Thursday 24th September

Romans 5 vs 2b  

"And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God.”

Through Jesus Christ our circumstances have changed and now we stand in his grace. It is a present and a continuing situation. Grace that provides a foundation not only of a present reality justification, peace and access to grace but for a future hope.
I mentioned a few days ago that a number of years ago the old family home was extended but that extension was part of a larger scheme that included renovation of the old part of the house that goes back to the 1700’s. It was a simple worker’s cottage. When we first talked about doing the work our initial step was to employ an architect who, once he had spoken to us, took our thoughts and ideas and worked them into a plan which brought to us the real hope of gaining a modern usable family home albeit retaining a lot of the character of the old cottage.

When Paul writes to the Romans of our standing in grace he goes on to write about boasting or rejoicing in a future hope which is the glory of God. In that he moves the focus on from the present to the future; from what we are now to what we will, in God’s grace, become. The hope is not only being in the presence of God in eternity and seeing our Lord face to face as it were, but points to our restoration as true image bearers of God. We will again become perfectly human. It is the complete renovation of the whole person so that we are restored to what we should have been and regain in full all the blessings that once were humanity’s. Since we have known only life in a fallen world we really haven’t a clue what that will be like but the bible in much the same way as the architect who redesigned our old family home gives us a picture and holds out the hope of what that will mean. We find pictures of that in Revelation and in other parts of the New Testament but the words that really inspire me, make me rejoice in this hope of which Paul writes come from John “Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.” (1st John 3:2)

On that day the promises of scripture will become a reality to us, but the hope we have now is much more than hope for the best, the mere longing for something that is uncertain. No, the promises are sure, the hope is a certainty that transforms our present circumstances and that’s where we are going next with Paul.