What is the difference between faith and hope?

There are two leading principles in the soul of the Christian, which make God the special object. These are "faith and hope." There is a marked distinction, and yet an intimate connection, between these two principles. Faith takes what God has given; hope expects what He has promised. Faith rests in holy tranquility in God's statements about the past; hope goes forth in active longings after the future. Faith is a recipient; hope an expectant. Now, it will be found that, in proportion to the vigour of faith, will be the vigour of hope. If we be not "fully persuaded that what God has promised, He is able also to perform," we shall know but little of the power or energy of hope. If faith be wavering, hope will be flickering. On the contrary, if faith be strong, hope will be strong also; for faith, while it nourishes and strengthens the persuasion, imparts strength and intensity to the expectation. Thus, the soul, in the happy exercise of the above principles, is like a climbing plant which, striking its roots downward into the soil, sends forth its tendrils along the nearest wall or tree. So the soul finds its root in the eternal record of God, while it sends forth the tendrils of an imperishable hope to grasp tenaciously the faithful promise of God; and, we may say, the deeper the root, the stronger the tendril.

283 "Faith, hope, and charity," or love, are not put accidentally here. They are the three things that are characteristic of the Christian state now, "putting on the breastplate of faith and charity [the same word], and for a helmet the hope of salvation," 1 Thess. 5:8. Some ten times in the New Testament faith, hope, and love are put together. They are positive elements, faith and hope referring to the present state I am in, and charity to the present and eternal state. Faith lays hold of an object, and hope desires it. The word "charity" is an ecclesiastical word. Love is really what God is. He that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and this never fails. When we possess a thing, we have done with faith and hope as to it: they have passed into positive fruition, as we say. There will be love in heaven, but we shall not have faith there, because there will be sight; and we shall not have hope there, because we have got possession. "Now abideth" shews the three as present things, but charity never fails.

It is only normal and right that by Him we should trust this living God, who has both given his Son, and has raised Him up from the dead, giving the supreme glory to Him who deserves it. For He is the very manifestation of' the heart of God, and by Him faith and hope in God are brought into fullest reality. Faith is present confidence of heart in His faithfulness. Hope is the precious expectation of future glory in His presence.

"Faith is the substance," or "the substantiation of things hoped for;" that which makes the "things hoped for" a reality in the present. It is "the evidence," or, as it should be, "the conviction," — that which is borne into the soul in the power of divine truth as a reality, "of things not seen."

"Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." This is not a definition, but shows us something of what faith does. It is that which, to the individual, gives solid substance to things hoped for. It is no mere fanciful imagination, but an honest trust in the living God, by which the things of God are made a definite, clear reality to the heart, and are thus recognized to be more truly substantial than all material substance-for the latter will pass away. Also it has that peculiar power of evidencing to us "things not seen." Faith in the living God is not blind, but the actual opening of the eyes, accepting unquestionable evidence of the reality of unseen, spiritual things.

The eleventh of Hebrews begins not exactly with a definition of faith, not what faith is in its essence, but with what faith is in its practice. "Now faith is the substance (substantiating) of things hoped for, the evidence (conviction) of things not seen." Faith is that which turns "things hoped for" into positive "substance" today, and this, of course, is the main argument of this letter to the Hebrews. Some of the Hebrew Christians were beginning to think that they had lost the real thing. Imagine a Jew who had become a follower of that Jesus who was crucified as a malefactor some thirty years before. His old friends say to him, "You are surely a fool. Here is our Temple, with the sacrifices going up and silver trumpets sounding; we have the ancient God-instituted worship and the priests descended directly from Aaron. You can see our religion; you can smell it; you can hear it; we have the real thing. You have got only a little upper room, where your Master gathered His disciples together; but now He is gone, and where has He gone? Really you have got nothing, you are running after mere ideas." This is the language of the world, but the language of the Epistle to the Hebrews is, "Your sacrifices are shadows, you have only a shadow temple. Your priests are shadows, and your altar is only a shadow altar." A few years after the epistle was written the Roman armies came and swept the whole shadow system off the map. We Christians have got the substance, that of which the shadows when first they were ordained of God spoke, but it is no good to us except there is faith that lays hold of the unseen things and turns them into real "substance" in our hearts and lives. The writer goes on immediately to speak of creation: "By faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the Word of God." No one can prove it nor fully understand it. In the same way as by faith we understand that the Bible is the Word of God, we understand this truth of Creation. Faith can and does receive it. Faith is the eye of the soul, or, as I think we shall see in a moment, is more like a telescope which, applied to the eye, brings into evidence things beyond the reach of mortal eyes. I am not speaking of something that only appeals to very advanced Christians; you are not a Christian at all if you have not got faith. If Christ is not a reality to you, you can hardly claim the name of Christian. I am speaking of that with which you have begun, and I want you to see that faith is not only that with which you start, but the operating force on your side that is going to carry you through. Your life in this grand faith-succession comes down from Abraham, Moses and Paul, and. here we are today blessed in the Lord Jesus Christ. However humbly you start, you are in this grand faith-succession. Faith saves the soul, and this comes out in the opening instances of Abel, Enoch and Noah. Faith was that which respectively put them in right relations with God, translated them, saved them from the judgment. Faith does save the soul, but it would not do that were it not that faith is sight that sees the thoughts of God and enables us to hold them: "By faith Abel offered to God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain"; it was not by accident, but by faith. How could he have done it by faith except there had been some "light"? I have no question in my own mind that it was the first action of the Lord God in the garden in the day when sin came that was the object of Abel's faith. Again and again he must have heard that story of the ineffectiveness of the aprons and how the Lord God made coats of skin, thus indicating His way of covering.

