What the Bible Says about Hope
Standing at the trail head of Mount LaPlata and looking up at the challenging climb, a voice from the group expressed what all of us were thinking: “ I sure hope we can make it to the summit.” The steep trail up the 14,336-foot mountain was going to test everyone’s expectations. Laughter erupted as another from the trek party muttered, “Legs, don’t fail me now!” One by one, each climber shouldered their backpack and set out in the hope to realize their goal—one step at a time.
Hope is fundamental to the life we live. The possibility of something greater stretches out before us like the trail up the mountainside. But what exactly is it we are hoping for?
Ordinarily, when we express hope, we are expressing uncertainty. Is hope a “maybe” or an “unsure optimism?” Our culture’s idea of hope is “a feeling of expectation and desire for a certain thing to happen; grounds for believing that something good may happen.”
When it comes to basic human hope, each of us looks either horizontally or vertically. You can look to created things to satisfy the desires of your heart or you can look to the Creator. When we place our hope in the Creator, we look to the Bible. It is there we discover that hope is not just a desire for something good in the future, but rather a strong and confident expectation that desires something good in the future. By its very nature, hope deals with things we can’t see, or haven’t received, or both.
There are two main Hebrew words translated as hope in the Old Testament. One is most often associated with waiting on God continually or enduring patiently. The second is a feeling of tension and expectation while waiting for something to happen.
The word hope in the New Testament (which appears over 50 times) means expectation, trust, and confidence; to anticipate (with pleasure) and to welcome; an expectation of what is guaranteed—and it’s related to Jesus.
Biblical hope not only desires something good for the future — it expects it to happen. And it not only expects it to happen, but it is confident that it will happen.
Romans 8:24-25 states:
For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.
Hope is looking expectantly towards the future based on our faith in God in the present and His faithfulness in the past. Hope requires trust in God—we do not see what we are waiting for, nor do we know when it will come. But through our faith in God, we are confident it will come, and we wait for it patiently.
Paul writes in Romans 5:3-4:
Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope...
Hope motivates us to move forward because life is a never-ending flow of hardships and trials. When we have hope, we can navigate those difficulties without despair. Biblical hope has its foundation in faith. We cannot have one without the other.
In Hebrews 11:1 it says, “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”
Faith is grounded in the reality of the past; hope is looking to the reality of the future. Without faith, there is no hope, and without hope, there is no true faith. Trials develop our endurance and teach us to trust God despite our sufferings. That perseverance builds our character and enables us to see beyond our current circumstances to the future God promised—which produces hope.
As Warren Wiersbe states:
This confident hope gives us the encouragement and enablement we need for daily living. It does not put us in a rocking chair where we complacently await the return of Jesus Christ. Instead, it puts us in the marketplace, on the battlefield, where we keep on going when the burdens are heavy and the battles are hard. Hope is not a sedative; it is a shot of adrenaline, a blood transfusion. Like an anchor, our hope in Christ stabilizes us in the storms of life (Hebrews 6:18-19); but unlike an anchor, our hope moves us forward, it does not hold us back (Be Hopeful 14-15).
As a Christian, hope is grounded in the belief that there is more to life than what we can wish for in this world. We have been given promises by God Himself that Jesus Christ, whom He raised from the dead, will return again. That when Jesus returns, those who believe will be transformed into the perfect image and likeness of His Son (2 Corinthians 3:18; 1 John 3:2–3). That those who believe will receive forgiveness of sins and will inherit eternal life because of the righteousness and resurrection of Christ (2 Corinthians 1:20; Titus 1:2).
In this we have hope for God has said it will be and God accomplishes everything He says (Hebrews 10:23; 1 Corinthians 1:9). He has done so throughout history and will continue to do so in the future.
There is only one place to look for hope that is secure:
Psalm 130:7: “O Israel, hope in the Lord! For with the Lord there is steadfast love, and with him is plentiful redemption.”
Jeremiah 29:11: “For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.”
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,”
Colossians 1:27: “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.”
Scripture repeatedly invites us, commands us, and pleads with us to hope in the Lord. It gives us reason after reason to do so. Take note of how each of these verses calls to faith-shaping truth and secure hope in the person of Jesus Christ—the one who can transform your life, give rest to your heart, and ignite new ways of living for God.
And yes, our group finally made it to the summit that week. Our temporary earthly hopes were rewarded with majestic views and reminders of the greatness of God.
His greatest work is Jesus, our living hope, the fulfillment of everything we wait for in this life. He is coming soon to make all things new, and Christians are expecting His return with joy!
Gibby Gilbert has served in ministry for 47 years. He is married to Dawna, and together they have four children and eleven grandchildren and reside in Lubbock, Texas.