God of Hope

Worlds die, and our own world is susceptible to change, leaving us wondering how to live in hope. Through the gospel, though, hope is not simply a desire or expectation for future good. Hope is our present possession. As members of Christ who is our Hope, we form a community of hope, dispersed in hope to share the mission of Jesus. In God of Hope, Peter J. Leithart writes about the nature of hope in the wake of a pandemic and massive economic and political changes in Western civilization and across the globe. Christianity is no longer a “Western” religion, as the world is no longer a Western playground. In light of such changes, Leithart shows how the Bible's vision of hope surpasses common understandings of hope as an optimistic feeling or human virtue. Since God is hope, hope is far more than either of these things. Hope is God’s own life, and our hope is the effect, the excess, the overplus of the work of the God of hope in us. God of Hope reckons with what it means to be saved and what the new heavens and new earth entail, that we are not only set back on track toward the glory of new-creation life but also being given now the substance of future glory, as Christ our hope lives in us by His Spirit. Through us, He brings His Father’s promises to reality, until the knowledge of the Lord covers the earth as the waters cover the sea.