2019 in this class.\u201d My answer would be, \u201cDo you mean you hope\u00a0<\/em>to, or you wish\u00a0<\/em>to?\u201d They thought hoping and wishing were the same thing.<\/p>\n In Acts 27 there is a well-known story of Paul\u2019s sea voyage to Rome, when the ship ran into a violent storm. The experienced sailors took desperate measures trying to save the ship, but finally threw the cargo and the ship\u2019s tackle overboard. It says, \u201cWhen neither sun nor stars appeared for many days and the storm continued raging, we finally\u00a0gave up all hope of being saved<\/em>\u201d (Acts 27:20).<\/p>\n This simple story helps us understand what \u201chope\u201d means in the Bible. It does not mean \u201cwish,\u201d for those in the ship certainly did not give up wishing to be saved, but \u201cexpectation.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cExpectation\u201d has a different meaning than the word \u201chope\u201d as we commonly use it in English. Like my students, we tend to mean \u201cwish\u201d when we say things like, \u201cI hope\u00a0<\/em>to come see you,\u201d at the end of a phone conversation with distant friends. But neither we nor our hearers think we are already buying plane tickets when we say that. Both they and we understand it is a wish, not a plan.<\/p>\n Appreciating what the Bible means by the word \u201chope\u201d really makes a difference in how we understand being told not to grieve \u201clike those who have no hope.\u201d It is not that non-Christians\u2014then or now\u2014have no desire (or wish) to pass through death to a greater life, but they have no expectation\u00a0<\/em>of doing so. Romans 8 tells us how to face the challenges of life as Christians. The writer Paul explains that the whole created order knows itself as imperfect and wants to be freed from bondage to decay. But by having the Spirit of God, Christians already have a line to the coming new world. Christians are the \u201cfirst fruits of the Spirit.\u201d Yet we still live in the flesh, we \u201cgroan inwardly,\u201d awaiting the redemption of our bodies, the resurrection (Romans 8:18\u201330). We have been saved\u2014in hope! We don\u2019t see our resurrection, but we expect it, we have hope. Of course, to hope is not the same as to hold. \u201cWho hopes for what they already have?\u201d Paul asks (Romans 8:24). But if we hope for it, we wait patiently.<\/p>\n I have talked with Christians nearing the end of life, who said they wanted to go home to God. They were dying in \u201chope,\u201d with \u201cexpectation,\u201d as Paul urged the Thessalonians!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" My occupation for almost fifty years was teaching\u2014talking for a living. It is not genuine work. So I have lived by words and in the next few posts I want to reflect on some important Christian words we find in the Bible. Of course, words do not have meaning by themselves and most words have […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3510,"featured_media":1388,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[172431,2764],"tags":[172426,1716,166918,54613,366],"class_list":["post-1387","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bible-interpretation","category-translation","tag-epistles-of-st-paul","tag-hope","tag-interpretation","tag-new-testament","tag-vocabulary"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/csart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1387","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/csart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/csart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/csart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3510"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/csart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1387"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/csart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1387\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1397,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/csart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1387\/revisions\/1397"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/csart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1388"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/csart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1387"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/csart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1387"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/csart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1387"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"http:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/csart\/files\/2018\/09\/Willis_Wendell.jpg\")
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