“Real to Reality”                                                                                                                                                A Ministry of ReCovering All... Mark and Cathy Eaton

                                                     The Undiscovered Hope or Is It? 

We have heard the term “blessed Hope” for years in our churches.  And after years of trying to squeeze “Hope” out of it, we personally don’t feel what heard about “Hope” is a blessing.  A 50/50 chance that it is based on a truth that may or may not be true is not “Hope.”  That would make God; a God who is “almost, not Almighty.”(Willie Cripps).  Hope is described in the Bible an Anchor.  No matter what winds of doctrine may come, what debates surface, Hope is solid.  It is not a wishing or wishing for the best.  I have heard “Hope” defined as “maybe yes or maybe no.”  I have experience a Hope within, a Hope that leaped in my womb while all mental reference points where gone.  All have this Hope within them; it is a treasure in earthen vessels.

     Biblical Hope is beyond belief.  Some have defined “Hope” as only future.  There is only NOW.  The future sense of “Hope” that exists in modern English is not true to the Original Koine Greek.  In the original languages of the Bible, Hope has a different flavor.  In Hebrew, the word translated “Hope” denotes “union, together.”  The Hebrew idea of “Hope” is rooted in Union with God, not performance.  The word “Hope” is taken from a Greek word meaning “anticipation or aim.”  However, we miss the true meaning of Hope if we stop there.  Check out the semantic range and see the vastness of how this word is used in Context.  The definition of Hope becomes generic if we take it out of context.  Almost in all cases, it is used in context with the Glory of God.  To discuss “Hope” outside of the context of the Nature of Christ is very misleading.

      We will admit it! We have a hobby.  We love to look up old translations of the New Testament and search out how translators saw verses.  I was looking up Ephesians 1:17, 18 in various translations.  I was studying the little preposition phrase “In Christ.”  Look at how these Greek scholars interpret “Hope.”  Let’s begin with King James Version

Ephesians 1:18 King James Version

The eyes of your understanding being enlightened; that ye may know what is the hope of his calling, and what the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints…

     For years I have meet people who say “…believe in Hope…”  “Keep on Hoping…”  “Have faith in Hope…”  “Faith is the present Now of things hoped for…”  Look at what it says, the eyes of your understanding being enlightened that may KNOW what is the HOPE.  Biblical Hope is a knowing, not a belief.  I was searching through old E-Mails.  I found this by my good friend Nate Rangel:

“Hope walks the high-wire without a safety net. There is no support for hope other than He who calls to us from the other end of the high-wire. Hope, it seems to me, is usually tied to a new experience for which no reference point is yet established.  Hope, it would seem, is meant to be held, not believed, because how can you believe for something that has no established parameters? That is why I believe hope is held by the more mature children of God, because it is more attached to the quality of the One promising than it is to the thing promised.”

     My good friend Ronnie Martin has shared with me for years about the “Power of Divine Hope.”  We think we cannot conceptualize of Hope mentally, yet Hope is the Presence of Christ in us.  We don’t have Hope is the midst of the transition, The Presence of Hope is the transition.  This is a Hope that STANDS when crisis has achieved its manifestation.  There is a Hope that dismantles and disrobes grief when it assaults.  Hope answers with a “Who” when you are in a crisis of “Why?”  Hope Reveals while we become stuck with the glue of failed suspicion.

Ephesians 1:18 Cornish Translation

…And illuminate your inner vision, the eyes of your heart, thereby explaining and opening to you the full nature of his calling and its aim and expectation, revealing too what an abundance of glory is implied in this ‘inheritance in the saints.’”

     This translation saw biblical Hope as three things, (1) Aim (2) expectation (3)

And revealing the abundance of Glory in Christ. 

Ephesians 1:18 New English Bible

…so that you may know what is the hope to which He calls you, what the glory and wealth of the share He offers you…

     “To know what is THE Hope to which He calls you…” 

Ephesians 1:18 The Message Bible by Eugene H. Peterson

So that you can see exactly what it is he is calling to do, grasp the immensity of His glorious way of life…

     That is what Knowing Hope is about, grasping the immensity of His glorious Life in you! 

Ephesians 1:18 Arthur S. Way Translation

….may flood with light the eyes of your understanding.  So shall you know what it is, that hope that springs up in those who hearken his invitation: so shall you know what riches are comprised in the magnificence of the inheritance…

Ephesians 1:18 J. B. Phillips translation

“…that you may realize how great is the hope to which he is calling you-….”

Kenneth S. Wuest, a very known Greek scholar, shares this “…in an enlightened state with a view to your KNOWING the hope of his calling…”  The Doddridge translation shares “…and animate you to the further exercise of every grace in acknowledge of Him….that you may know in a more comprehensive manner what is the great and important hope…”  Charles B. Williams, an excellent Greek scholar renders this “…so that you may KNOW what the Hope is to which He calls you…”  One translation said “The Object of Hope…” is the Christ in you, the HOPE of glory.  Jonathan Mitchell translates this so beautifully from the Greek, “…the expectation (or: hope) of His calling(belonging to His summons; THE INVITATION WHICH IS HIM).  That’s so rich and deep! Thanks Jonathan!

Biblical Hope is not mental wishing, or mental gymnastics about an idealism of the future.  It is the Knowing of His Glory, revealed in the High Calling of God in Christ.  What we hear usually about “Hope” is simply a belief system, or as Kenyon called it “mental assent.”  It is the projection of a perceived image into the future based on our own filtering.