What is hope?

What the Bible says

In everyday speech, hope usually means a wish: ‘I hope it works out.’ Biblical hope is different. It is the expectation of something that will surely come because God has promised it. What gives hope its weight is not how strongly we wish, but how faithful the one who promises is.

Hebrews compares hope to an anchor, the thing that holds a ship in a storm.

Thus by two unchangeable things in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled to take hold of the hope set before us may be strongly encouraged. We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure. It enters the inner sanctuary behind the curtain,

Heb 6:18-19

This anchor is not inside the ship. It is cast behind the curtain, into God's presence, where Jesus has gone ahead of us (Heb 6:20). Hope is firm not because our hearts are firm but because the anchor is set in firm ground.

At the center of this hope is the resurrection. Peter writes:

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! By His great mercy He has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, reserved in heaven for you,

1 Pet 1:3-4

A "living hope" is one that does not go out in the face of death, because the one who rose from the dead is its ground. Whether that ground is solid depends on the question of whether Jesus really rose. Paul urges us not to "grieve like the rest, who are without hope" (1 Thess 4:13), and he rests that urging on Christ's resurrection.

Hope is needed precisely when nothing is in sight. Paul says, "hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what he can already see? But if we hope for what we do not yet see, we wait for it patiently" (Rom 8:24-25). Hope asks for waiting, but not with empty hands. Paul says that suffering produces perseverance, perseverance character, and character hope, and that "hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out His love into our hearts through the Holy Spirit" (Rom 5:3-5). The guarantee of hope is a love already poured into the heart. So he prays: "Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you believe in Him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit" (Rom 15:13).

Hope can be spoken among ruins. Lamentations was written after Jerusalem fell, and in the midst of that grief comes this confession:

Yet I call this to mind, and therefore I have hope: Because of the loving devotion of the LORD we are not consumed, for His mercies never fail. They are new every morning; great is Your faithfulness!

Lam 3:21-23

The poet does not find hope because things have improved. He finds it by calling to mind who God is. Hope does not deny the pain; it remembers God inside it.

The Bible's picture of where hope ends is a renewed world.

‘He will wipe away every tear from their eyes,’ and there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the former things have passed away.

Rev 21:4

The One on the throne says, "Behold, I make all things new" (Rev 21:5). Christian hope is not an escape from this world for souls alone. It is that God renews the whole creation and dwells with his people (Rev 21:3).

The church's witness

The church has always placed hope near the center of faith. The Apostles' Creed ends by confessing the resurrection of the body and life everlasting The Apostles' Creed. The Heidelberg Catechism begins by asking what is your only comfort in life and in death, and answers that I belong, body and soul, to my faithful Saviour Jesus Christ Heidelberg Catechism Q1. This hope rests on belonging, not on circumstances.

Matthew Henry distinguishes worldly hope from biblical hope in his notes on 1 Peter 1: "Hope, in the world's phrase, refers only to an uncertain good" Matthew Henry. "But the hope of the sons of the living God is a living hope" Matthew Henry. On Lamentations he writes: "We should observe what makes for us, as well as what is against us" Matthew Henry.

Christians differ over how the last days will unfold, in what order Christ returns and the new heaven and new earth arrive, and whether Revelation's visions are to be read symbolically or more literally. But that Christ will come again, that the dead will rise bodily, and that God will make all things new are hopes the church has confessed together.

In the original languages

The New Testament word for hope is elpis (ἐλπίς). In classical Greek it meant expectation in general, mostly of good but occasionally even of evil, and the word itself carried no certainty. The New Testament binds the word to God's promise and the resurrection and fills it with confidence. That is why Romans 5:5 can say that hope "does not disappoint."

Behind "patiently" in Romans 8:25 is hupomonē (ὑπομονή), "endurance," built from "to remain under." It pictures someone who does not flee from beneath a burden but endures. Hope is not resignation; it becomes strength to stay.

In Lamentations 3:24 the Hebrew for "I will hope in Him" is from yachal (יָחַל), a verb that means both "to wait" and "to hope." Waiting and hoping come from one root.

Common objections

"Hope is just wishful thinking." There is truth in this. People hope for things that never come, and it is hard to deny that religion has sometimes been used to soothe pain. But the Bible tells hope apart by its ground, not by the strength of the wish. Peter ties hope to the resurrection. If Jesus rose, hope has a foundation; if he did not, Paul admits, it is empty (1 Cor 15:19). So the objection turns into a historical question about the evidence for the resurrection, which is taken up in Did Jesus really rise from the dead?. What can be said here is that Christian hope stands not on proof but on evidence and trust.

"Hope of the afterlife is an opiate that makes people tolerate injustice." This is a serious charge. Some Christians have used heaven as an excuse to ignore suffering on earth, and that is shameful. But the Bible's hope is the renewal of the earth, not its abandonment. Paul says the creation itself waits to be set free from its bondage to decay (Rom 8:21). If God will make all things new, then present pain and injustice are not normal but meant to be mended.

"It is better to expect nothing, so you are never let down." This may be the wisdom of someone who has been hurt, for whom hope feels dangerous. To be honest, the Bible does not promise that every wish comes true. The hope that someone will be healed or a relationship restored may never be fulfilled on this side of death. But biblical hope drops its anchor in God, not in a particular outcome. The poet of Lamentations said that God was his portion when nothing else was left. Hope set there, the Bible says, is not put to shame.

Going further

Biblical hope is first received, not manufactured. On days when it feels absent, it depends not on our feelings but on where the anchor lies.

You might ask yourself: What am I hoping in right now? Does it rest on my own strength and circumstances, or on the one who promised? In this time of waiting, which promise of God am I holding?

To read further, see What happens after death? and Does suffering have meaning?.