“May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.” – Romans 15:13 NRSVue
“Hopefulness … is the warrior emotion.” – Nick Cave
Having spent much of my adult life engaged in studying and teaching the letters of Paul, I am fascinated to see which phrases or verses emerge from time to time as slogans, even rallying cries, for various groups of Christians. Galatians 3:28 is the most obvious example, at least in my own lifetime and among progressive Christians. Romans 1:16 is another, especially among more evangelically oriented Christians (“For I am not ashamed of the gospel …”) “All things work together for good” (or better: “God makes all things work together”) in 8:28, shorn of its essential context, is a perilous sentimental favorite. I am sure we would find Romans 13:1 on that “hit parade” in some quarters of American nationalism, since it comes to the foreground conveniently by way of squelching dissent.
Recently I have noticed Romans 15:13 cited with some frequency, and reasons for that attention are not hard to locate. Paul’s identification of God with hope and his prayer that Roman believers might “abound in hope” are welcome reminders of hope in a time when even Emily Dickinson’s relentless “thing with feathers” seems to have flown out of sight.
For Paul, as 15:13 makes clear, hope comes from God and through the gifts of the Holy Spirit. Hope not only comes from God and the gifts of the Spirit, but hope is oriented toward God. Paul does occasionally speak of hope in the pedestrian sense of wishing for safe travel, as in 1 Corinthians 16:7, or wanting to be understood, as in 2 Corinthians 1:13. Even in those contexts, however, God has an active role (“if the Lord permits,” “by the grace of God”). For the most part, Paul’s expression of hope is what Philip Ziegler has aptly called “Godward hope” by contrast with “worldward hope.”1 When Romans 4 declares that Abraham was “hoping against hope,” the text attributes to Abraham hope elicited by God’s promise and directed toward God’s action by contrast with a worldward hope that relies on the human capacity for birth.
The language of hope that repeats in chapters 5 and 8 is consistently Godward hope.2 To “boast in our hope of the glory of God”3 is to live out of confidence in God’s work in Jesus. Paul seems to unpack that confidence in Romans 8, with its repeated emphasis on hope (vv. 8, 24). This emphasis returns in chapter 15, with its claims that “we” have hope through Israel’s scriptures, and with the citation of Isaiah about Gentiles “hoping” in the “root of Jesse.”
The prayer of 15:13 encapsulates this Godward hope. The opening lines of chapter 15 anticipate eschatological reconciliation between Jew and Gentile, but that reconciliation does not itself constitute the fullness of Paul’s hope. Something vastly greater even than human reconciliation is at stake. The horizon of 15:1–13 is the glorification of God.
Importantly, 15:13 is a prayer. Paul prays to the “God of hope” for abundance that “you” might abound in hope. Notably, hope is not an ought here, not a spiritual exercise, a muscle to train on a daily basis so as to be ready for the marathon of life. It is a gift, a God-given condition in which Christian life takes place.
All of this is well and good. It makes for good slogans, but then what? What does hope look like? Where do we see it? If hope is a warrior, as Nick Cave so winningly writes4, what does that warrior do? It’s one thing to appreciate Abraham’s “Godward hope” and be moved by Paul’s expectation of God’s eschatological glory. It is quite another to understand what hope looks like for us, in a time when each day brings fresh disasters—whether those of an increasingly fragile climate or those produced by a political climate so toxic we struggle to see a way forward. For preachers and teachers, there is the additional challenge presented by misunderstanding and even contempt for the name Christian, a fact that is itself dispiriting.
How does Paul’s language of hope help us in the living of our faith in these chaotic times? Here I think the remainder of Romans 15 may be instructive. Admittedly, the language of hope does not appear in the passage, yet it displays Paul’s own actions in anticipation of the eschatological unity of Jew and Gentile and fueled by the God of hope.
Romans 15:14–33 is highly unusual in the context of Paul’s letters, a fact that is easily overlooked. Paul does not elsewhere comment on the letter he has just written or sum up his apostolic labor thus far, as he does in vv. 14–21. Nor does he elsewhere expand on his plans going forward, as he does in vv. 22–33. Already those familiar with other letters will be taking note.
What draws my eye in connection with the work of hope is the final section of the chapter (vv. 22–33). Paul first elaborates his desire to go to Rome, having already expressed that desire in the letter opening (1:11–13). Rome will be the launching spot for his work in Spain. But then, quite abruptly, Paul introduces an immediate departure for Jerusalem (v. 25). Only after his work in Jerusalem is complete will Paul visit Rome on the way to a new mission in Spain.
