Romans 15:13

Now the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that ye may abound in hope, through the Now the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that ye may abound in hope, through the power of the Holy Ghost.

Now ... This seems a closing prayer, suggested not so much by the immediately preceding context, as by the whole subject-matter of the Epistle thus far.

The God of hope (see the note at ) fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that ye may abound in hope. As peace and joy are the native fruits of faith (Romans 5:1; ; ), so hope of the glory of God necessarily accompanies or flows from all three, especially faith, the root of the whole. Hence, the degree in which one of these is possessed will be the measure in which all are experienced. When 'the God of hope fills us with all joy and peace in believing,' we cannot but "abound in hope,"

Through the power of the Holy Spirit - to whom, in the economy of redemption, it belongs to inspire believers with all gracious affections.

Remarks:

(1) No Christian is at liberty to regard himself as an isolated disciple of the Lord Jesus, having to decide questions of duty and liberty solely with reference to himself. As Christians are one body in Christ, so the great law of love binds them to act in all things with tenderness and consideration for their brethren in 'the common salvation.'

(2) Of this unselfishness CHRIST is the perfect Model of all Christians.

(3) Holy Scripture is the divine storehouse of all furniture for the Christian life, even in its most trying and delicate features ().

(4) The harmonious glorification of the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ by the whole body of the redeemed as it is the most exalted fruit of the scheme of redemption, so it is the last end of God in it (Romans 15:5).

(5) The prayer of sheds an interesting light on the relation of "hope" to "faith," in the usage of the New Testament. As hope does not terminate on the past work of Christ, so none of its fruits in us are ascribed to hope. We are never said to hope for pardon, peace, reconciliation, union to Christ, access to God, or the indwelling of the Spirit. The apostle does indeed say in one place (), "We through the Spirit wait for the hope of righteousness (or justification) by faith" But this is said, not experimentally, but doctrinally; and the import of it is. 'Be not moved away by false teachers from the hope of the Gospel, as ye were taught it by me: They would persuade you that faith in Christ is not enough for you Gentiles, and that except ye be circumcised and ken the law of Moses, ye cannot be saved; but we who are taught "by the Spirit," whether we be Jews or Gentiles, hope for no righteousness but by faith alone.' Here, then, "hope" refers merely to the ground on which the apostle rested all his own expectations of anything whatever of a saving nature, and is not at all put in contrast with "faith." And if this is the only passage in which "justification" even seems to be the object of hope, we are safe in affirming that hope, as distinct from faith, is in the New Testament always represented as fastening on what is future in the work of Christ, and subsequent to the believer's justification; such as His glorious appearing the second time, without sin, unto the salvation of them that look for Him, the believer's preservation from falling, and being at length presented before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy, and being thenceforward forever with the Lord.

If these, then, are the appropriate objects of "hope," while "faith" appropriates the cross and crown of Christ as the ground of our righteous standing before God, and new life in our risen Head, the prayer of becomes not only more intelligible, but rich in import. There can be no "hope" - that prayer implies-until first there be "faith," and the "joy and peace" that spring from "believing;" but as this faith necessarily begets "hope," and a hope only measured by the strength of our faith, the apostle, desiring his Roman Christians to have large hope, prays that "the God of hope" might fill them with all joy and peace in believing, in the confident persuasion that then they would "abound in hope, through the power of the Holy Spirit."