What is the difference between faith and hope?

Answer

Faith and hope are distinct yet interconnected. The difference between faith and hope is clear in 1 Corinthians 13:13, “Now these three remain: faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love.” Two of the most significant gifts are faith and hope, mentioned individually. The relationship between faith and hope is evident in Hebrews 11:1, “Faith is confidence in what we hope for.”

Faith is complete trust or confidence in something. It involves intellectual agreement with a set of facts and trust in those facts. For instance, we place our faith in Jesus Christ, meaning we trust Him entirely for our eternal destiny. We intellectually agree with the facts of His substitutionary death and bodily resurrection, and then we trust in His death and resurrection for our salvation.

Biblical hope is founded on faith. Hope is the eager anticipation that accompanies believing in something good. It is a confident expectation that naturally arises from faith. Hope is a peaceful assurance that something yet to occur will indeed come to pass. True hope must involve something unseen: “Hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what they already have?” «For we are saved by hope: but hope that is seen is not hope: for what a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for? », (Romans 8:24). The return of Jesus is our “blessed hope” «looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ; », (Titus 2:13)—we cannot see Him yet, but we know He is coming, and we eagerly await that moment.With joy.

Jesus said He is coming again, “And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also.” (John 14:3). By faith, we trust Jesus’ words, and that leads to hope that we will one day be with Him forever. Jesus was resurrected from the dead, “the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep” “But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that slept.” (1 Corinthians 15:20). That is the basis for our faith. Then we have Jesus’ promise: “Because I live, you also will live” “Yet a little while, and the world seeth me no more; but ye see me: because I live, ye shall live also.” (John 14:19). That is the basis of our hope.

The relationship between faith and hope can be illustrated in the joy a child feels when his father tells him they are going to an amusement park tomorrow. The child believes that he will go to the amusement park, based on his father’s word—that is faith. At the same time, that belief within the child kindles an irrepressible joy—that is hope. The child’s natural trust in his father’s promise is the faith; the child’s squeals of delight and jumping in place are the expressions of the hope.

Faith and hope are complementary. Faith is grounded in the reality of the past; hope is looking to the reality of the future. Without faith, there is no hope, and without hope, there is no true faith. Christians are people of faith and hope. We have “the hope of eternal life, which God, who does not lie, promised before the beginning of time” “in hope of eternal life, which God, that cannot lie, promised before the world began.” (Titus 1:2).

For the truth of God, which does not lie, promised before the beginning of time (Titus 1:2).