Our specific topic at the moment is Christian hope. What does the Christian really expect as he hopes? What, then, will specifically determine and characterise his life in Christian hope? We have seen that he expects the coming of Jesus Christ in glory…
It means his transformation, his investiture with a new being which is neither exposed to corruption nor subject to death, his restoration and the beginning of his eternal salvation and life. But it means all these things only in the comprehensive context of the final redeeming act of God in full manifestation of the reconciliation of the world accomplished in Jesus Christ, of the conclusion of peace between the Creator and the creature established in Him, of the kingdom or establishment of the rule of God over all men and all things enacted in Him, of the alteration of the whole of human and cosmic reality effected in Him.
This event of revelation expected by him in hope will not be particular but universal. Not his eyes alone, but those of the whole community which has hoped in Him in every age and place, and indeed of all the men who have lived, or live, or will live, will see this great light, will be terrified by it, but will also be made to rejoice by it. Not he alone, but all the known and unknown members of the community exalted to be brothers and sisters of Jesus Christ and therefore children of God, and indeed all the men among whom the community has had to proclaim the Gospel of divine sonship in this age…. This, then, is what the Christian expects. It is wonderful that he himself belongs and will belong to the community and all humanity and the whole cosmic order which has this before it.
The Christian as a witness to Hope.
His calling is to service. It is calling to a ministry of witness to the Word of God which is directed not only to himself or a few but to all men. It is calling to the ministry of the divine Word concerning the work which God has done not merely for himself or a few but for all men. It is calling to attest Jesus Christ as the Saviour of the world who is also the great Prophet speaking to the world. It is calling to personal participation in the ministry of the Christian community sent into the world. The Christian is not only ordained to this function but instituted in it. What other meaning or goal could his life have as that of one who may hope, but to look and move forward in present participation, though within the world, to the future fulfilment of the divine Word, to the consummating revelation of the Saviour of the world, which is the future of the world?
What determines and characterises his life and action is that he does not therefore hope at his own risk …He hopes for God, “unto the praise of his glory” (Eph. 114). God wills that among those who have no hope he should exist as one who has. And when he keeps to the promise given him with this divine disposing he hopes for others too, for those who are without hope, i.e., for those who do not yet know that God’s Word applies to them too and that its fulfilment is before them, who are strangers to the previous revelation of Jesus Christ.
The Christian hopes in order to show thereby that there is good cause and ground for all men and the whole world to hope with him……he does not hope for his own sake, but for God’s sake and for the sake of the men to whom he is bound and pledged as one who believes and loves and therefore hopes as a Christian. There have to be in the world men who even in the night, perhaps only at midnight or before, or possibly in the hour of early dawn, look forward to the morning, to the rising sooner or later of the Sun of righteousness, to the end and goal of all things and therefore to their new beginning in light, which no further end can follow…
There have to be men by whose irrepressible and constant unrest at least a few and even perhaps quite a number of their fellows are prevented from falling asleep as though nothing had happened and nothing out of the ordinary could happen in the future. In so doing, they do provisionally, and in great weakness and frailty, that which He Himself will finally do with unequivocal and irresistible power when His day comes. To this extent they are His representatives. …
…the Christian life in hope, where it is genuinely found, is the seed of eternity already sown in the present world, or rather the seed of the coming salvation of the whole world. It is only seed, and therefore still alone and concealed from the rest by a hard and wintry crust of earth. Yet it is living seed, which must die as such, but which will come to life again in the springtime, and like the grain of mustard seed in the Gospel (Mt. 1331) grow greater than all plants and become a great tree, so that “the birds of the air come and lodge in the branches thereof.”