Several things here capture my attention. First, Jerusalem is well out of the way, a detour of roughly 700 nautical miles. No one would plot a course from Corinth to Rome by way of Jerusalem without a major need to do so. Second, Jerusalem is hardly a priority if Paul’s vocation is to take the gospel to new places, which is what he has just affirmed in 15:20.5 A more efficient strategy would have had Paul delegate a representative to Jerusalem with the collection, so that Paul himself might travel directly to Rome and then Spain. Third, Jerusalem is dangerous for Paul, or at least his comments reveal his fear that Jerusalem will be dangerous. It is not at all clear that either Paul or the offering will be welcome in Jerusalem.
Yet this journey is urgent, and not for the reasons that come immediately to mind. It is not just that Jerusalem is in famine, and therefore its population is in urgent need. The more we learn about the fragility of life in the first century, the clearer it becomes that many people experienced serious need on a regular basis. Indeed, most lived close to the edge of disaster at all times.6 Nor is Paul attuned to Jerusalem because of its inherent importance in the history of God’s dealings with Israel. That concern marks Luke’s Gospel and the book of Acts far more than it does the letters of Paul. The collection Paul takes will fulfill human need in Jerusalem, but for Paul the urgency is that it represents the shared participation of Jew and Gentile in the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Even the word he uses conveys this concern. Although above I have used the customary term “collection” for the fund Paul takes to Jerusalem, the Greek word is koinōnia, which actually means a fellowship, a community. As Paul sees it, the fund he takes is primarily an act of making community. Or better, the fund is an act of recognizing a fellowship or community that God has already made. All of those who are “in Christ” have been given to each other by him and remain in relationship with one another as with him (Romans 12:5).7 If believers in Jerusalem reject the collection, the fund, in Paul’s mind that would be tantamount to the rejection of the reality of the body of Christ. The stakes are exceedingly high.
It should not surprise us, then, to find Paul’s request for prayer. In other letters, he asks for prayer but always in a general way (1 Thessalonians 5:25; Philemon 22). Here the request is both urgent and specific: he prays that he will be “delivered” from unbelievers in Jerusalem and that the collection will be accepted by believers in that city. Moreover, he frames the request with the intense verb “contend along with me in prayer.” The struggle here is a real one.
This prayer reveals Paul’s anxiety both for his personal safety and also for the mission. Routinely, New Testament scholars claim that in writing to the Romans Paul needs to establish his authority in a city where he is unknown. (I have regularly written and taught this point myself.) But this prayer, with its fears and needs, seems calculated to undermine Paul’s authority. It looks more like what would be thought weakness than it does like authority. His willingness to subject himself to the charge of weakness in itself conveys the severity of the situation.
Other ways forward are imaginable, if Paul wanted to avoid danger. The smooth answer, the easy answer, would be to give up on the project of recognizing the unity of Jew and Gentile in Christ. It appears, however, that Paul’s confidence (aka hope) in God’s future for Jew and Gentile alike requires him to go to Jerusalem, despite the danger, the risk to reputation, the fear of rejection. He cannot avoid going, because the God of hope has made a fellowship that would not let him do otherwise. A rough analogy (always a dangerous move) familiar to us might be found in Martin Luther King Jr.’s decision to go in person to Memphis in April 1968, despite full awareness of the danger, because his own vocation demanded that he advocate for the struggling garbage workers in that city.
How is this passage connected to hope in our time? I am not proposing that somehow this stage in Paul’s work is a “model” for others, that we find a pattern in this event of the first century and replicate it in our own situations. My point is far simpler: it is that in Paul’s determination to go to Jerusalem we see the evidence of hope. We can trace its outworkings. Godward hope both empowers us and compels us to persist toward what we understand to be God’s will (Romans 12:2), flawed and partial though our knowledge may be. More than merely clinging to some slender thread of hope, Godward hope flourishes among us “by the power of the Holy Spirit” (15:13).
Does this emphasis on the role of God, in the person of Jesus and by the Spirit, deny the reality or importance of life in the world? Mē genoito! as Paul would say. To emphasize Godward hope over against worldward hope may raise that fear in the minds of some, especially given the frequent claim (really a calumny) that Paul is not interested in the real world. It is not that Godward hope abandons life in the human realm, but Godward hope does not rely on myths of human autonomy or self-determination. It exposes the values of the marketplace and the halls of what passes for power for the frauds they are, with their steady practices of quantifying and controlling and manipulating. And it instead relies on the values of the crucified and risen Messiah, the one who died for the weak, the ungodly, the sinners, even those enemies of God–namely, us (Romans 5:6–11). Godward hope looks to the “realer world”8 for how to live hopefully even in these chaotic and cruel days.
