Title: What Hope?
what hope?
Ask yourself what hope you are living with now. Students will want to study well and get into a good university or get a good job. Scientists will live with hope in the results of their research. Some people dream of getting married, while others have a dream of owning a house. Anyone who is about to undergo cancer surgery will hope and hope that the operation will be successful. Those who bought land or an apartment in a speculative area will be eagerly waiting for the price to rise. Those are our lives. Everyone lives with hope in their own way.
What would our life be like if all our hopes came true? After we get a good college, a job, a spouse, and a house, we'll try to get something else. When one thing is accomplished, we will cling to something until we die, in a way that hopes for another. I think that's what human life is all about. But if you are a little thoughtful, you know that even if our wishes are fulfilled, we are not at all satisfied. Don't get me wrong. I am not saying this to mean that these everyday things are meaningless. We must cherish such a small dream and work hard within it, but we must be able to notice its fundamental limitations.
The reason we are not completely satisfied even if we get what we want is because human nature is like that. We are creatures made by God in His image. It means we are spiritual beings. Since we are made according to the Spirit, which is the image of God, we cannot be satisfied anywhere unless we are spiritually satisfied. In other words, if you are not satisfied with your relationship with God, you cannot be satisfied with anything else.
Are there people who say that you cannot agree with such a claim? There are those who claim that I am satisfied with money and that I am satisfied with a good house. If there is a person who is satisfied with the external condition of the life given to him, he is one of the following. The first is a person who has already deeply entered into a relationship with God without even realizing it, and the second is a person who does not notice their spiritual thirst at all. Many fall into the latter. It's like an alcoholic who doesn't notice what's going on in his spiritual and spiritual life and he resorts to alcohol and forgets everything.
The Bible teaches us over and over again that the only true satisfaction in life is the spiritual satisfaction of life. Only when we know that true satisfaction can we live happily. Today's text says just that. Don't go overboard with Paul's statement, "We rejoice in suffering." I hope you don't come to the conclusion that everything will work out if you believe in Jesus. This is not a clich , but a truth that we should keep thinking about until the day we die. As we breathe, we must engrave these words. Listen to what Paul has to say.
God's Glory
The joy Paul is talking about is never given because his goal has been accomplished. Paul once described such targets as dung in Philippians 3. The joy Paul speaks of is rooted in “the hope of a partaker in the glory of God” (2b). Those who have the hope that they will participate in the glory of God (the Serpent Too Deu) in the future are bound to rejoice. Because you are entering a whole new world.
What does the glory of God mean? The word glory can be used only with the eternal God, not with the finite. There can be no object or event in this world that directly points to it. Even if you have been appointed to the position of a Supreme Court Justice, University President, or President, that is not an honor. Because even those things lose their light in an instant. The glory of God is completely different from those things.
In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus once said that Solomon's glory was less than that of a flower (Matthew 6:29). This does not mean that Solomon also had partial glory, but he denied it. It means that no one can enjoy any glory. Many of the heroic heroes who appeared in history, including Solomon, pursued their own glory, but now there is no trace. Many of the buildings that we admire as wonders also do not escape this fate. According to Paul's teaching, we do not have such a hope, but a partaker of God's glory.
I am not confident that I can accurately explain this glory of God to you. I am always like a child in front of this wonderful world the Bible speaks of. It is similar to a situation where a kindergarten student has to explain Verdi's 'Requiem'. I wish today's text would explain more about the glory of God, but there is none. Perhaps the Roman church members at that time fully understood Paul's words. What would they have known?
Based on Paul's theology, the glory of God is the eternal life that was preempted from the resurrection of Jesus. It is difficult for us to understand the glory of God because there is no eternal life in this world. Everything passes like grass. Such a thing cannot be called the glory of the eternal God. The glory of God is life beyond death. We will participate in this life someday in the future. That is our ultimate hope. Those who know this hope are naturally happy. Just as those who took exams in the past and waited for the day they would go down to secret words or local officials rejoice, so we live happily today, hoping for eternal life, when we will share in the glory of God.
