Rejoice in hope

I've been meeting with a group of men every Tuesday in the late afternoon for the last 10 years.  We gather together to "shoot the breeze", pray and study the Bible together.  We've been working our way slowly through Paul's letter to the Romans.  By slow I mean we've been in Romans for at least 7 of those 10 years.  Personally, I've been helped in my own walk with Jesus enormously by meeting and praying and talking with these men.

As an example, last week we spent 40 minutes reflecting on Paul's command in Romans 12:10, "Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer."  Our current facilitator, leader began our discussion by asking this question: "Does God want you to be happy?"  After some spirited discussion we turned our attention to the fact that in this verse God commands us to be happy, to commands that we be full of joy.  Therefore, it is not simply a desire that God has for us to be happy but he actually requires that we be happy, full joy.

However, then the obvious question follows: in what way does God require us to be happy?  In what are we to rejoice?  Clearly God does not want us to rejoice in doing evil.  In this verse he commands that we be full of joy in hope.  What is hope and what is our hope in that is supposed to be the ground of our joy?  In the Bible the word hope is never used the way we normally use it in our conversations when we say things like "I hope it rains today" or "I hope the Brewers win today"  We use the word as a synonym for "wish".  However, the Bible uses the word to mean, "a confident expectation of future good."  Biblical hope is a certainty.  I know that this is going to happen, without a doubt.  The reason biblical hope is not a wish but a certainty is because it is rooted in the finished work of Christ and all that promises that he has secured for all of his people forever.

Paul talks a lot about hope in his letter to the Romans prior to this command.  In Romans 5:1-2 we are told: "Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.  Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God."  Here Paul tells us that every person who is trusting in Jesus and thus declared not guilty but perfectly righteous is right now already rejoicing in or being happy in "the hope of the glory of God."  What does that mean?  All Christians have a confident expectation that one day we will fully experience, in an immediate, present, ongoing way, the wonder and beauty and majesty of the great Tribune God in all of his glory that is able to be perceived by finite creatures like us.  We will know his love and grace and holiness and justice and power and creativity and mercy and kindness and every aspect of his glorious being revealed to us in the person of the resurrected and ascended Lord Jesus by the mighty work of the Holy Spirit.

But Paul also says that the hope which we have is right now causing us to rejoice.  So then, if we are already experiencing it, why does he command us to rejoice in it in 12:10?  Before we answer that question let's think for a moment about the relationship between a future hope and present joy.  All of us have experienced this connection in our normal lives.  Our family takes a two week vacation each summer to Door County.  At any point during the year prior to our going all I have to do is think about being in Door County with my family and my heart  feels happy.  In fact, it is a regular occurrence throughout the year but especially as the vacation approaches that one of our children will remind us that we going to Door County in X number of days and then will say, "I can't wait to go."  Thus expressing their hope and the joy they find in that hope.  We are not in Door County but we have joy now as we anticipate being there.  However, are we always full of joy in the hope of Door County?  No because of the reality of sin and suffering in our lives.

It is the same reason for why Paul says we already have joy in the hope of the glory of God and also commands us to rejoice in the hope.  He talks like this because of the fact of sin and suffering in this world.  Sin is, at its core, putting our faith and hope in created things and the promises of pleasure that created things give us, rather then putting our faith and hope in God and his promises.  Thus, the process of Christian growth is the fight to turn away from placing my hope for future good in money or relationships or success or vacations or a new car or sex or health or drugs or successful children or whatever and instead fixing my hope on this one certain thing: one day, by God's grace, I am going to fully experience the glory of God.  Thus the experience of present joy is directly related to my consciously and intentionally fixing my mind and heart on that future glory and turning away from the unreliable promises of glory in created things.

However, not only does sin interfere with our hope inspired joy but also the sufferings of this life interfere with it as well.  This world is full of trouble and misery that comes to us not as the result or our sin but simply by virtue of the fact that we still live in this world that is under God's curse.  Suffering now is always painful and distracting.  It is difficult when in the throes of some great trial to look beyond the trouble to our final destiny and find our joy in it.  It is difficult to feel the joy when we feel the pain so strongly. 

This is why it is so important to recognize how it is that Jesus endured the greatest trouble any human has ever experienced: he a completely perfect and righteous man suffered unjustly at the hands of men and endured the wrath due to us.  Yet we are told in Hebrews 12:2 that he endured this greatest of all suffering in joy.  This is exactly what Peter says is the experience of the believer when in some trial in 1 Peter 1:3-6, "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God's power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.  In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials."

The experience of the Christian in the midst of some trial is one of grief in the trial and, at the same time, joy in the hope of that coming salvation.  This is the normal Christian life.  Grief and joy in the same heart at the same time.  Weeping and rejoicing is our condition until that final day when Christ returns and then it will be only joy forever.  Revelation 21:1-4, "Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more.  And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.  And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, 'Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God.  He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.'"