Hope for the Future (Part Two) Romans 8.18-25

There is probably no other Biblical doctrine that is more important than salvation. It is really the theme of the entire Bible. The Bible is about how God is saving fallen man from sin and death. But this vital doctrine is often treated very lightly by the Church today. Most people speak of salvation as a one-time event that happened when they were baptized, said a prayer, or made a response to a sermon invitation time. Once this transaction was completed, the person has supposedly been saved. And some groups even say that once you are saved you are always saved. You are sort of locked-in for life, no matter what else you might do. In this way of thinking salvation is sort of like getting a spiritual soul-tattoo! Salvation is usually thought of as something like a life-insurance policy. It is for when you die. Then you can pull out your policy and cash it in for heaven! When someone is at death’s door many concerned Christians, especially family members, always want to know if the dying individual is saved, or not. Perhaps they have never shown any interest in God during their life, but when death comes knocking we want the comfort of knowing that our loved one might say the magic words at the last moment and “get saved.” I am not saying that a death-bed confession might not be a real conversion. But I am against this formulaic, mechanical, and almost magical understanding of what it means to be saved or “get saved” as many Christians call it. While there is certainly a point of passing over from death and into life, there is much more to salvation than just that first, initial experience of conversion.

Salvation includes a three-fold process of justification (saved from the penalty of sin), sanctification (saved from the power of sin), and then future glorification (saved from the presence of sin). So we have been saved (justified), we are being saved (sanctified), and we will be saved in the future (glorified). The believer’s hope for the future is this full salvation which is called “glory” by the apostle Paul! Hope is not the world’s wishful thinking, but is really just faith looking forward into the future that God has promised to His children. I believe it is the second and third phases of salvation that are neglected by the Church today. We do focus on the forgiveness of sins that comes when we believe and are baptized into Christ. But what comes after that? Is the believer just supposed to wait for death and then go to heaven? What is there to salvation between that initial conversion experience and our death?

So from one perspective the believer in Christ is saved. We have been justified by faith. The righteousness of God has been imputed to our accounts. This is the basis for our confidence moving forward. If we are not convinced of our justification then it will be very hard to move forward into the next phase of salvation, which is sanctification. It will be difficult because we will probably think that because we still feel the presence and the pull of sinful desires that we must not really be justified. Has anything really changed? Am I really born again? These questions often come into the mind of a believer, especially a new believer. We must base our confidence on the Gospel and what Jesus did for us rather than trying to base our confidence by looking at ourselves and our progress. If we are constantly looking at ourselves we can become too introspective and we will usually find something wrong with ourselves. And then our confidence will be shot to pieces! We must look to Christ and trust in His work. From this position of acceptance and justification we can then begin to work on our sanctification.

But it is extremely important that we do not confuse justification with sanctification. Justification is a legal transaction that takes place instantaneously. The righteousness of God is imputed to us and we are no longer under condemnation (Romans 8.1). But sanctification does not happen instantly. Sanctification is a process. This is the process by which everything in our lives becomes dedicated to God, made suitable for His habitation, and set apart from sin and the world so that we may serve God. The trouble is, we are in much the same position as the Israelites were when they were to possess Canaan: there are still Canaanites occupying the land! Sanctification is like Israel conquering Canaan. The land was theirs but there was some conflict involved in actually possessing it. But remember that we are not justified because we are sanctified. We are justified by faith. We begin the process of sanctification from this position of acceptance, not in order to earn our acceptance with God.

Being justified does not remove us from the realm of sin and it certainly does not remove us from our bodies and the influence of the Flesh. Obviously, we are not transported to heaven the moment we are saved. We are still in the world and in the body. And that means we are in a kind of war-zone! The process of sanctification is going to take place in the very realm where there is still the presence of sin and the possibility of temptation to do evil. That is why it has been correctly stated that the believer has three enemies: the World, the Flesh, and the Devil. Two of those enemies are external to us, but one enemy is within us and we carry it with us everywhere we go!

