Wednesday 15 March 2017

Hopefully saved

1 Timothy 1
'God our Savior and of Christ Jesus our hope'

God our saviour 
God has saved us from ourselves. He will rescue us from the danger we put ourselves in. He will free us. Liberate us from all the guilt and shame that we carry around from the past, from the things we know we have done wrong or are continuing to do that we know aren't right. God knows that we carry the weight of it around with us. That's why He sent his son. He freed us by allowing us the opportunity to get to know who he is and accept that; He loves us, He forgives us and accepts us.
God is our champion. He is our liberator. He is our knight in shining armour that has charged along and whisked us away from the brink of death, eternal death.

That would not be enough though.

To be rescued - it's great and all that, but what next?

Unless life has a future it's futile.

Unless there's more to life than this freedom from what we do wrong, then it's pretty pointless. There must be a meaning to it, a purpose, a hope. That's why Christ Jesus is our hope.

Christ Jesus our hope

What does your hope rest on?
Do you hope for good luck? Hope your talents, skill, studies are enough? Do you hope in someone else? Or in a particular organisation? These hopes are fallible. At some point they will let you down. The will break your trust or just not deliver what you expect - then what? Then what is there left to hope for or left to hope in?

Jesus.

That's the answer. He is our hope.

There is no point being saved if we have nothing after that. Hope is the desire and expectation of joy to come.
There is purpose in being rescued - there's better stuff coming. Jesus was and is our hope, and he will be our hope for eternity.
Through Jesus' life and death he has given us hope.

God has promised that, 'whoever believes in him (Jesus) should not perish but have eternal life.' (John 3:16).
For me, that's something to live for, the promise that there will be life after this one. There is more living to be done after this Earthly life vanishes, once this mortal body decays there's even greater hope because of Jesus.

We need both a saviour and a hope. If it's one or the other it wouldn't work. What hope would there be if we were stuck overwhelmed by the weight of our wrongdoing? What purpose would we be rescued for unless there's an expectation that there's something better?

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