In Christ, Part 4 - Hope in Eternity, Hope in the Now

In Christ:
I've been redeemed from all my former sins.
I've been delivered from the power of sin in my life.
I've died to my old life.
I've been resurrected to new life
I've become a part of Gods new creation.

And now, I have a newfound hope. I have an expectation of good things to come!

Hope for Eternity

Do you remember your life before Jesus?
You were hopeless. Your life was dragging you to Hell! You were filled with dread - the expectation that you were going to be punished for everything you did wrong. We see this life described in Ephesians 2:12 - "at that time you were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world."

This was a terrible condition to find ourselves in...but it was the way we all lived. Our sins cut off our hope for a better future. Although we may not have known exactly how to say it, we were well aware of the truth found in first phrase of Romans 6:23 -  "For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

But now that we're in Christ, we can stop focusing all of our attention on that first phrase. True, sin WILL earn the wages of death - both immediate and eternal. But thank God for the "but" in this verse! When you're in Christ, that "but" will erase the wages of sin! When the sin is taken out of the way, what's left? A hope for Eternal Life!

Now when we leave this life in Christ, we're immediately ushered into the presence of our Savior. Paul clearly tells us in 2 Corinthians 5:8 that when we're "absent from the body", then we're "present with the Lord."

Can you imagine this? I dare you to try!
Imagine standing in front of Love Himself. Imagine standing on the other side of your finish line, having held tightly to your faith until the end. In that moment, every care, every concern, every struggle, all the pressure, and all the battles  - they will be finished forever! My prayer for you is that you'll hear "Well done, good and faithful servant. You've been faithful over the few things in your earthly life. Now I'll make you ruler over many things! Enter into the joy of your Lord!" 

Hope like this is an amazing thing. And it's what Paul referred to in 1 Corinthians 15:19 - "If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men the most pitiable." We have a hope that extends far beyond this life. It's an expectation of a glorious future that will never end!

In Christ, we have hope for eternity.

Expect Better Things

Read 1 Corinthians 15:19 one more time...this time I want point out one word you may not have noticed:

"If in this life only we have hope in Christ..."

Paul's point here is that we don't only have hope for good things NOW, but also of good things to come. This word "only" tells me that we also have hope in this life - right here and right now!

Let's be clear about our terms here. Hope is not wishing for and wanting something. Hope is not some vague desire of what we'd like to have. No, hope is the confident expectation of something good.
We know this when it comes to our eternal hope, right? We're not wishing to go to Heaven, we're expecting it! Why? Because we believe the promise of God. This expectation is what we call hope.

This same expectation extends forward...before eternity, into the life we're living now!

1 Peter 1:3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His abundant mercy has begotten us again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead."

We've already found out that we were (past-tense) raised from the dead with Jesus. This means that we are living in a confident expectation to see God's goodness....right now. 1 Timothy 4:8 makes this clear, "godliness is profitable for all things, having a promise of the life that now is and of that which is to come."

In the same way that we can expect to see God's eternal promises in Heaven, we can also expect to see His immediate promises here on earth. We have hope in this life!

2 Corinthians 1:20 "For all the promises of God in Him are Yes, and in Him Amen, to the glory of God through us." Every promise in the Word of God - from healing to peace, to prosperity, to favor with men, to living in the good of the land - all of them have been given to you in Christ. They're yours right now - and you can confidently expect to see them come to pass.

Psalm 27:13 "I would have lost heart, unless I had believed that I would see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living."

In Christ, I can expect to see the goodness of God in this life.