This introduction of new life in Christ creates a struggle and tension with the Old Order. It is important to understand that the newness of life in Christ cannot be mixed with the old life that follows the principle of sin. Adam and Christ are two different kinds of men who have two different kinds of children. The believer in Christ has the life of Christ in a body that is still in the likeness of Adam. But this does not mean that the two natures can be merged into one. There can be no compromise between Adam and Christ. One man has to dominate. Either the life of Christ must rule or sin will have the dominion. In other words, there is no peace treaty between the principle of sin and that of new life in Christ. There is a constant struggle in which one Principle or the other must come out on top. Think of your life, or your body, as a nation that is undergoing a civil war. The two sides have irreconcilable differences and therefore one must dominate our lives. (We should not think that the New Man and the Old Man are somehow equal. The New Man is far superior to the Old Man. This Biblical principle should not be confused with the pagan philosophy of dualism in which good and evil are opposite, yet equal, forces.) But a believer must give himself to the control of the New Man, or the sinful nature will continue to dominate. If a believer sins then the only explanation is that the Old Man was allowed to dominate. You can’t sin while you are walking in newness of life. If sin continues to dominate a person, then we have every reason to suspect that there is no new life at all. But the ongoing struggle with sin should never be a source of guilt or doubt for the believer in Christ. On the contrary, the believer should sense that this struggle is actually evidence that there is New Life within him.

The Hope of Full Redemption

The believer senses that this tension between the New Life and the Old Order of sin and death means that there is more to salvation than what he has experienced while in the body in this world.

The children of God are never at home in this world and they sense that there is something more to come. Along with this inner conflict comes a sense of dissatisfaction. There is a sense of incompleteness in the children of God. C.S. Lewis said that the fact the Christian does not feel at home in this world is evidence that he has been made for another world. Sometimes Christians have been accused of being escapists. That is, instead of dealing with the problems in the world, we just want to get out of here. This is why there are people who think that Christians are just weak people seeking a crutch on which to lean -- we just can’t deal with our problems in this world and so we have to invent another world. How do we answer that? The longing for a better world and the desire simply to escape the problems of this world is not the same desire. Escaping your trouble in this world could simply be the result of despair. People who commit suicide are escapists. But even those people who criticize Christians for being escapists are the very ones who also want to change the world. The difference between the Christian hope in the world to come and some kind of secular, humanistic utopian society is in how these new worlds will become a reality. The Christian has a hope in God. The secular humanists puts his hope in the evolution and progress of mankind. But the secular humanist cannot accuse the Christian of being an escapist for wanting a better world. Everyone wants that. The difference is that the Christian’s hope is not that this world will simply be improved, but that God will make a new world.

Until this New World comes the believer has a sense of dissatisfaction and incompleteness. This does not mean that salvation is somehow deficient, but that salvation is not finished. We know that when Jesus died He cried out “it is finished.” So can we really say that there is something left undone? Was Christ’s death not sufficient for full salvation? Christ’s death was enough to accomplish what was required for salvation. But that does not mean that everything Christ died to accomplish has come to pass in actual experience.

There is an aspect of salvation that believers have not yet experienced. This is the hope of glory. What is the future hope of the children of God? What aspect of salvation is still in the future? What are the children of God waiting for and looking forward to?

Whatever this hope of glory is, it cannot be something that we can experience while in the body and in this present world. Something has to change before the children of God can experience the fullness of salvation. First, our environment has to change. We are living in a fallen world that has been cursed because of sin. Secondly, our bodies must change. Our bodies are also fallen and subject to sin and death. Obviously, these two changes are things we cannot bring about but we must wait on God to do His work.

So what do we do in the meantime? How does this hope have an impact on believers still in the world? We are not instantly translated to heaven when we are saved but are left in the body and in the world. But for what purpose? If everything we are hoping for is still to come in the future, then what should we be doing now? Actually, the time between our justification and our glorification is vital. This time is for our sanctification, which takes place in a realm that is fallen and filled with conflict. We are in a state of preparation for God’s glorious future salvation.

Why Do We Need Hope?

Imagine that you entered a very difficult sporting event, like a marathon. You expect that there will be a starting line and a finish line. But what if it was announced that in this particular race, there was no finish line? You were just to keep running with no goal or end in sight. Would you even begin that race? Even if you enjoyed running and were in excellent physical condition, you could not and would not participate in a race without a goal and an end. Not only would your body give out, but not having an end would discourage you psychologically. You would have no hope.

