Living Hope

Illustration by Ben Evans

Each year at Harding School of Theology, a theme is chosen to guide the hearts and minds of faculty and students in chapel, coursework and conversation. The theme for the 2025-26 academic year is A Living Hope.

By Matthew D. Love, instructor 

“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! By his great mercy he has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.” 1 Peter 1:3 

For Christians, hope is more than Dickinson’s “the thing with feathers.” It is more than a good idea or a compelling vision. It is far more than mere optimism or a hoping against hope that things turn out all right. It is, in fact, more than a belief in the afterlife — we are not unique to believe in such a thing. For Christians, hope is found in the resurrected Son of God. 

First-day-of-the-week hope cannot be contained in an empty tomb, even if the barren grave is a metonymy for the resurrection. The Christian’s hope is not found in a vacuous rock interior; it is found in the one who left it. The church does not have an empty tomb but a living Lord. Writing to a constellation of beleaguered congregations, the Apostle Peter reminds Christians of their “living hope.” This hope is not based on subjective wish-fulfillment but objective reality: Jesus Christ, raised from the dead. Believers have been born again into this hope, so that hope is not only a doctrine, something known or possessed, but a new world into which we have been born.  

Hope in Christ opens to us a future; it also opens to us a present. The Christian hope is good today; it is good news for now. We no longer must wait like children for holiday in a world that is, as Lewis described, “always winter, never Christmas.” Already, spring thaws this world of frost and shadow, as the poet wrote, “Grief melts away/ Like snow in May,/ As if there were no such cold thing.” So, the prophet writes, “The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning” (Lam 3:22–23), and the psalmist sings, “Weeping may linger for the night, but joy comes with the morning” (Ps 30:5).  

Christian faith is a forward-facing faith. A new present and future are made possible by this new reality in the resurrected one who made true that “death has been swallowed up in victory” (1 Cor 15:54). Theologian Jürgen Moltmann names how this hope impacts the present: “The more totally we trust in resurrection and eternal life, the more we can love this life — and the lives of those dear to us — with abandon, loving all that lives and our life together here on earth. We no longer have to cling to anything, not even to ourselves. It will all be restored in the end.”  

Hope is here and now, like the sun, energizing every part of our world and every moment of our lives. “The brightness of the Light divine/ Doth now into our darkness shine,” wrote Martin Luther. Paul couples hope with steadfastness, applying hope to the quotidian tasks of Christian living: Our “work of faith and labor of love and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Thess 1:3). Christian hope yields steadfastness (ὑπομονή). It gives grace and meaning to all we do, from our studies to our service. We can put the hand to the plow and not look back.  

“A living hope” means that nothing not of God is permanent for us: whether failure, sin, loss, or anxiety — not even death. “A living hope” means that the good we do today — however small — matters. Macbeth was dead wrong. Life is not “a tale/ Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury/ Signifying nothing.” The living Lord is with the church giving eternal significance to all our good work. A new world has opened to us in Christ’s resurrection. The author of life is with the church making possible tomorrow, but, just as good, making possible today.