11. The God of Hope
The reason for our expectation, the basis of our persistence, and the cause of our joy … In his letter to the Romans, the apostle Paul included a number of short prayers (15:5, 6, 33, etc.) and one, in Romans 15:13, is quite fascinating from the perspective of hope:
"May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit" (Romans 15:13). This prayer is interesting in many ways, but not least in the title Paul gives to God as "the God of hope." This is the only place in the Bible where God is specifically called the God of hope, and it is possible that Paul had a reason in mind for using the term to his audience at Rome.
The ancient Romans had a specific deity for the concept of hope – the goddess Spes. There were a number of temples to this goddess throughout Rome, but the oldest and probably most famous was one which stood in the forum olitorium that had a very checkered history. It is known that this temple to hope was struck by lightning at some point, and that it burned down. It was later rebuilt, but burned down again. The irony of these disasters relevant to the Roman deity of hope may have been widely appreciated, and it is possible that Paul knew and played against this situation in underlining that the true God was the God of a much more secure hope.
There is also another way Paul could conceivably have been thinking of the Roman interest in the deified hope. When a new Emperor was appointed, it was common for the ruler to issue coins depicting the goddess of hope on them, as the deity symbolized the expectation of many good things for the new emperor's reign. We remember that Paul noticed the inscription to the unknown god in Athens (Acts 17:23). It is certainly possible that Paul had seen images of the personified hope on many Roman coins and that he was aware of and thinking of the Roman "hope" compared to the true God of hope as the background to what he wrote to the believers in Rome.
But whether one or both of these possibilities is likely or not, Paul made an important point about hope in his prayer. We are used to saying that God is love (1 John 4:8), but in this verse in Romans Paul essentially points out that God is also hope. It is not that God is the God of hope because he hopes in the human sense of hoping things will work out – it is because God personifies the qualities of hope just as he personifies the qualities of love. God is also the God of hope because ultimately it is God who supplies our deepest hope as a fruit of his Spirit – as is also the case with faith and love.
When we see this aspect of Paul's conception of hope – as being grounded in God himself – we can better appreciate many of the things the apostle wrote in Romans. Take Romans 8:32, for example: "He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all – how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?"
It's a thought worth meditating upon. God is the God of hope, and as this last verse shows, he has given us, or is desirous to give us, everything we should hope for. Put another way, God is the reason for our expectation, the basis of our persistence, and the cause of our joy – the very things that make up hope itself.