I’ve often wondered what it means to “in hope believe against hope” [Romans 4:18].
I believe there is more than one way to hope for here there at least appears to be two ways. I believe that one is to hope as the world hopes. This worldly hope, as we shall call it, is little more than a faint thought of positivity. It is a foolish hope. It is a person, with little guarantee as to the outcome of life, wishing [or hoping] or thinking positively as to the future. This is appears to me to be the only hope one can have outside of God. Without “knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises” [2 Pet 1:3-4] we cannot have hope. For what would we hope in? Without this hope we rely on things that are fundamentally and foundationally corrupted. Paul says in Romans that all of creation [and mankind] has been subjected to futility as a consequence of man’s fall. We needn’t look far to find evidence of this.