Hope is essential to life. Without hope we soon give up. The same principle applies to the Christian life. We must have hope. Living by faith is like running in a race (see Heb. 12.1). There is a goal and a finish line where there is a great reward. The race is hard and it is a struggle to keep going. Hope is what keeps us going. While in this world we have to exert a tremendous amount of effort, just like a runner in a race, and there are obstacles, difficulties, and resistance to reaching our goal.

But the Believer lives in hope that this present struggle will not last forever. Eventually, if we keep running, we will reach our goal. Without this hope the race would be too difficult and we would either fail to start at all or we would soon give up.

Glory is Ahead

The Believer lives with the hope of glory or the fullness of salvation. The term “glory” in Scripture has to do with the revelation of something, and usually has something to do with God Himself. The glory of God is when something about God is manifested, or made known. Sometimes this glory had to do with a visible manifestation of the presence of God, such as the glory of God that descended on the Tabernacle. This glory was usually accompanied by some kind of bright light and perhaps even a kind of fire that burned or a glowing cloud. Then everyone knew that God was present. Moses asked to see the glory of God, but was allowed only to see the afterglow of God’s glory. No one in the flesh can see the fullness of God’s holy presence and live.

The hope of glory includes being able to be in the presence of God’s glory without any separation caused by sin or the flesh. The believer looks forward to being forever in the very presence of God and seeing His face (Rev. 22.4). This is something that believers are actually seeking and wanting! The hope of glory is that day when the veil (which is the physical world and these mortal bodies) that separates us from God will be lifted.

But there is also an aspect of this glory that has to do with the Saved themselves. There is some glory that will be ours and will be manifested in us. This includes the redemption of the body and the removal of mortality. This new life in Christ is like a deposit of glory that God has made in us.
But the glory is hidden by our mortal bodies. We have a treasure in jars of clay (2 Cor. 4.7). Someday the jar of clay that is the mortal body will be broken, like Gideon and his army broke their vessels, and the glory that is inside will shine forth.

The Redeemed don’t look like anything special in this world. Sometimes it is hard to believe that anything has changed with us at all! Our glory is covered by mortality. This was also true of Jesus when He was here in the flesh. But on the Mount of Transfiguration the disciples saw some of His glory “leak” out!

What we will be has not yet been made known (1 John 3.2). But we know we will be like Jesus. He is the first of our glorified Race! We are going to get a body like His glorious body (Phil. 3.20).

When we get this new, glorified body, the true identity of the saints will be seen. What we are now in the body is not really who we are in Christ. What you can see belongs to the Old Order, which is going to pass away. What belongs to the Old Order is what is presently causing the children of God to be frustrated. These mortal “coils” severely limit us and keep us from doing what we really want to do. I am talking about our service to God, not just some kind of superhuman feats of physical strength. Simply dealing with the body, especially the desires Flesh, keeps us from really being what we were recreated in Christ to be. Most of our energy goes into keeping our bodies and desires in check. In a sense our bodies are working against us and great energy must be exerted to get them to work for us.

But in the future the believer will not have to deal with the downward pull of sin and the Flesh. Our new bodies will not be subjected to sin or death. We will find that we are incapable of even producing a contrary thought or desire! The New Body will be in perfect agreement with the New Creation that we have already become in Christ. Now we have a redeemed nature in an unredeemed body. Eventually the body will be made to match the spirit of the Redeemed!

This full redemption of the body will result in a glorious freedom to be what we were saved to be. There will be no more struggle or conflict. We have been so busy fighting there is a sense in which the Redeemed have never really even started to serve the Lord and do what He has saved us to do, which is what we really want to do.

We would like to be rid of everything that is distracting us from the Lord. While we do serve the Lord even in this body, we are limited by our mortality. We probably don’t even realize how weak we really are!

That being said, we do what we can do while we would do much more. Our true service is still to come. We start serving God while still in this body. We are being trained for the true service.
Some of God’s people get frustrated by how little they feel they can do for the Lord here in this world. This feeling of frustration should be expected because we are not fully redeemed. The desire to do more is evidence of New Life and is blessed by God. If we are good stewards of our talents now we will reign over cities in the future!