Faith here is the portion we have now in the things that God gives, which in Christianity are revealed as truths, while the things promised are not yet come. It was in this way that the believing Jews were to possess the Messiah, and all that God gave in Him, as the Lord had said, "Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me. There are many mansions in my Father's house; I go to prepare a place for you." That is to say, "You do not visibly possess God; you enjoy Him by believing in Him. It is the same with respect to Me: you will not possess Me corporeally, but you shall enjoy all that is in Me — righteousness, and all the promises of God — by believing." It was thus that these believing Jews, to whom Peter wrote, possessed the Lord: they had received this precious faith.

There are three things spoken of in Scripture - 1st, "Full assurance of faith" (Heb. 10:22); 2ndly, "Full assurance of hope" (v. 11); 3dly, "Full assurance of understanding." (Col. 2: 2.) The "full assurance of faith" rests on the testimony of God. God tells me the blood of Christ cleanseth from all sin, and I rest upon that testimony. There is more than this in the "full assurance of hope;" my soul counts upon a person who has made a promise. (See vv. 12-20.) Hence there is the leaning upon God (a different thing from merely believing a testimony), and, moreover, a looking "within the veil." It is founded upon what is perfectly immutable, not upon anything produced here, and which might be liable to change. Entering into that within the veil, God's throne must be shaken before my hope. Faith rests upon a testimony that has come out; but it carries me up, and hope reckons on Him who is there. The "full assurance of understanding" goes a step further. Not only have I an object on which my heart and conscience rest, but it takes up God's counsels; it "understands;" I can say, "It became God" to do this and to do that.

When speaking about "hope," we must recollect it is not in the least like human hope (as though the thing was uncertain). In ordinary language I might say, "I hope such a person will come tomorrow," when that was extremely uncertain. Not so with "hope" in divine things. All that is meant is, that the thing hoped for is not present: "If we hope for that we see not, then do we with patience wait for it," because it is certainly coming.

“For we are saved in hope: but hope that is seen is not hope: for what a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for? But if we hope for that we see not, then do we with patience wait for it.” Hope is an essential part of Christian character — “an anchor of the soul, both sure and stedfast” (Heb. 6:19), not a matter of indefinite uncertainty: if it were so, we should not wait with patience, but with doubts and fears. Faith gives the certainty that hope shall be fulfilled — when, we know not, but faith also makes us content to wait patiently. This is true “patience of hope.”

We are saved; but it is by hope. As yet we see not that for which we hope. If it were visible, then hope should have no place. We hope, then, for that we see not. But though we see it not, yet knowledge is the ground of our hope. The certified assurance of the God who cannot lie is the pure fountain of a Christian's hope. But hope thus born creates desire; and growing desire brings a sickness to the heart whose quickened consciousness of prospective liberty brings the more forcibly and sensibly upon the spirit the actual pressure of still-protracted bondage. A free spirit, in a bound and vile body, must groan. Thus the operation of the Spirit, in stimulating the desires of the believer's heart for the promised glory, makes room for the proper knowledge and enjoyment of God as the God of patience: "If we hope for that we see not, then do we with patience wait for it."