267. Hope for Salvation
Lamentations 3:26 It is good that a man should both hope and quietly wait for the salvation of the Lord.
Hoping and waiting for salvation is a good thing. God promises salvation. It will surely come. Hope for it and wait for it. I have been saved through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. It is already finished. It is mine in reality. However, at the same time, I am still waiting for the final fulfillment of salvation in my experience. I have salvation by faith, but not yet by sight. I live by faith. Salvation is already but not yet. The present life is a life of hope and waiting.
Salvation is past in that salvation has been finished and secured in history. Salvation is present in that we have it by faith in the Gospel and the Spirit applies it to our present needs. Salvation is future in that what we are saved from and what we are saved for is not yet realized: Sin, Death and Satan will be confined to the Lake of Fire, and the new heaven and new earth will come from God to our resurrected bodies. In the meantime in the present we hope and we wait. And the Lord calls this a good thing: it is good that we hope and wait for God’s salvation. We wait to possess and enjoy what we already have.
We live by faith: Hebrews 11:1: “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” The hoping and waiting is the faith that has it, and that is good. We live surrounded by the Enemies we are saved from. The Enemies attack, tempt, threaten, scare and try to destroy us, but we are saved from their final effects. We live by that promise. The Lord saved us, He is saving us, and He will save us. It is hard to wait for what we don’t yet see, but it is easy to wait for something we already have, (eternal life).