Unfortunately, that glory did not materialize. We have not yet shared in the glory of God, eternal life. There are many elements in our present life that are not befitting the glory of God or eternal life. No matter how well we live our life of faith, suffering will inevitably follow. This is the Christian existence. On the one hand, we rejoice with the hope of sharing in the glory of God, but at the same time we have to live with various pains. In the case of Paul and Roman Christians, there was a lot of suffering that came from not only daily life, but also from the life of faith. The difficulties faced by Judaism and the Roman government sometimes led to martyrdom. Today's time is different from Paul's day, but there is no difference in that we have to live in tension between the hope that we will share in God's glory and the reality of having to bear pain. Christians may be sandwiched between two worlds. One world is the glory of God to come, the other is the suffering of the present.
peace with God
Christians lie between two worlds, but they do not wander back and forth. Because the pain of reality has already been overcome. Notice what Paul is saying. “We rejoice when we suffer. We know that suffering produces perseverance, and perseverance produces perseverance over trials, and that perseverance produces hope” (Romans 5:3,4). will be
Some of you may think that Paul's teaching that suffering eventually leads to hope is a pun on words. Pain is just pain, so it is something we should avoid, how to create hope. Of course, pain is not easily overcome. Now, let's say I was diagnosed with cancer and had surgery. Such things happen frequently around us, so there is no law that says not to happen to me. There are people who suffer greatly because of an accidental family member. Go to them and say, "Pain begets hope, so be strong." And it is difficult to say. Those who heard that would probably say to themselves, “You are good.” I don't know what to do.
I'm not saying that Christian beliefs make these real sufferings go away in an instant. Then it would be just a pain reliever. As long as we basically maintain the right faith, we will hold on to hope through a process we are not aware of. Paul described it as a process of patience and perseverance. Although it differs slightly from person to person, it is clear that the pain of reality eventually leads to hope.
The important thing here is that we must not lose sight of the right faith. If we follow the theme of today's sermon, it is the fact that we must not lose the hope of sharing in the glory of God. I don't know if the reason we don't think about the glory of God so much today is because, ironically, there is no pain. This world is a good place to live, but the idea of what the glory of God is is at the bottom of it. If we suffer so severe that we have to give up everything in this world, our hopes of participating in the glory of God will be stronger.
You don't have to worry about what you will encounter in this world. If your life goes well without pain, I hope that you will live happily and trust with God's grace to enjoy the life He has given you for a while before you participate in God's glory. Conversely, if painful things happen, please use it as an opportunity to put away the regrets of this world and focus more on the glory of God. If you don't give up on the right faith, God will lead you in ways you never thought possible.
Hope and God's Love
Now our final question is this. How do we know that God is helping us in our struggle with this reality? For those who have actually experienced it, this question means nothing, but for many who have not, it will be more important than the previous story. Faith must lead to experience, not just understanding.
Paul says in verse 5: “This hope does not disappoint us. Because the Holy Spirit, whom we have received, has poured out God’s love into our hearts.” The answer is that the Holy Spirit pours out the love of God into our hearts. God's love is His help. It's not that I was miraculously healed or that I became rich, but that God's love is proof that God helps us. If God's love is in our hearts, we have nothing to worry about in any pain or situation. Just as a child is not afraid of storms as long as it is in the arms of its mother, we too can overcome suffering only in God's love.
Do you experience this love of God in your life? If so, that's good. But you have to ask a little more seriously. You can act as if you're being loved, even if you don't actually have any love experience. It is similar to many women who are not loved by their husbands at all, acting as if they are loved. Let me show you the way to determine whether God's love has been poured out into your heart.
God's love refers to peace with God. The proof that you have received God's love in your heart lies in peace with God. Paul tells us in verse 1 that we have “peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” If you can enjoy peace with God, you have received God's love. Peace with God is possible through faith in Jesus Christ. After all, God's love depends on the fact that we believe in Jesus. The one who truly believes in the fact that we have peace with God through Jesus Christ, not through our religious achievements, ethics, or morals, is a person loved by God. Such a person lives with joy even in today's painful life with the hope of sharing in God's glory with God's help.
Guys, back to the question I asked at the beginning. On what hope do you live? Hope to share in the glory of God is the answer. That hope will lead you to joy that can overcome even pain. We, who have made peace with God through Jesus, should sing this song of hope together. As Paul stated, this hope will never disappoint you.