Do we live in troubled times? Of course we do. I don’t need to give you a litany of the terrible things happening in our world. You see it 24/7 on your news feed, social media, and from the people around you who are sharing and passing along more of the same. It is a common refrain that things are worse than ever. In the midst of all this, people see it as only getting worse, with no hope for the future. In a certain sense, this is an understandable response. However, that is only if we do two things: forget what history can teach us and disregard what God’s Word tells us.

The Bible has a great deal to say about hope. In fact, the word shows up nearly 200 times. When it speaks of hope, it doesn’t do so with a Pollyannaish wishful thinking that ignores reality. Rather, it fully acknowledges the struggles of life, but denies that that is the complete picture of reality. Biblical hope looks at what is going on in life while pointing people to the truth that there is more going on than meets the eye. God is at work even in the most desperate and dangerous of times, and that gives the follower of Christ the assurance that in spite of and sometimes through the hardships of life, God is doing something extraordinary, and one day it will all be revealed. Biblical hope is the deep, settled, conviction that no matter what the circumstances, followers of Jesus can stand firm, calm, gracious, and loving, because God is still God and cannot be thwarted.

Paul’s Letter to the Romans speaks of hope more than any other New Testament writing. That in itself is shocking when you consider that he is writing to Christians who are living in the shadow of an Emperor who will one day set many of them on fire to function as human tiki-torches to illuminate the streets of Rome. In chapter 5, verses 1-5, Paul says this:

Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. ² Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. ³ Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, ⁴ and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, ⁵ and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.

I want you to see how provocative and counterintuitive Paul’s words are in this passage. Look at what he says about suffering, Rejoice in your sufferings. Say what? Believe it or not, that is one of the most common themes you can find in the New Testament. Jesus says to consider yourself blessed when people persecute you for your faith. (Matthew 5:10) Then he doubles down on it in verse 11 when he says blessed are you when they revile you and persecute you and say all manner of terrible things towards you. If we still have not gotten the point, in verse 12 He says,  Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

Evidently, the first disciples took Jesus at His word because when they were arrested and beaten in Acts chapter 5, because they were preaching the name of Jesus and that He rose from the dead. They walked out from that experience, rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer dishonor for the name. (Acts 5:41) That attitude was the default response of the early Christians for the first 300 years of Christianity. That mindswt is also one of the main drivers behind the spread of Jesus’ message across the Roman Empire, resulting in countless people coming to faith in Jesus.

Why? Why would people come to believe a faith in which people were regularly being persecuted for it? One significant reason was because of the way they responded to that persecution. They didn’t lash out. They didn’t take up arms to defend themselves. They actually rejoiced, following the words of James, the brother of Jesus:  Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. (James 1:2-4)

How could they rejoice? It was due to the sure hope of the Gospel’s promise and their participation in Christ’s life. They lived for Jesus in the here and now and knew that they were one with Him because, as both Paul and James said, those hardships are used by God to shape their character and make them more like Jesus. And more than anything, they wanted to be like Jesus. As a result, they could endure anything in this life with hope because they knew what eternity had in store for them.

If those early Christians had raged against their persecutors and treated them as enemies to be defeated, the Christian movement would never have gotten off the ground. How can I say that? Simply because it would have shown itself to be no different than any other human-empowered movement. It would have been the expected response and would have been met with greater derision, and violence. But, because it was Spirit-empowered, rejoicing at sharing in the fellowship of Christ’s sufferings, (Philippians 3:10) the persecutors eventually ran out of steam. Persecution had the opposite effect from what they expected. That is why the second-century martyr Tertullian could say, “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church.”

Those early Christians were as bold as it is possible to be. They never backed down in their preaching of the Cross and the Resurrection. They also never backed down from radically loving those who were attacking and persecuting them. That takes courage and strength that is rarely evident in today’s divisive climate. It also requires an assurance that no matter how things appear at the moment, we know that God has other plans, and that fills us with hope.

