We are "Christ-hopers"
“'Staying under’ (is) the opposite of ‘withdrawing from underneath’ some burden or hardship. This metaphorical, and in particular N.T. spiritualized, meaning is not to be confounded with the Stoic ‘apathy’, for the latter is an artificial indifference forced by the will, whilst the Christian patience is an inward submission inspired by other positive gains and satisfactions in view. Hence, ‘hope’ and ‘patience’ in the Christian sequence of thought naturally go together (cp. Romans 5:3,4, 8:25, 15:4, 1 Thess. 1:3).
“…The suffusion of the hoping state of mind with profound feeling and the strong concentration of interest upon it as a life-concern are well illustrated by 1 Cor. 15:19, a statement which… might be paraphrased as follows: If we have turned out to be no more than Christ-hopers and staked on that our whole present life, then we are of all men most pitiable… hope without corresponding reality or least a principle of realization, is the most futile and ill-fated frustration of life-purpose… when this futile hope so engrosses a man as to monopolize him for an unreal world such a state of mind involves the forfeit of all palpable realities of life, a sacrifice at bottom of all this worldliness for an other-worldliness that has no substance (…the force of the periphrastic perfect, ‘have been hopers’ – in vs. 19 – will be noted; it describes such as have acquired hope and continued to live on that basis ever since…)
“…The pagan, who lives without God and without hope in the world, has at least the enjoyment of the earthly and transitory; the Christian whose hope puts him to shame has not even this: he has lost what he had and received nothing in return (1 Cor. 15:32). It is significant…that Paul makes hope the source of that peculiar exaltation which he calls (boasting) or (rejoicing). There is a genuinely enthusiastic element in the experience of hoping (Romans 5:2,3, 1 Thessalonians 2:19).
“…the believer’s hope is a most potent ferment and stimulant in the religious consciousness of the early Christian, and not the least in the Pauline churches. After all, what is most convincing in this respect is the indubitable expectation of the nearness of the parousia which pervaded the Christian mind.” – Geerhardus Vos, The Pauline Eschatology, pp. 31-32, n39,40
“…The suffusion of the hoping state of mind with profound feeling and the strong concentration of interest upon it as a life-concern are well illustrated by 1 Cor. 15:19, a statement which… might be paraphrased as follows: If we have turned out to be no more than Christ-hopers and staked on that our whole present life, then we are of all men most pitiable… hope without corresponding reality or least a principle of realization, is the most futile and ill-fated frustration of life-purpose… when this futile hope so engrosses a man as to monopolize him for an unreal world such a state of mind involves the forfeit of all palpable realities of life, a sacrifice at bottom of all this worldliness for an other-worldliness that has no substance (…the force of the periphrastic perfect, ‘have been hopers’ – in vs. 19 – will be noted; it describes such as have acquired hope and continued to live on that basis ever since…)
“…The pagan, who lives without God and without hope in the world, has at least the enjoyment of the earthly and transitory; the Christian whose hope puts him to shame has not even this: he has lost what he had and received nothing in return (1 Cor. 15:32). It is significant…that Paul makes hope the source of that peculiar exaltation which he calls (boasting) or (rejoicing). There is a genuinely enthusiastic element in the experience of hoping (Romans 5:2,3, 1 Thessalonians 2:19).
“…the believer’s hope is a most potent ferment and stimulant in the religious consciousness of the early Christian, and not the least in the Pauline churches. After all, what is most convincing in this respect is the indubitable expectation of the nearness of the parousia which pervaded the Christian mind.” – Geerhardus Vos, The Pauline Eschatology, pp. 31-32, n39,40
posted by Chad Richard Bresson at 6/15/2006 09:08:00 AM
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