CRITICAL NOTES
Romans 8:24.—The salvation which we now enjoy is by the exercise of hope as well as faith.
Romans 8:25.—The duty of waiting with patient endurance is argued from salvation being yet a matter of hope. It enables all who possess it to wait in patience.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— Romans 8:24-25
The sustaining grace.—The sustaining grace is hope, for we consider it in this passage subjectively and objectively. We look forward in hope to its object, which is the perfected adoption and redemption of the believer. We may be allowed to consider hope in its bearing upon the whole of the Christian character. Perhaps we may extend the apostolic idea in this passage, as we observe:—
I. Hope appropriates the blessings purchased by Jesus Christ.—We are saved by hope, and thus it is the instrumental cause of salvation. “Thy faith hath saved thee.” It is the hand which lays hold upon the hand of Jesus, who leads out of the pit. Hope does not save apart from its object—Jesus Christ as mediator. Hope must rest on the foundation-stone laid by God in Zion. All other hope is baseless.
II. Hope is the “helmet of salvation.”—The head the most important part of the human frame, for therein resides the brain. Man of all animals has the largest brain and a weak defence. Reason and the inventive faculty enable him to provide against attacks. The helmet is the artificial safeguard for the human brain. The Christian soldier is crowned with the best helmet, the hope of salvation. In ancient warfare a strong arm would make the sword cleave the helmet and slay the man. No arm is sufficiently strong, no sword sufficiently well-tempered, to cleave the Christian’s helmet of hope. We are saved by a strong hope.
III. Hope holds the Christian’s head above water.—Hope is like the cork to a net—the lead upon the bottom of the net would sink it, but the cork bears it up; our troubles would sink us, the testimony of our external senses would sink us, but hope sustains. Hope is the life-buoy for the mariner. The ships of earth may sink; the billows may rise mountainous; but hope enables the man to swim in roughest seas. The tempest only makes sweet music in his soul. He rides calmly like the sea-bird on the swelling and rolling waters.
IV. Hope is the pleasant pilot.—The pilot takes complete control of the vessel, and conducts into the harbour. He may bring pleasant news from shore. Hope guides the soul, and tells sweet stories of succeeding joys. Amid the gloom that death’s shadows cast over the dying Christian hope brings gracious rays of heavenly light to cheer. Lightsome is life, less stern is death, when hope pleasantly pilots the soul.
V. Hope is not daunted by inscrutable purposes.—There are mysteries in life, dark providences in human proceedings. Hope brightens the dark design; hope contentedly waits for the solution of all mysteries. Dr. Payson was once asked if he saw any special reasons for some particular dispensation of providence. “No,” was his reply; “but I am as well satisfied as if I saw the design.” God’s will is the very perfection of reason. Hope teaches satisfaction. Philosophy kicks against the unknowable, and is in a state of unrest. Hope accepts the unknowable and also the knowable divine wisdom and goodness, and is in a state of delicious repose.
VI. Hope waits the Father’s time.—“Then do we with patience wait for it.” Time is a human word. Of course all words are human, but by the expression “time is a human word” we mean that men are subject to time conditions; and in what sense the word may be applied to the divine we cannot tell. God’s time is not measured by human dial-plates. The eternal clocks are made on larger scale than the clocks of time. A child measures time by fitful fancies. A man measures time by prolonged efforts. We are all children with our fitful fancies. God’s time must be measured by mighty purposes which require ages for their unfolding. Hope calmly waits at the post of duty, while God’s great time is moving onward to the development of His benevolent designs.
VII. Hope sees the unseen.—“Hope that is seen is not hope: for what a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for?” Hope ceases when its object is realised. Perfect redemption is unseen, but we live in hope. Heaven is unseen, but hope is so strong that it brings heaven down to earth. Let a man’s citizenship be in heaven—let his thoughts travel amongst the holy angels—let his spirit thirst for the joys of the upper temple—let his longings be towards the presence of the Lamb, who is without blemish and without spot, and that man must rise out of a low state of manhood into a condition that shall be sublimely glorious. With such a process carried on to perfection, he will appear as one let down from the upper sphere to this lower world. Blessed hope enables sorrowing disciples to rejoice in days of darkness, and martyrs to sing in the very hour of their martyrdom. It brings rich grapes from heaven with which to refresh the parched lips, and pours healing oil into wounded hearts. It scatters the darkness of death, chases away the gloom of the grave, by throwing around it the divine light of a glorious resurrection, and opens the kingdom of heaven to all believers. Let us then no longer dissipate our lives in a series of trifles; but let us recall ourselves to-day from fugitive events, and strike a nobler aim, and seek a more enduring interest, and cast a further anticipation on the futurity which lies before us, and on that blessed hope the realisation of which will fill our souls with joy unspeakable.
SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS ON Romans 8:24-25
How to know hope.—Thou shalt know hope by three things, whether thou hast it or not.
1. By the mother of it, which is faith: he that hopeth believeth, for faith is the ground of things hoped for.
2. By the daughter of it, which is patience: thus do we with patience wait for it. Merchants in hope of gain endure the water, martyrs in hope of recompense endure the fire; where there is no patience there is no hope.
3. By the companion of it, which is love: he that hath this hope purifieth himself. If then thou hast a true and lively hope of salvation, remember to increase in faith, patience, and love, which is the fulfilling of the law. Thus we suppress the rising sigh, thus we bow with submission to the will of God which afflicts us, thus we show to ourselves and others that we have the firstfruits of the Spirit. But we wait for the victor’s crown; we have not actually attained or come to the realisation of that for which we hope: that “eye hath not seen nor ear heard, nor hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive,” and therefore we patiently wait until the hour of glorious liberty, the deliverance from the bondage of corruption.—Adams.
Hope and despair.—Despair throws over the soul an oppressive gloom, paralyses the energies, benumbs the powers, and throws the man a wasted wreck on the sands of time; while hope fills the soul with light, braces up the man with strength, and sends him walking through God’s creation, a being endowed with powers of endurance. Despair is the result of sin’s working in this world, while Christian hope is the gift of God. He has given us a good hope through grace. God might have shut us up to the darkness of despair; but in the midst of our moral darkness mercy appeared and hope spanned the world in its many colours like a rainbow of divine promise.
ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 8
Romans 8:24-25. Sir Walter Scott.—There is pleasure in abiding amid the storm when the anchor of a good hope fastens to the immovable throne of Him in whom is everlasting strength. When Sir Walter Scott was a little boy, he was found sitting on a knoll in a great and terrific thunderstorm. He was lying on his back, listening to the thunder, looking at the lightning, clapping his hands at each successive flash, and exclaiming with glee, “Bonnie, bonnie!” When Christian hope is in lively exercise, elements of delight may be found in the very storm which causes fear.
Romans 8:24-25. The steadfast boy.—A gentleman in London, having some business one morning to transact at the India House, took with him his son, then only six or seven years of age. The boy was left at one of the outer doors, with instructions to wait until his father came for him. Having been detained within for some time, the father, under the pressure of his engagements, forgot his son, and left by another door. When he reached home in the evening, the first inquiry of the wife was about the missing child, and then the father recollected all. He at once returned to the India House, and found the obedient boy waiting at his post, where he had waited the livelong day. The eternal Father never forgets, but sometimes to our shortsightedness He may appear to forget, and then hope comes to our assistance and teaches us to wait in patience the Father’s time. Wait through the longest day; wait through the darkest night. The shadows will flee away; the morning of perfect explanation will appear. Sorrow may endure for the night; joy will come in the morning of divine revelations.
Romans 8:24-25. Bedridden for twenty years.—A friend once told us that when visiting a woman who had been bedridden for twenty or thirty years, she said to him, “What a useless creature I am, lying here doing nothing, just a burden to others, and everybody around me actively employed! I wonder how it is that God keeps me so long in the world?” And yet the fact was, as our friend told us, that she was the wonder of all who knew her. They could not think or say enough of her patient, cheerful resignation, her self-forgetfulness, her interest in everything and everyone she saw or heard of, her sweetness of temper, her heavenly, Christlike spirit. Her lowly estimate of herself added a charm to her character and life. Her beautiful exemplification of the passive virtues rendered her one of the most useful creatures in the whole parish.