The Effects of this Hope

Confident of Victory

This future hope enables the believer to continue to struggle against the Flesh, knowing that he can be victorious, and will eventually be delivered. For the Believer the future is now. We are already living in the New, even in the midst of the Old. We are like a person who just became engaged to be married. He or she is not actually married yet, but there are preparations going on so that in some sense the engaged person is living in the future now. What is going to happen in the future is influencing, even dominating, their thoughts, feelings, and actions even in the present. When there is something really good in the future, this provides a high level of motivation to do whatever is necessary to reach that future goal. Hardships are endured for the sake of that glorious future. Difficult work is done with the future reward in mind.

Of course, the future that God has promised is something we must believe since we have not seen it yet. However, it is not a vague hope or a completely unknown future. This is because we see Jesus in His glory. (We “see” Him by faith, of course, not by our physical sight! But we have the hope that we will actually see Him when He comes again!) Jesus in His glory, the glory of His resurrection and ascension into Heaven, is like a little glimpse into the future glory.

It is like someone from the future has come back in time to show us a little glimpse of what things will be like! Did you know that the time in some places in the world is nearly an entire day ahead of us? They are already in the future, in some sense. If someone called you from Australia, for example, they would be calling you from tomorrow! On New Year’s Eve they would be calling you from next year! In the same way the Gospel is like a call from the future and we need to get ready for that future glory so when it is here we will fit in.

Pleasing God in the Body

The Believer is preparing for the future by living to please God in the body now. It would be pretentious to say we are preparing for a certain future while doing nothing that is in harmony with that desired end. This would be like a college student who says he is working on a degree, but never goes to class or cracks open a book! Likewise, it is presumptuous for a person to claim to be a Christian yet appear to be making no progress toward the hope of glory.

This hope of glory includes a powerful, inward, moral motivation. This hope is what motivates and empowers holy living (See 1 John 3.3). Holiness is motivated by hope, not by Law. A person who is not sanctified is a person without hope. I mean that subjectively and objectively. A person who is not sanctified has no hope within himself and therefore has no hope ahead either. It is nothing but sheer delusion for a person to think that he is going to heaven when he dies while he has no connection to heaven in life. A person who does not serve God in this world will not serve God in the World to Come. In fact, I don’t think there is any evidence that people who have no interest in God here would even WANT to be in the presence of God there in the World to Come.

Preparation for inhabiting the New Body begins while we are still in these mortal bodies. I think this has to do with the great glory and high calling that is in salvation. We need a period of orientation, just like a person who is becoming a citizen of a new country needs a period of naturalization in order to fit in. Believers are being cultured to fit into the Kingdom of God that has come in Jesus Christ and will come in its fullness in the very near future!


Desire Fulfilled

Hope is closely linked to desire and longing. This hope of glory is something Christians are longing for with an eager anticipation. Christianity does not teach the cessation of desire. God created us with the capacity to desire something. The problem is that these desires often become prostituted. The fact that we can love the wrong things does not mean we should just stop loving altogether. We should learn to love the right things! The solution for sinful desires is not to just stop having desires, but for those desires to be fulfilled by God in His way and in His time. For every human desire there is a legitimate fulfillment that God means to satisfy. On the other hand, any legitimate desire, if we attempt to fulfill it without God, can become idolatry. Augustine said that sin is taking any legitimate desire and attempting to fulfill it apart from God. I am not referring to those base desires of the sinful nature. But I suspect that even beneath these twisted desires is a legitimate desire that has been prostituted. But the New Man has desires too. The hope of glory means the anticipation that God will fulfill all the holy desires of the New Creation that He has already begun in the Redeemed.

These holy desires for glory can effectively push out all affection for this present, evil world. In fact, this is the only way to lose our love for this present world. A person who has no hope is going to be hopelessly in love with this World. Why would you let go of this present world unless you had hope that there is another world and that you might have a way of entering that world? Of course, just because there is another world does not guarantee that you can get there. But the Gospel is the best news in this world because it not only tells us there is another world on its way but that God has made a way for us have a place there. The Gospel says that we don’t deserve a place there, any more than a criminal deserves a Caribbean vacation. But purely by grace we can be made into new creatures who have a place in that new world that is coming. And when we are absolutely convinced that this new world is real and that we really have a home there, we will gladly let go of this world. It is hope that lets go of what we cannot keep in order to gain what we cannot lose.