Hope in the Heavens

We always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you, because we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love you have for all God's people—the faith and love that spring from the hope stored up for you in heaven and about which you have already heard in the true message of the gospel that has come to you.

Colossians 1:3-6a

Did you pick out the three words that are crucial there: faith, hope, and love? We could say these are favorite words of the apostle. He uses this triad in several of his letters. In 1 Thessalonians he writes about your work of faith, your labor of love, and your patience of hope. We also remember that wonderful triad at the end of 1 Corinthians 13, And now abide faith, hope, and love, but the greatest of these is love.

Yes, love is what is needed in our world. But, according to Paul's statement, love comes from faith. It is important to recognize that these wonderfully warm words, faith, love and hope, are related. These words mark what we could well call qualities of authentic Christians. The mark of a true Christian will be: you have faith and love which spring from hope, and that hope is found in the gospel. It's important to notice that hope produces faith, and faith in turn grows into love. Hope is the root, faith is the plant, and love is the fruit. Thus, hope is foundational.

This gives rise to the question, what produces hope? We all desperately need hope. Without hope men lose the desire to live. In hopeless moments we feel like saying, What is the use of going on? What, then, produces hope? Paul's answer is that hope is awakened by the gospel. That is the good news. The gospel addresses itself to losers — not to the successful, but to the failures, the weak, the empty, the lost among us, and it gives them hope. When nothing else can give them hope, the gospel will. But how does hearing the story of Jesus: his birth, his life, his death, his resurrection and his coming by the Spirit, give hope that awakens faith and stimulates love for others? The answer is in this one phrase, the hope stored up for you in heaven.

To most, that immediately suggests life after death, when we will go to be with the Lord and all the glory of eternity will be ours. Though it is a wonderful truth, the hope of life after death, this translation obscures what is really being said. The singular word heaven is what misleads us. The Greek text actually says, hope is available to you in the heavens — plural. This term the heavens refers not to heaven after death, but to the invisible spiritual kingdom that surrounds us on all sides right now. Thus, what this is saying is that the gospel reveals there is hope for us immediately, coming from that invisible spiritual kingdom which surrounds us at this very moment. That is the hope awakened by the gospel. It is the good news that right now, whatever you are facing, in your moment of weakness or hopelessness, Jesus is available to you. His strength can be imparted to you, his wisdom granted to you to steady you, strengthen you and make you to stand. That is the hope of the gospel. That is what awakens faith.

Father, thank you for the hope I have in the heavens. May that hope awaken in me both faith and love.