Hope
William Langerak explores the virtue of hope as a foundational element of the Christian spiritual life, examining its essential unity with faith and love as described in 1 Corinthians 13:13. The article carefully distinguishes between faith and hope while demonstrating their inseparable connection through covenant love, drawing extensively on Scripture and the Heidelberg Catechism to develop a Reformed understanding of hope as assured confidence in God's promises and character.
Basic to hope is its place in the grand spiritual trinity of the Christian life: faith, hope, and love (I Cor. 13:13). In this relationship, faith and hope are essentially one. Martin Luther once wrote that although faith and hope can be distinguished, there is such affinity between them that, like the two cherubim over the mercy seat, they cannot be divided. And what unites faith and hope is love. For love believeth all things and hopeth all things (I Cor. 13:7). In ardent covenant love, every...
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