Observation: Paul is now into the point of his letter, which is that we are all redeemed through faith in Jesus Christ alone. This is the promise of the Messiah and of his resurrection ... that as humans we cannot achieve full obedience to the Law, and therefore we cannot achieve holy sanctification on our own and thus receive salvation, yet faith in Jesus covers all that failure. It is faith alone that will result in eternal salvation in heaven with the Lord, in a life without sorrow, without pain, without strife. That is our hope.
And ... that is actually why we cannot have that unproblematic life here on earth. Paul's point is that, if by faith God removed all our problems in the here and now, we wouldn't hope for it in the future. In other words, we wouldn't hope at all! That lack of hope would thus diminish our faith, and might even create a scenario where we don't truly have faith.
That may sound rather philosophical, like 'I think therefore I am' type of logic ... 'I hope therefore I have faith'. The Lord is not that formulaic. However ... people are. It is part of our nature - even part of original sin - that we have to reason things out for ourselves, and Paul is simply giving us some reasoning for understanding the truth about life as a Christian. Life as a Christian is not perfect. It has pain, hardship, sorrow, even persecution and sometimes painful death. However, none of that disproves faith, and in fact our hope despite such hardship is a necessary product of faith.
Application: We have a saying in business I use often ... "hope is not a strategy." It effectively means, if you have business goals and objectives to be achieved, you can't just hope they'll happen; You have to create a plan, then work the plan.
Well, God isn't an IT department, is he?! Part of his plan for building faith in Jesus and spreading the good news of salvation through simple faith, is hope.
I am confident in my faith, and confident in my eternal destination with the Lord. Even though I treat that as a known future, it is still best described as hope. Also, I absolutely know that my current life - despite all the great blessing and love the Lord has shown me - remains difficult, with hardship, illness, pain, sorrow, regret, worry, heartache, injury, frustration, and insult. Someday, none of that will exist. Today, most of it exists in my life daily.
By my faith in Jesus, I hope for salvation, and for eternal life with the Lord. May my daily hardships no longer deter my hope, but rather encourage it, as those hardships are even necessary to strengthen my hope, and thus strengthen my faith.
Prayer: Lord, I will take this idea to heart. My daily challenges will now become signposts for me on my daily walk, pointing me toward the hope I have in Jesus. Amen.
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