Why is that kind of character and behavior, that was so prevalent among early Christians, so lacking today? I believe what happened has three components. First, Christianity became the dominant religion of Western civilization. As a result, Christians became comfortable. There was no longer a price to pay for being a Christian. In fact is was the opposite, there were social and political benefits to being a Christian and it was detrimental if you were not. For centuries, Christians operated from a majority position of power, and many forgot that to be a Christian means to follow a suffering, crucified savior, whose power is most dramatically demonstrated through weakness. Paul says as much in 2 Corinthians 12:9, “But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore, I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. Those early Christians were able to be hopeful, and strong, and bold, and loving, all at the same time, not because they relied on their own power, but because they realized that their power was minuscule compared to the power found by relying on Christ and the sure hope of the Gospel.

Second, as Western civilization became more secularized, Christianity, as it was being practiced, had less and less influence. Christians became concerned and eventually scared. Instead of hope being built on Jesus’ blood and righteousness, as the hymn says, many Christians built our hope on our institutions and a society that purported to exhibit Christian values. When the secularization became more and more obvious, particularly in the late 1970’s and early 80’s, instead of looking back to the early church and asking how they dealt with a culture that did not honor Jesus, people looked to our human ways of making a difference. Instead of placing hope in the power of the Gospel, hope was placed it in the tools and methods of the world. Christians started boycotting businesses. They formed political action committees in an effort to regain power via the ballot box. Pastors preached sermons against the evils of secular humanism. Churches raged against people who were HIV positive, even turning them away from churches like modern day lepers. It should have been a wake up call when Princess Diana, acting much like Jesus with the lepers, hugged a seven year old AIDS infected child, to the shock of the world. That moment of compassion is viewed as the pivotal moment in the debate over AIDS and caused a seismic shift in public perception. Sadly, most of the church was behind the curve on that. Why? Because the way of the Cross was being forgotten.

Third, in the United States, many have conflated Christianity with assorted political positions and equated one’s stance on political positions with whether or not one is a good Christian, or even a Christian at all. I have said many times, neither party has a monopoly on biblical truth or ethics. One has great concern for the sanctity of marriage, the life of those not yet born, and justice that deals with evil doers. Those can all be grounded in Scripture. The other has deep concerns for the marginalized, widows, orphans, minorities, and immigrants, as well as justice, meaning fair treatment of those who have little to no power. Those are also issues found in abundance in Scripture, and Christians need to be at the forefront of all of that. But maybe not in the way it is currently practiced.

Again I go back to history and the early centuries of the church. In the first three centuries of Christianity, the Roman government did not enact any laws that promoted Christianity or Christian values. It was quite the opposite. There were periodic edicts calling for the persecution of Christians. Christian ideals were viewed as beneath the average Roman. They were seen as promoting weakness and servitude. To the Romans way of thinking there is no chance anyone would follow a supposed savoir who was crucified. They were right about the weakness and servitude. But they were wrong to think that demonstrated a lack of power. That is exactly where power, the power of Christ, was most radically demonstrated. Those early followers of Jesus lived out what it meant to pick up one’s cross on a daily basis. It wasn’t just a spiritual metaphor. It was the way they reached people with the radical, provocative message of Jesus. That is what changed the Roman Empire from a Ceasar worshipping culture to a Jesus worshipping culture. That is what caused the abortion rate to drop dramatically, discarded newborns to be adopted and cared for, the plague victim to be comforted, and the list goes on. Each time a Christian picked up their cross it cost them something. They sacrificed. At the very least they suffered ridicule. For many it cost them financially to take in more mouths to feed. For others it cost them their lives, as martyrs, or as people who succumbed to the plague as they care for others, some of whom were the very people who previously persecuted them.

What the early Christians accomplished was only possible because of the deep, abiding, unshakable assurance they had in Jesus, in who He was and what He did. Their eyes were constantly set on Him. They looked to Him and the promise of His kingdom and return. That is the essence of Biblical Hope. Far from causing them to abandon this world, becoming so heavenly-minded that they were no earthly good, instead because of that hope in Christ, they became people committed to demonstrating the hope of the Gospel through their lives and how they sacrificially loved people. They accomplished that, not in spite of hardship, suffering, and persecution, but in the midst of and because of it. Their world was far more dangerous than that of Christians living in westernized countries yet they were filled with hope. Calamity is constant. Bad things happen. Sometimes it gets worse, sometimes revival happens and it gets better, only for the tide to go out again and get worse. Jesus said, do not be afraid. Have hope and trust in Him.