We grieve with Hope

As Christians, we grieve. Oh, do we grieve. Being a Christian does not mean that our sorrows go away or are minimised, or that we pretend that the many sorrows of this life are no big deal. In fact, we Christians actually grieve more. God has taken out our old, dead hearts and put new hearts in us. In Christ, the insensitivities and imbalances of our old selves are being renewed day by day into the likeness of Jesus (Col. 3:10). With the help and healing of the Holy Spirit, we feel more, not less.

More than joy alone, we feel, at new depths, the seemingly negative emotions of anger, fear, shame, guilt, and sorrow. With sin still indwelling us, we often err in the timing, focus, and intensity of our feelings. But in Christ, we really can, and really do, grow to feel holy anger, holy fear, holy shame, holy sorrow—a holy grief that is wholly different from worldly despair.

All joy, no grief?

In 1 Thessalonians 4:13, the Apostle Paul writes with the longing that Christians “not grieve as others do who have no hope.” Note well that his instruction is not “all joy, no grief.” Clearly, grieving with hope doesn’t mean that we do not grieve.

We may not say it outright, but many of us carry vague suspicions that sadness is a mark of Christian weakness or immaturity rather than maturity. Still, few of us pretend that life in this world can be without regular and significant sorrows; Christians and non-Christians alike cannot avoid the pains, sufferings, and losses of this age. But godly sorrow is vastly different from worldly grief.

The solid, confident hope we have in Christ turns the eyes of the soul, sometimes in between sobs, to God’s promise of final joy to come.

The opposite danger would be that we grieve but do so without hope. While professing faith in Jesus, we might, to our shame, grieve just as unbelievers grieve. Sadnesses surround us, but do examples of Christian grief abound? What does it mean for us, who claim Jesus, to live in our sadnesses as those who truly hope in Him?

Thick hope, not thin wish

In the Bible, “hope” is not the thin wish that people typically have in mind when using this word in everyday speech. “I hope we win the game.” “We hope to be there by dinner.” “I hope our flight’s not delayed.” Common talk has a far shallower and more wishful conception of hope than Scripture, where the language of hope is not thin wishes but solid sureties.

Christian hope is a firm expression of Christian faith applied to the future in light of the utterly trustworthy promises of God. We speak with confidence of our “hope of eternal life” (Titus 1:2; 3:7) and the return of Christ as our “blessed hope” (2:13). In Him, we have a hope laid up for us in heaven (Col. 1:5), a hope rugged enough to make us “very bold” (2 Cor. 3:12). The hope of salvation is a head-saving helmet (1 Thess. 5:8), shielding us from otherwise fatal blows to the skull. We speak of no thin wish or mere possibility when “we rejoice in hope of the glory of God” (Rom. 5:2).

That Jesus is “our hope” (1 Tim. 1:1) means at least (1) that we bank with confidence on the future He promises to provide, and (2) that we’re not yet there in that tearless, painless future. Jesus lived here, too. He wept (John 11:35). He was not sinful and immature to be a “man of sorrows.” Instead, His acquaintance with grief, as the perfect man, was a shining expression of His maturity and holiness. We see strength, not a flaw, in His tears. It is not holy to live in this age of sorrows and to not grieve. Nor is it honourable to grieve as unbelievers do—without deep, solid, stabilising hope in Jesus.

Handfuls of hope

In this life, we have our seasons of surprising joy and unusual peace. Then, without choosing sorrows, they roll toward us like sea billows. When they do, we seek to honour our Lord by grieving in hope, grieving as Christians, grieving with Him in explicit and constant view. Having Him does not suppress or minimize our griefs but frees us to truly grieve—and to grieve in helpful, holy, healthy ways as He puts His hand in ours. How does He do so?

First, He puts in our hands His book teeming with truths to help in grief, truths that guide us not only through grief but deeper into grief, to grieve our losses all the way down, without losing our bearings in utter despair. He gives us not just a book but sixty-six books, and all sixty-six of them with glories to uphold us in our sorrows and griefs, if we only have ears to hear.

Second, He bids us fold our hands. He has given us prayer. What a wonder. What an offer. How precious, how marvellous to have prayer. Because we have the risen, glorified God-man, who sits at the right hand of the Majesty on high, we have access in Him by His Spirit to the Father (Eph. 2:18).

Third, our God gives us fellows in Christ to walk not only arm in arm but hand in hand. How sweet it is to not be alone in our sorrows. Christians are part of a supernatural body, assembled not by family blood or shared occupation or mere earthly allegiance but by the blood of Jesus and an eternal calling and our ultimate allegiance. In our griefs, we are prone to overlook what a means of grace God’s own people are to us—to have fellows, not just in our flesh but in the Spirit, who from the heart heed the call to weep with those who weep (Rom. 12:15).

Our God does fill our hands in sadness, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy. The call to Jesus is a call to emotional complexity in this age. Surrounded by sin, and sinners still ourselves, we do not move simply from great joy to greater joy one day after another. Oh, what joy we have already, and what depth of joy we taste even now in Jesus. But a life of all joy, no sorrow, is not ours yet, and we dare not pretend that it is.

Joy will come

Yes, a day is coming when every tear will be wiped away, and there will indeed be no more sorrow or pain for those who now grieve in hope. On that day, we will go out in unmixed joy and be led forth by Christ Himself in unadulterated peace—and it will make a name for Jesus (Isa. 55:12–13). He will be glorified in that day in His people’s pure and simple, undiluted joy. 

But until then, in this age of sorrows, our Lord is honoured by joy in sorrow, peace in pain, and satisfaction in Him in the midst of our sufferings. Jesus is not honoured by a pretense to be rid of sorrows. What is more, He appoints for us sorrows and griefs in this world, and with them, His sustaining grace to keep us afloat.

This means that Jesus is honoured in our lives not just even in our sadness but especially in our sadness. This is a stunning acknowledgment of the complex strands in the Christian life. For now, sorrows and suffering are no mere concession to glorifying Christ; they are a catalyst for showing His supreme worth.

The solid, confident hope we have in Christ turns the eyes of the soul, sometimes in between sobs, to God’s promise of final joy to come. The prophets told of sorrows that would turn to joy, not vice versa (Isa. 35:10; 51:11; Jer. 31:13), as did Jesus Himself (John 16:20–22). 

For a little while, God deems them necessary (1 Peter 1:6), and we glorify Him as we grieve them in hope. But joy will come with the morning (Ps. 30:5). Joy is ultimate, and even now, even in the billows of sorrow, it sustains us to stretch for the day when “he will wipe away every tear from [our] eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away” (Rev. 21:4).