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What the Bible says about Hope , Deferred
(From Forerunner Commentary)

Galatians 6:9

"Hope deferred," the proverb says, "makes the heart sick." Devotion to Christianity is not easy in this world because the pull to just slide is constantly present, and the Galatians were losing their attentiveness. A synonym for devotion is "attentiveness," and these people were becoming inattentive in their devotion to Christ.

They had lost sight of the real goal and entirely neglected what Christ was doing for them on a daily basis. He had not lost His attentiveness to them. Because they had allowed themselves to drift, they were not aware what Christ was doing for them out of His love for them.

If we can think of this in a human sense, it was as if He were being spurned, where one of the two parties involved in a loving relationship is doing all the good things and the other is passive. So, there was Christ, making the effort through His apostles—through the church and His ministry by means of the Spirit—to stir them up, but they were not paying a great deal of attention.

How quickly they forgot that without Him we can do nothing (John 15:5)! If they were going to have any spiritual growth and reward, it would be through their relationship with Christ. Yet, they were forgetting that their supply of the Spirit, as it were, was coming from Him. He is the main trunk of the tree—He is the vine, we are the branches—and so the relationship is all-important.

Daily, He prepares us for the Kingdom. "I go and prepare a place for you," He says in John 14:2. He is working with us on a daily basis, forgiving us, leading us, being patient with us, and providing for us. However, the Galatians were instead looking longingly at the world for gratification and relief.

If a person feels that his affections are abused by the one he loves, it impairs his power to grow because people tend to follow the lead of their emotions. Human beings are very emotional creatures. These Galatians felt that, because He had not returned according to their expectations, and because Christ and the Father had allowed them to go through persecutions—both economic and social—they were being neglected. They were feeling as though their affections for Christ were being abused. They thus allowed themselves to follow the lead of their emotions.

It is a principle that what we like to do, we gradually become. We then set our wills to do what we like to do. We must be very careful about what we set our emotions upon.

John W. Ritenbaugh
How to Know We Love Christ

1 Thessalonians 4:13

What follows this verse is the instruction regarding the return of Jesus Christ at the seventh trump.

So, where in the grand scheme of things is AD 50, the date of Paul's writing of this epistle? It is a mere nineteen years after Christ's death and resurrection, and He has not returned yet. It is a topic of hot conversation in the fellowship of the people of the church of God. Some are beginning to worry; some are beginning to feel that it is taken too long. Their hope is being deferred.

So, Paul has to write them, instructing them about the return of Jesus Christ, and to exhort them to get their hope back on track!

John W. Ritenbaugh
How to Know We Love Christ

Hebrews 10:34-35

We should add to this their deferred expectation of the return of Jesus Christ and the establishment of the Kingdom of God. In them were high expectations of Christ's return, and conversely, the ever-diminishing hope that He would come in their lifetimes, combined with the difficulties of Christian life.

Does this apply to us today? Could we, too, feel that the return of Jesus Christ may be farther off and be beginning to have somewhat the same attitude as these people did?

John W. Ritenbaugh
How to Know We Love Christ


 




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