Hope is a person. Like everything else, all things are summed up in Jesus – Ephesians 1:10. Peace, love, patience, joy, strength, kindness, power, anointing, righteousness, etc., are not things that Jesus gives us. They are expressions of the life Jesus exudes in us. The same is true about hope. Hope is not a gift from Christ to us; it is the manifestation of Christ in us who lives in perpetual hope. One of my favorite verses in the Bible (and there are a bunch of them) is 1 Peter 1:3; “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His great mercy has caused us to be born again into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.”
At the cross, in Christ, the old hopeless, cynical, pessimistic, despairing, depressed self was crucified and buried. In the resurrection of Jesus, you and I were resurrected in Him as a new self – a totally new creation (creature). Through our union with the resurrected Jesus we were birthed into a new life of which Jesus Himself is the source (all of our fountains are in Him – Psalm 87:7). We were born again into a living hope – the very life of Christ. One of the stark characteristics of the new creature in Christ is vivid hope because you and I get to wake up every morning in hilarious anticipation of a new day in the life of Jesus lived out through us. Hope deferred makes the heart grow sick – Proverbs 13:12. The heart of Jesus never grows sick because Jesus doesn’t do “hope deferred.” Our part is to simply abide in Him, surrendered in childlike faith to His hope-filled disposition.