Proverbs 10:28 Commentary and Bible Study

Hope is one of the three great graces mentioned in 1 Corinthians 13. It has power to carry us through severe trials without allowing us to fall into despair. Hope takes hold of the future and borrows against it on the basis that all will be paid back when the hope is realised. It is a crucial piece of the believers armour which equips him to fight against the devil, and the devil knows this, and is therefore intent on crushing it. But the hope of the believer has all the strength and certainty of the promise of God. It is not used in Scripture in the sense of a mere possibility to which we attach ourselves, but of a certainty which the God who knows the future will bring to pass. In order to sustain him, a Christian’s hope must answer to all his fears and needs for the future, it must be a certain hope, and it must be fully believed. The Christian life is now a life of hope, for much that we desire and that we need is not yet seen, yet this does not make it any the less real to us. It is not rash for the believer to have a strong and certain hope of heaven for he is resting on the word of the God who cannot lie. But there is another very different form of hope which is nothing but presumption. There is no foundation to it other than the wishful thinking of the wicked. It is not a certain hope but a vague expectation of a future that his imagination attracts him to. It is built on what is likely to take place according to his unbelieving principles, and it is achieved by extending the present into the future. The hope of the wicked is further possibility to sin, to live without God, or at least with the God of the Bible, and where they are not called to account for their deeds, but they forget the Day of Judgment and God’s interruption of earth’s history. On that day the false expectation of the wicked will be brought to an end.