This is the next part of my ongoing series exploring the letter written by St Polycarp to the church in Philippi, collaborating with my friend Adsum Try Ravenhill of the Raven’s Writing Desk.
You can read the previous parts at these links: I; II; III, IV, V, VI, VII.
Dear Adsum
Thank you for your last letter. Your strong encouragement to fight with the weapons of faith rather than those of the world is important and something I continually need to hear. I find myself tempted to ‘win’ or earn ‘clout’ with a particularly astringent tweet more often than I’d like to admit. I’m not lots better face-to-face, though I’m learning self-control.
The most helpful part of your encouragement though was to point to the weapons that Christ gives us, particularly prayer. I pray less than I should. The song “when I fight, I’ll fight on my knees” often feels a little trite to me but it’s true, nonetheless. I appreciate the reminder!
Today we turn ourselves to chapter 8 of Polycarp’s letter:
Let us then continually persevere in our hope, and the earnest of our righteousness, which is Jesus Christ, “who bore our sins in His own body on the tree,” “who did no sin, neither was guile found in His mouth,” but endured all things for us, that we might live in Him. Let us then be imitators of His patience; and if we suffer for His name’s sake, let us glorify Him. For He has set us this example in Himself, and we have believed that such is the case.
Despite everything we’ve heard, the encouragements and warnings that Polycarp is giving to this community whose leaders have failed them and who are grappling with how to follow Jesus in their circumstances, he says to them to hold on to their hope.
Hope is a tricky thing. I think we can misunderstand how it works. Polycarp tells them to ‘persevere in hope,’ to keep going in hoping. Hope is a thing that you do, and that you have to keep on doing. Paul says something very similar in the opening lines of 1 Thessalonians, where faith was to be worked at, love laboured at, and hope persevered in. These virtues need verbs.
I think we often get that backwards—with faith and love too—imagining that hope is an emotion that we work up either through an intensity of prayer or some sort of dramatic worship experience. Or, perhaps, we simply decide we’re not a very hopeful person. I have a tendency towards the cynical, but thankfully that doesn’t mean I can’t hope because hope is a thing we do. It’s an action.
We desperately need it in uncertain times. The Philippians’ times were uncertain, but so are ours. On a national and global scale the ambient anxiety is almost palpable and has been growing for a long time. On a closer level I know there are plenty of uncertainties in your life, as there are in mine. Who knows what the future might hold?
The Lord does. Your hope is Jesus, the ‘earnest’ or guarantee of your righteousness. You know that whatever happens, whatever difficulties and suffering comes to your door, God Almighty has judged and will judge you to be righteous because Jesus guarantees it.
He is your hope because he bore our sins in his body. Even your worst impulses, even the very root of Hell that grows from the darkest corners of your own heart, will never define you again. Because you trust in Jesus your sins have been crushed in his body on the tree and are far from you as east from west. So, hope in him.
He is your hope because he committed no sin. The only perfect man who ever lived, the only example of true humanity that there has been, is the one who stood in the gap for you. He couldn’t fail and his sacrifice is perfect on your behalf. So, hope in him.
He is your hope because he endured all things for you. For you. For the joy set before him, he endured the cross (Hebrews 12.2). What was that joy? Adsum Try Ravenhill was. So, hope in him.
He did that so that you could live in him. There is more than just freedom from sin available in Christ, wonderful enough though that may have been. He instead has invited you to be growing in his life, grafted into the vine, knowing Jesus day-by-day. So, hope in him.
It doesn’t matter if you don’t feel it, because the point here is not to feel it every day but to persevere in hope. Start by hoping, by living as though it were true, by casting aside worry, by facing suffering, by choosing to pray and to imitate Jesus as best we can. The emotion may follow, it often does, but we hope because he’s worth hoping in rather than because we feel it.
So, my friend, as Polycarp instructs, let’s imitate him in his patience. It is but a little while until he returns and wraps up the earth in a breath, remaking all things in his image and redeeming the creation in himself.
Hope is a hard thing. I wonder if you, or some of those peering over our shoulders, internally wince at the encouragement to hope. I understand. When you’ve hoped for something dearly and it hasn’t come, especially if that cycle has repeated over and over again, hope starts to sting. Hope deferred makes the heart sick (Proverbs 13.12). There are no easy answers here. I don’t say to hope again lightly, as I know I speak to a weary warrior and say to pick up your spear and shield again.
All I can say is this: whatever has gone before, there was once a day in a cold garden when creation’s weary breath was extinguished. All was dark, all was cold, the forlorn hope had failed and died on Hell’s battlements. Then, in the stillness of the early morning, a spike-torn hand twitched, a blood crusted eyelid opened, and the breath of life blew into a newly empty tomb as the Son of God walked out of the back of death.
One day all of creation will do the same. With Samwise Gamgee will we be able to ask if “everything sad is going to come untrue?” All of creation will reply, like Gandalf’s laugh, “like music, or like water in a parched land.”
We can hope because he rose from the dead. Which means our troubles are light and momentary against the eternal weight of glory (2 Corinthians 4.17-18).
Polycarp is keen that if we must suffer for Jesus—and I think the New Testament is pretty clear that we will, in fact, suffer for him in one way or another—let us use them to glorify him. You wrote so movingly in your first letter about suffering for the sake of Jesus. It’s our hoping that means we can.
He gave us an example of how to suffer, so let’s apprentice ourselves to him in this too. We’ve spoken privately about some of our own sufferings, the difficult lots that the Lord has had us draw. I am inspired by your example of patient endurance.
Because he is our hope, we can endure. Keep going, Adsum.
With love
T. M. Suffield
Photo by Nagara Oyodo on Unsplash
To subscribe and receive email notifications for future posts, scroll all the way to the bottom of the page.
Would you like to support my work? The best thing you can do is share this post with your friends. Why not consider also joining my Patreon to keep my writing free for everyone. You can see other ways to support me here.
nuakh 