HOPE! - Days of Future Present

The death of Christ is the ultimate example of God’s deep love for humanity, and His desire that everyone should be saved. When Christ did for us, he did so in humility. He was not weak – he was God after all. But he chose weakness. He became weak for our sake.

Why?

Because he wanted to redeem us. And not only us, but the entire cosmos as well. That which Christ assumed – he redeemed. He became the lowest of the low in order to save the lowest of the low.

Think about that.

God must really love us in order to show that kind of gentleness to us. God became a baby. God became a refugee. God became a boy doing what his parents told him to do. He was a brother to siblings who didn’t always believe in him. He showed up at weddings. He showed up at funerals. He worked a trade. He became homeless. He chose ordinary people and drop-outs to be his disciples. He befriended prostitutes and tax collectors. He showed compassion to his tormentors as he died on the cross – forgiving them. He died as a criminal, between two criminals, in order to redeem criminals. He “carried our diseases.”

What kind of a God would do all this?

A God who is gentle.

A God who comes along side us and suffers with us.

A God who gives us hope of the future age in the midst of our present suffering.

The pledge and guarantee of the age of the future is seen in the Christian message of hope and is written on our hearts by the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit inside of us is the evidence we have of what is to come. We have become united with God through his Spirit which is in Christ, and in the future, at the final consummation, we will be fully united with God.

We have hope that this Kingdom that is breaking into the here and now will someday reach its fulfillment on earth as it is in heaven in completeness. Paul writes about this hope of the future age in many of his letters. In Romans he writes that the entire creation will be “liberated from its bondage to decay.” Paul indicates that we taste the coming age in the present through the Holy Spirit living inside of us.

He writes in Ephesians, “For he has made known to us in all wisdom and insight the mystery of his will, according to his purpose which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth” (Eph. 1:9-10).