Hebrews 3:6

Christ, as the Son, is in charge of God’s entire house. And we are God’s house, if we keep our courage and remain confident in our hope in Christ.

Confidence is important in every part of life isn’t it? I find it interesting that many people who are supremely confident in one area of life have no, or very little, confidence in another. We can probably all think of an area where we don’t feel confident, but here the writer speaks about an area in which we all need to be confident – our faith. The word he used here for confidence is sometimes translated as boldness. He knew that as we look to the future we all need to be strong in faith. Everything depends upon it.

Here the writer talks about being confident in our hope in Christ. Hope is a very important concept in the New Testament and we need to make sure that we are understanding it correctly in this context. Donald Coggan, a former Archbishop of Canterbury, once described the word hope as we use it in normal life as “a weak and flabby word”. We use it to speak about things that we would like to happen, while realising that they probably won’t. The writer to the Hebrews was talking about something quite different. He was talking about hope as a rock-like certainty built on the saving death and miraculous resurrection of Christ.

Sadly, the Church rarely looks full of confidence. If anything, it looks as if it is overwhelmed by the challenges of living in a materialistic society that has long since abandoned any notion of faith in God. We need to listen afresh to this letter to the Hebrews. We need to focus our attention on Jesus and recognise that he is the only source of hope. Anything else is only an illusion and will lead to desperate disappointment.

Question

How confident are you of your hope in Christ?

Prayer

Loving God, I praise you that you are the source of all hope. Thank you that in Jesus I can find hope that will never disappoint me. Amen