The Tension of Faith and Hope
The two great points of Christian history are the first and second advents of Jesus Christ. Faith looks back to the cross and receives the blessing of justification. Hope looks forward to the coming of Jesus and the day of final redemption.
The truth of righteousness by faith gives hope in the coming of Jesus. A Christian, as we have seen, is righteous in the sight of God only by faith. His righteousness before God is not here on earth; it is in heaven. It is not in himself; it is in Christ. Christ is his righteousness; Christ is his life (Jer. 23:6; Col. 3:4). And because he has the blessing only by faith and not by sight, he longs and waits for Jesus to come. Then he will no longer be righteous by faith, but by visible and actual possession.
So God's people are righteous now by faith. Yet they "wait for the hope of righteousness. . Gal. 5:5. They are now the sons of God through faith, yet they wait in hope for "the manifestation of the sons of God." Rom. 8:19.
Faith pertains to now. Hope pertains to the not yet. John declares: "Now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be." If it does not yet appear what we shall be, the urgent question arises, When shall it appear what we shall be? And the answer is, " . . when He shall appear, we shall be like Him; for we shall see Him as He is." 1 John 3:2.
Now we are righteous by faith. Then we shall be righteous by actual visible reality. By faith we grasp it now. By hope we wait for the not yet.
Faith and hope must be preserved in the proper New Testament tension. We must not confuse the now with the not yet. And we must not try to bring the not yet within the historical process or Paul's theology is destroyed.
There are two specific reasons given in Paul why hope must look to the coming of Christ:
Firstly, the sinful nature is still with the saints (Rom. 6-8). With continual penitence and tears they must still confess their sinfulness and implore the mercy of God. They therefore groan within themselves as they wait for the redemption of the sinful body (Rom. 8:23).
Secondly, the saints have in themselves only the "firstfruits of the Spirit," or as it says in Ephesians 1:14, the "earnest," or "down payment," of their salvation. So far from the gift of God's Spirit making them feel that life is fulfilled, it causes them to groan for life's fulfillment, when Christ shall come and roll up the scroll of time.
Herein lay a great weakness in our past "Awakening" teaching. The New Testament hope is always directed to the coming of Christ, not to the investigative judgment or latter rain. The judgment has an important place (as we shall see further), but in dealing with this matter of righteousness, we must allow the emphasis to lie just where the apostle puts it (unless we think we know more than Paul).
Let me illustrate it this way: Those who put their hope in the immortality of the soul lose the significance of the resurrection, for if the soul lives on after death, they already have everything that is meaningful without the resurrection. In the same way, if the judgment and the latter rain brought to God's people the consummating blessing that many of us expected, life could be fulfilled without the coming of Jesus. In the light of Paul, the idea must appear as silly as the bride setting off on her honeymoon without the bridegroom. Life is not fulfilled within the historical process, and we were simply trying to bring some aspects of the not yet within the historical process.
And to be candid with ourselves, we never laid great stress on the coming of Jesus. We must admit that we did not put the emphasis where Paul puts it, and for obvious reasons. We tended to regard the coming judgment and latter rain as the mighty climaxof Christian experience, whereas the coming of Jesus Himself was relegated to a sort of appendix. Oh yes, we said that He would come and change the body; but we thought to have everything that is really meaningful in actual possession before He came.
But the truth of justification by faith restores the thrilling New Testament meaning of Jesus' coming. Our message must be, in the oft-repeated words of Ellen White, "the message of a crucified, risen and soon-coming Saviour."
In saying these things, we are not going to lose sight of the judgment message. I only plead that if we allow the apostle to teach us about faith and hope, we shall soon see these in new power and simplicity in the judgment hour message.
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