Hope

In the strict and proper sense of the word, this is Christ; for He, and He only, as the prophet hath described him, "is the Hope of Israel, and the Saviour thereof?" (Jeremiah 14:8) And, indeed, this view must be uniformly preserved and kept up, because, without an eye to Christ, there can be no such thing as hope, for all our whole nature is, in its universal circumstances, "without God, and without hope in the world." (Ephesians 2:12) And it is very blessed to turn over the Scriptures of God, and behold the Lord Jesus Christ set forth under this endeared character, in a great variety of figures and representations, throughout the whole Bible.

Jesus was the grand hope of all the Old Testament believers before his incarnation. They all, like Abraham, saw "his day afar off," rejoiced and were glad; and, like him, amongst all the discouraging circumstances they had to encounter"against hope, they believed in hope." Hence, though the longing expectation of the church, as Solomon expressed it, was like "hope deferred, which maketh the heart sick;" (Proverbs 13:12) yet, as Jeremiah was commissioned to tell the church, there was still "hope in the end, saith the Lord, that the children of Christ should come to their own border." (Jeremiah 31:17)

Christ, therefore, being held up to the church's view as the hope of his redeemed, is set forth under various similitudes corresponding to this character. His people are called "prisoners of hope." (Zechariah 9:12) And the apostle Paul, under the same figure, calls himself the Lord's prisoner, and saith, it is for "the hope of Israel, I am bound with this chain." (Acts 28:20; Ephesians 4:1) And elsewhere, he described it under the strong metaphor of "an anchor to the soul, both sure and steadfast." (Hebrews 6:19) In short, Christ is the only hope of eternal life, to which we are "begotten by his resurrection from the dead. In him our flesh is said to rest in hope," when returning to the dust; and all our high expectations of life and immortality are expressed, in "looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the Great God, and our Saviour, Jesus Christ." (See those Scriptures, Titus 2:13; 1 Peter 1:3; Psalms 16:9)

As Christ then is the only true hope the Scriptures speak of, it is very evident, that every other hope, not founded in Christ, is and must be deceitful. The world is full of hope, and the life of carnal and ungodly men is made up of it. But what saith the Scripture, of all such. "The hope of the hypocrite, saith Job, shall be cut off, and his trust shall be as a spider's web." (Job 7:14) So that the hope of the faithful, which is Christ himself, affords the only well-grounded confidence for the life that now is, and that which is to come. And this "hope maketh not ashamed, because the love of God is shed abroad in the heart by the Holy Ghost." It is founded in Christ, and is, in. need, Christ formed in the heart, "the hope of glory." (Romans 5:5; Colossians 1:27)