J.C. Ryle: To be Without Christ is to be Without Hope

In what do we put our hope?  In what does the world put their hope?  In what does the church of God put their hope in?  Hope is seemingly something that cannot be fully grasped.  We put our hope in people and they let us down.  We put our hope in money or material possessions and the well of satisfaction eventually runs dry.  We put our hope in ourselves and we find that we cannot always handle what life throws at us.  Everyone claims to have hope in something or someone, but the question remains: Is what we hope in worthy to be trusted?  Will it sustain the eventual difficult circumstances of living?  J.C. Ryle points us to the One and Only Hope, Jesus Christ.  May his words be an encouragement for us as disciples of Jesus Christ.

"To be 'without Christ' is to be without hope.  Hope of some sort or other almost everyone thinks he possesses.  Rarely indeed will you find a man who will boldly tell you that he has no hope at all about his soul.  But how few there are that can give 'a reason of the hope that is in them' (1 Pet. 3:15).  How few can explain it, describe it and show its foundations!  How many a hope is nothing better than a vague empty feeling, which the day of sickness and the hour of death will prove to be utterly useless, impotent alike to comfort or to save.

"There is but one hope that has roots, life, strength, and solidity, and that is the hope which is built on the great rock of Christ's work and office as man's Redeemer.  'Other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ' (1 Cor. 3:11).  He that builds on this corner-stone 'shall not be unfounded.'  About this hope there is reality.  It will bear looking at and handling.  It will meet every inquiry.  Search it through and through, and you will find no flaw whatever in it.  All other hopes beside this are worthless.  Like summer-dried fountains, they fail man just when his need is the sorest.  They are like unsound ships, which look well so long as they lie quiet in harbor, but when the winds and the waves of ocean begin to try them, their rotten condition is discovered and they sink beneath the waters.  There is no such thing as a good hope without Christ, and 'without Christ' is to have 'no hope' (Eph. 2:12)."  (J.C. Ryle, Holiness)