Hope

This lesson turned into two classes. You can find the first here on YouTube, and the second one here on YouTube.

Access the slide deck here. 

1)     Examples of people suffering who respond with future hope.

A)   There is hope after suffering in the Old Testament. One form of hope is restoration.

1)     Promises of blessings (Lev. 26:3ff. / Deut. 28:1-2ff.)

2)     Promises of curses (Lev. 26:14ff. / Deut. 28:15ff.)

3)     Promises of restoration (Lev. 26:40-45 / Deut. 30:1-10)

(a)   1 Kgs. 8:33-34 – Solomon’s temple dedication prayer.

(b)   Is. 54:7-9

B)    While not as prominent, there are a few places where we can even see hope after this life.

1)     Gen. 22 / Heb. 11:17-19 – Abraham considered that God was able even to raise him from the dead.

2)     Job 19:25-27

3)     2 Sam. 12:23 – David’s hope to see his son again.

4)     Is. 25:6-9 (v. 8a)

5)     Is. 26:16-19 (v. 19)

6)     Dan. 12:1-3

C)    Other passages that show hope in suffering.

1)     Ps. 73:1-2, 23-26

D)   “So Christian theodicy cautions that it would be premature for the logical problem of evil to declare victory over God. It is too soon to call the game. There is more to the story. Theodicy appeals to the afterlife for future resolution of the problem of evil. The rewards of heaven and the punishments of hell balance the cosmic ledger, and the beatific vision engulfs human suffering. That move always risks the twin charges of moral insensitivity and intellectual evasion, but Christian theodicy does not answer only to ‘the tribunal of reason,’ it answers also to the tribunal of faith, and faith operates in the realm of mystery, the mystery of God and the mystery of suffering. Christian theodicy lives in hope that God will right all wrongs and make beauty out of ashes, as the teacher says, ‘he has made everything beautiful in its time’ (Eccles. 3:11).”[1]

2)     Suffering will be worth the suffering of this life. This version of hope is transactional. It sees the future as a reward.

A)   Heb. 12:1-2 – Jesus endured the cross for the joy that was set before him.

B)    2 Tim. 4:6-8 – Paul at the end of his life.

1)     If we start in v. 5 Paul tells Timothy to be sober-minded and endure suffering.

2)     Phil. 3:4-11 – “Whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ.”

C)    Passages for us:

1)     Lk. 6:22-23 / Matt. 5:11-12 – Rejoice in suffering because your reward is in heaven.

2)     1 Pet. 1:3-9

3)     1 Pet. 4:12-14

4)     Rev. 2:10 – Do not fear what you are about to suffer…Be faithful unto death, and I will give you the crown of life.

3)     Proportional hope: Suffering will be outweighed by glory.

A)   Rom. 8:18

B)    2 Cor. 4:16-18 (cf. 11:23-27 - Paul describes his "light momentary afflictions")

C)    2 Cor. 5:1ff. – The tent of this life vs the building from God.

D)   “Heaven does not simply balance the cosmic ledger, it engulfs the suffering of the world, and thus reframes the problem of evil entirely. The problem with the problem of evil, from the perspective of eschatology, is that it works with incomplete information. An incomplete equation will always remain unsolved until the missing variables are inserted. Heaven, as the ultimate missing variable, casts the equation of evil into new light. It not only solves the problem of evil: it renders it obsolete.”[2]

4)     God will restore his very good creation.

A)   Acts 3:17-21 – “until the time for restoring all the things about which God spoke”

B)    Recall the second class in this quarter about the Fall:

1)     Everything God did was good (x7).

2)     But then Satan and sin entered the world and…

(a)   Sin

(b)   Suffering

(c)   Death

(d)   Curses

(e)   Natural evil (Gen. 3:17 – “cursed is the ground because of you”)

C)    Our hope is God’s promise to restore his original work and make all things new.

1)     Rev. 21:3-7

2)     Rev. 22:1-5

D)   Christians are currently waiting for the new heavens and the new earth where righteousness dwells.

1)     Is. 65:17-25

2)     2 Pet. 3:7, 11-13

5)     Practical Summary

A)   From someone in class: “Christians need to stop focusing on the effects that evil has on us but rather focus on the fact that it’s much bigger than me. Christ has already beat evil and he has shown us the path forward. We need to keep our eyes in him rather than ourselves or the world around us.”

6)     Question: Will we still have libertarian free will after the restoration, and how will there be no more sin if we still have free will?

A)   First, we don’t know.

1)     1 Jn. 3:2 – “what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is.”

B)    Rev. 21:27 – Nothing unclean will every enter the New Jerusalem.

C)    William Lane Craig – Will there be sin or free will in heaven?

1) https://x.com/5solas2/status/2019115398407565389?s=12

D)   “Likewise, when we chose to forsake all other gods and cling to the true God alone and see him face-to-face, we do not lose our freedom. Actually, we gain a higher freedom…It is like seeing an infinitely beautiful painting wherein we lose all desire to see finitely beautiful paintings since they are all subsumed in the infinite Beauty of God. It is in this way that God defeats evil without destroying our freedom. We are allowed to chose good or evil (Libertarian freedom) here on earth. Once this decision is sealed by death and we see the infinite God we desired to see, that is, we see God fact-to-face we no longer desire and lesser goods, to say nothing of evil. Our freedom moves from the freedom to sin to the freedom from all sin.”[3]

E) “The great goods of Heaven, as pictured in the Christian tradition, include that deep awareness of God which, combined with even moderately good desires, logically rules out any of its inhabitants having the good of being able to choose to reject the good. This deep awareness is an awareness of the ultimate source of things, the perfectly good, loving, and beautiful God to whom the Blessed cannot but respond in worship.”[4]

[1] Mark Scott, Pathways in Theodicy.

[2] Mark Scott, Pathways in Theodicy.

[3] Norman Geisler, The Roots of Evil. 3rd Edition.

[4] Richard Swinburne, Providence and the Problem of Evil.