Now faith is assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.

What fabulously famous verse! Hopefully, we’ve all heard this a thousand times. Our shared faith rests on the 100% certainty that we are reconciled with God, our sins are forgiven, and we are adopted into Christ. Our faith is being 100% sure that these things have happened, are happening, and will happen though we can’t see, feel, smell, taste, or hear them. No doubt, that’s a lot of faith in things we can’t sense!

When we usually read this verse, the emphasis is on answering: “What is faith?” I want to look at the word “hope.” This word seems easy enough to understand, but it also seems to be a fairly abstract word. Its closest synonyms are “to long for” or “to dream of.” Boy, do those really fall short of “hope!”

I long to see my children when I’m away, but I don’t hope to see them when I return. Imagine the conversation with someone in a different part of the country, “Man, I really hope to see my kids when I get home!” That doesn’t sound to reassuring.

“To dream” is closer to hope. You could almost use them interchangeably. Except for the fact that the word is “dream”! By definition, it’s something that doesn’t exist! I dream of lounging on plush seats of a pontoon boat, sipping on a cold, crip, refreshing Diet Coke, soaking in the solitude of a remote, northern Wisconsin lake. It’s just a dream, albeit a humble one.

Hoping, longing, and dreaming are similar, but too different for our purposes.

Faith and hope are different things. Philip Melanchthon (friend, student, and co-laborer of Martin Luther in the Protestant Reformation) explains it more straight forwardly: “If anyone wants a distinction between faith and hope, we say that the object of hope is properly a future event, but that faith is concerned with future and present things.” (Apology of the Augsburg Confession, V 191). While Melanchthon describes hope as a future thing, Paul’s words put it in the now.

In other words, our faith is the present certainty of something in the future. Now how can anything in the future be certain? Friends, the Christian faith is full of these dichotomies; this is not new. We are at the same time saint and sinner, dead in our sins but alive in Christ, Jesus is both God and man, the kingdom of Heaven is ours to hold today but not yet. Our hope is in something that will happen in the future, but we are sure of it because it’s already finished and guaranteed.

Christ conquered hopelessness (sin, death, and the Devil) upon the cross and from the tomb. Today, we share that victory. Tomorrow, that victory will still be won. It is in this assured hope, that we can say: “I believe in God, the father almighty… I believe in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord… I believe in the Holy spirit, the holy Christian church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. Amen.”

By Ryan Castillero, Bible League International staff, United States