BibleProject | What Gives You Hope?Sample

Hope in Renewal Versus Escape

On a scorching hot day, we instinctively hope for shade. And when violence breaks out, we automatically hope for safety. Similarly, when we experience suffering and ongoing corruption in our world, we often hope for an escape to Heaven where we can rest in peace after we die. But what if such hope is misplaced?

What if Jesus teaches us to rest in peace right now, while we’re alive, and to hope for God’s promised reality of a renewed Earth more than for a divine escape plan?

The New Testament does offer a few ambiguous ideas about people joining God in heavenly paradise after death, but those are not the Bible’s focus. From start (Genesis) to finish (Revelation), Scripture tells a story about God uniting Heaven and Earth together into one beautiful world, where all the goodness of his Kingdom is the same on Earth as it is in the skies. Ours is an escape from death and corruption in our world, not from our world itself.

Like God’s heavenly realm, his renewed creation will be free from death and decay, filled with endless provision and love between all living creatures. Jesus prays to the Father: “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” (Matt. 6:10). He is not generally teaching people to hope for an escape to somewhere better; he’s specifically teaching us to hope for God’s promised renewal of all things.

By hoping this way, we learn to love and bless people more than avoiding or judging them. We learn to care for God’s world rather than to abandon it. Our desire for God’s promised renewal becomes real living hope, and that moves us toward resting in peace right now, here in our world that God is renewing.