The Hope of the Church 121 connection with the coming of the Lord. It is not unlikely that, even when it is used alone without any qualifying phrase, as in the expressions, “We are saved by hope,” “rejoicing in hope,” it has the same specific reference. The Epistle to the Hebrews makes frequent use of the word in this way. There was a special reason for this. The Hebrew Christians were a small and despised community, living under the continual influence of that majestic ritual which was still going on in the temple at Jerusalem. The return of Christ was delayed, and there was a strong tendency to slip back into the old ceremonial system. Their patience and hope had need of every encouragement. The writer of the epistle turns their eyes again and again from the shadows of the past to the re- alities that lay before them. Their Messiah had indeed come to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself, but He would come a second time, in glory, with a final and complete salva- tion. This was the hope set before them to which they had fled for refuge. (Heb. 6:18.) Let them hold fast their bold- ness and the glorying of their hope firm unto the end. (Heb. 3 : 6 . ) In a beautiful passage in his first epistle, the apostle John points out the practical value of this Christian grace in its essential relation to the coming of the Lord: “Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be; but we know that, when He shall appear, we shall be like Him; for we shall see Him as He is. And every man that hath this hope in Him purifieth himself, even as He is pure” (1 John 3:2, 3). 5. Redemption is not complete until the second coming of the Lord. The apostles think of salvation in three differ- ent ways ; sometimes with reference to the past, as a fact al- ready assured at the moment of belief in the Lord Jesus Christ; sometimes with reference to the present, as a process still going on ; and sometimes with reference to the future, as an act yet to be accomplished. In this last sense Paul uses
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