Romans 8:25

Therefore, one must not seek everything here: we "wait with patience" for the future. When you hear of patience, understand by it the idea of struggles and strenuous labors. For a Christian must endure, awaiting that which is unseen but expected through faith.

Fourth, he presents the conclusion, saying, "but if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience." Hence it should be noted that patience, properly speaking, inclines one to tolerate tribulation with a certain evenness of mind: "be patient in …

But if we hope for that we see not,.... Whether it be the hour of death, or the second coming of Christ, or the resurrection of the dead, and eternal glory; all which are unseen by us, and to be hoped for: then do we with patience wait for it; as that which is certain and real, as something valuable, which will be satisfying, and be received with the utmost joy.

It is our having received the first-fruits of the Spirit, which both quickens our desires and encourages our hopes, and both ways raises our expectations. The first-fruits did both sanctify and ensure the lump. Grace is the first-fruits of glory, it is glory begun.

It is acknowledged that one of the principal graces of a Christian is hope ( 1 Cor. xiii. 13 ), which necessarily implies a good thing to come, which is the object of that hope. Faith respects the promise, hope the thing promised.

25 But if we hope for that we see not, then do we with patience wait for it. In these words the apostle describes a fourth illustrious branch of the happiness of believers, namely, a title to the future glory. This is fitly annexed to our sonship; for as the adoption of sons entitles us to that glory, so the disposition of sons fits and prepares us for it.

But if we hope ... - The effect here stated is one which exists everywhere. Where there is a strong desire for an object, and a corresponding expectation of obtaining it - which constitutes true hope - then we can wait for it with patience. Where there is a strong desire without a corresponding expectation of obtaining it, there is impatience.

ACCORDING to our version "we are saved by hope," but that is scarcely in accordance with other parts of Holy Scripture. Everywhere in the Word of God we are told that we are saved by faith. See the first verse of the fifth chapter— "Therefore being justified by faith." Faith is the saving Grace—not hope—unless only as hope is, under some aspects, tantamount to faith. Faith is the saving Grace and the original should be rendered thus. One wonders that it is not so in the Revised Version—"We were saved in hope."

Sublime and affecting ideas, for which we are indebted to this passage alone! "As we struggle to express in articulate language the desires of our hearts and find that our deepest emotions are the most inexpressible, we 'groan' under this felt inability. But not in vain are these groanings.

quarantine:debris (2026-07-29) — odd-straight-quotes

ACCORDING to our version "we are saved by hope," but that is scarcely in accordance with other parts of Holy Scripture. Everywhere in the Word of God we are told that we are saved by faith. See the first verse of the fifth chapter— "Therefore being justified by faith." Faith is the saving Grace—not hope—unless only as hope is, under some aspects, tantamount to faith. Faith is the saving Grace and the original should be rendered thus. One wonders that it is not so in the Revised Version—"We were saved in hope." It would prevent misapprehension if the passage were so rendered, for as that eminent critic, Bengel, well says, "the words do not describe the means, but the manner of salvation: we are so saved that there may even yet remain something for which we may hope, both of salvation and glory." Believers receive the salvation of their souls as the end of their faith and it is offaith that it might be of Grace. They are saved by faith and in hope. At this present moment Believers are saved and, in a certain sense, completely saved. They are entirely saved from the guilt of sin. The Lord Jesus took their sin and bore it in His body on the tree. He offered an acceptable Atonement, by which the iniquity of all His people is once and forever put away. By faith we are at once saved from the defilement of evil and have free access to God our Father. By faith we are saved from the reigning power of sin in our members. As says the Scripture, "Sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under the Law, but under Grace." The crown is removed from the head of sin and the arm of its strength is broken in the heart of every Christian by the power of faith. Sin strives to get the mastery, but it cannot win the day, for he that is born of God does not commit sin with delight, or as his daily habit, but he keeps himself so that the Evil One touches him not.

But if we hope for that we see not - If we have a well-grounded expectation of our resurrection and final glorification, knowing that such things are necessarily future, and must for a certain time be delayed; then do we patiently wait for them, continue patiently to endure the common ills of life, and whatever tribulations we may be exposed to in consequence of our Christian profession; for we know, Faithful is he who has promised. Hope is a sort of universal blessing, and one of the greatest which God has granted to man. To mankind, in general, life would be intolerable without it; and it is as necessary as faith is even to the followers of God. The ancients have a very instructive and elegant fable concerning it. “Prometheus having made a human body, went up to heaven, and stole some celestial fire to animate it: Jupiter, incensed at the theft, sent down Pandora, with a box full of diseases and plagues of every kind, as an ensnaring present to Prometheus; but he refused to accept it. Epimetheus took and opened it, and instantly all those diseases, etc., by which mankind have been made miserable, flew out, and spread themselves over the whole earth; and only Hope remained at the bottom of the box.” This fable explains itself, as to its main design. Men find life, with its various and unavoidable ills, only supportable by the hope they have of not only getting safely through them, but of enjoying a state of blessedness in the end. Hope is still at the bottom; and therefore man is encouraged to bear up in all the pressures of life. Take away hope, and then black despair and indescribable wretchedness would be the instant result. Hope stands justly among the highest mercies of God.

As long as matters are really hopeful, hope is a mere flattery or platitude; it is only when everything is hopeless that hope begins to be a strength at all. Like all the Christian virtues, it is as unreasonable as it is indispensable.

The truth is that the tradition of Christianity (which is still the only coherent ethic of Europe) rests on two or three paradoxes or mysteries which can easily be impugned in argument and as easily justified in life. One of them, for instance, is the …

Hope is the power of being cheerful in circumstances which we know to be desperate. It is true that there is a state of hope which belongs to bright prospects and the morning; but that is not the virtue of hope. The virtue of hope …