Some ramblings about Steadfast Hope and steadfast hope for a Christian

So what does steadfast hope mean? There is a great chapter in the New Testament that deals with a hope that is steadfast. That is Hebrews 6:19-20: “This hope we have as an anchor of the soul, a hope both sure and steadfast and one which enters within the veil, where Jesus has entered as a forerunner for us, having become a high priest according to the order of Melchizedek.”

This hope has to do with our union with Jesus Christ and it is based in the truthfulness of God’s Word. As John Calvin, writing about this verse, looks at the simile ‘anchor’ and notes how a ship is held in the midst of rough seas by letting down the anchor into the darkness of the ocean. But he concludes as we all must, that sometimes even with that physical anchor the ship is not held. But he goes on to write of the sureness of God and His Word.

“There is this difference, that an anchor is cast down on the sea because there is solid ground at the bottom, but our hope rises and flies aloft because it finds nothing to stand on in this world. It cannot rely on created things, but finds rest in God alone. Just as the cable on which the anchor hangs joins the ship itself to the ground through a long dark gulf, so the truth of God is a chain for binding us to Himself, so that no distance of place and no darkness may hinder us from cleaving to Him. When we are bound in this way to God, even though we have to contend with continual storms, we are safe from the danger of shipwreck. That is why he says that the anchor is sure and steadfast. It is possible for an anchor to be torn out or for a cable to break or a ship to be broken in pieces by the violence of the waves. But the power of God to support us is quite different, as is also the strength of hope and the firmness of His Word.” (Calvin’s New Testament Commentaries: Hebrews, 1& 2nd Peter, Eerdmans)

So united with Jesus Christ in his death and resurrection and anchored in the hope and truthfulness of God’s word, how do we deal with truth? Once again, only through His Word, Psalm’s 119 tells us that His Word “is a lamp” and a “light” for our feet and our path.

Truthfulness is a part of the Christian's orders. It belongs to the hope we are given. Steadfast hope belongs to those who follow Christ, but it carries all kinds of interesting attributes. Walking in hope we walk outside of darkness, we walk away from lies. We insist on truthfulness.

We belong to a city and a Lord which excludes among other sins, the sins of lying. Yes, we enter, only because of the righteousness of Christ, but we are changed and forgiven to walk in good works as Paul says in Ephesians: “for by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that one may boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.” ( 8:8-10)

Pulling this all together with what I have been writing about the last few weeks, our steadfast hope in Jesus Christ prohibits the use of anti-Semitism because it is basically founded on a lie. In this case many lies about the Jewish people. And we are put in an opposing position to the Lord of the Church if we attempt good works or our own notion of social justice by means of lies.

Indeed when we are silent in the face of such lies we also participate in the lies. I pray the Church as a whole will speak out against the anti-Semitism being pushed and pursued among us. Faithfulness has many twists and turns that we often do not envision as we walk with Christ. But we all are called to faithfulness.

Let us come back to Hebrews, to chapter eleven. That is the great faith chapter which lifts up, not the saints of the New Testament, but the saints of the Hebrew Bible. And some do not realize this but even some saints that existed at the time of the Maccabees.

If the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) was to accept the writings of the author, Sand, used in the booklet Steadfast Hope to discredit the ancestry of the Jewish people, we would find our bible text gone. The faith chapter of Hebrews would be meaningless because for Sand, and undoubtedly for the Israel/Palestine Mission Network leadership who used him, the saints listed in that chapter never existed.

I prefer to listen to David Torrance brother of James and Thomas Torrance. In A Passion for Christ: The Vision that Ignites Ministry,” in the chapter , “The Mission of Christians and Jews,” he writes of five ways God uses the Jewish people to confront the nations of the world. Number one is:

“Their remarkable preservation through history, scattered as they have been across the world and persecuted time and again in most horrific ways, points to the miraculous hand of God who set them apart for himself and promised, ‘Only if these decrees vanish from my sight,’ declares the Lord, ‘will the descendants of Israel ever cease to be a nation before me’ (Jer 31:36). Their preservation points to the hand of God.”

We, as a church, are treading on ground that is infused with God’s blessings and promises as well as his wrath. We are reaching out to touch, with untruthful words, God’s purposes in history.