Perhaps more than anything else human beings crave for hope. In the midst of struggles, we endure because we hope for a day that will be better. In the shadow of failure, we stand up and move forward because we hope that the lessons learned will help us in the next challenge we face. Hope makes life endurable because it keeps us looking to the future-and what we trust will be a brighter day.
This is significant because Jesus has just informed His men that they will abandon Him to His enemies- and the coming cross. Left with only that, their spiritual failure, when it occurs, could be suffocating. Their collapse could be terminal. It is important that they maintain a hope that stretches beyond the events of the next few hours. It is vital for them to see the bigger picture and the hope that inherit in it. For this reason, the Master doesn’t leave them with words of failure and despair. He adds to them words of hope. Notice: “But after I have been raised, I will go ahead of you to Galilee” (Mathew 26:32)
In spite of their coming desertion, Jesus gives them room for hope! All will flee, all protest Jesus’ prophecy, and eventually all do run away, but all will be reunited! Even before they fail, Christ reassures them if restoration to Him and His presence. Not only does He offer them hope of reunion, He offers them the hope of the resurrection. All this will happen, “after [He has] been raised.” The root of all hope for believers is grounded in His resurrection from the dead. This is the testimony of the Bible to us: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His great mercy has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead” (1 Peter 1:3. Emphasis added)
Hope is more than an optimistic perspective or a cheery outlook. Hope is vital or vibrant confidence in the power of God to give life that lasts forever- a hope that is secured and validated by the resurrection of Christ Himself, the first fruit of the resurrection (1 Corinthians 15). That is what makes this so important. Jesus doesn’t tell them to shake it off or to keep their chin up or to not swear it. He instead offers them substantial and significant hope-confidence that God will bring them restoration if heart and mind when Christ is raised from the dead.
