The final object of hope.
Luther says the redemption is called "plenteous" because such is the straitness of our heart, the slenderness of our hopes, the weakness of our faith, that it far exceeds all our capacity, all our petitions and desires. Lord Bacon says, "Generous and magnanimous minds are readiest to forgive; and it is a weakness and impotency of mind to be unable to forgive." The point on which we now dwell is the strong demand that Israel shall hope in Jehovah himself. The sense of personality in God is to be most jealously treasured. In India it is conceived that the personality of god is but a step towards the higher realization of him, or it, as an impersonal, uncaused, unrelated, absolute being. But this is an unreal dreamland. No fitting idea of God can fail to include an active, ever-working will, that is influenced by surrounding and swayed by feeling. But that is the characteristic of a person. The Word of God, while refusing to permit any representation of God as a Person, nevertheless insists that we shall always deal with him as a Person.
I. GOD HIMSELF IS THE OBJECT OF A SINNER'S HOPE. There is a distinction of the utmost importance, which is often missed, and often very imperfectly apprehended. A man can never have absolute confidence based on anything that God has ever done. His confidence must rest in God, who did those things, and has revealed himself as wholly trustworthy in doing them. For the nation to rely on what God did, in delivering it from Egyptian bondage, would be wholly unworthy. For it to rely on God, who then delivered, and so proved himself to be the Deliverer, was worthy and. ennobling. So still, the work of Divine redemption is not the proper object of a sinner's hope, but God, who in such a glorious and Divine way has redeemed. The hope is in no thing, though it may have the Divine stamp on it. The hope is in the Person who is revealed in and by the thing done. The apprehension of this involves the reformation of very much of the imperfect theology that now prevails.
II. CHRIST HIMSELF IS THE AGENCY FOR REALIZING HIM WHO IS THE OBJECT OF THE SINNER'S HOPE. St. Peter states this with admirable precision, "Who, by him, do believe in God." Our faith is demanded, not for Christ's work, but for Christ himself. And not for Christ other than as a mediary. Our hope as sinners is only rightly fixed on Christ when we apprehend that "God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself."—R.T.