Daily Manna · Day 192 · July 11
Hope Not Ashamed
“And hope maketh not ashamed; because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us.”
Imagine two believers in the church at Rome in the late fifties, listening as this letter is read aloud. The first is a Jewish believer, recently back in the city. Some years earlier, the emperor Claudius had ordered all Jews to leave Rome (Acts 18:2), and those coming back would have found a church that had carried on without them. The second is a Gentile who joined the church during those years, and he does not really see why the returning believers should change anything. Part of the reason Paul writes this letter is to keep people like these two together.
The verse reaches each of them differently. For the first man, "hope maketh not ashamed" is about a track record. Everything he hoped for as a Jew has been through a political disaster, and being publicly wrong about God would be a real humiliation for him. The word Paul uses here means the shame of a hope that fails in front of others. For the second man, the danger runs the other way. His hopes have mostly worked out, so he does not think of hoping as risky at all. Yet Paul has just spent two verses on "tribulation," "patience" and "experience."
The reason Paul gives is more than a pep talk for either of them: "because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us." To shed abroad means to pour out freely. The same Greek verb is used of wine and of blood, so this is no trickle. Paul also speaks of it as something already done. So the proof that their hope is safe does not lie in how tomorrow turns out, for the returning exile or the settled Roman. It lies in what God has already done in both of them, before either one knows how anything ends.
So here is a blessing over you, whichever of the two you are more like this morning. May the hope you are afraid to say out loud not put you to shame. May the love already poured into you be more real to you than the outcome you are waiting for. And if you are ever exposed for having hoped, may you find yourself standing beside somebody who hoped differently, with both of you held up by the same love.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 192 is All Her Living (Mark 12:44).