Hope: Just Wishful Thinking?

Word of the Week

July 12, 2025

Hope: Just Wishful Thinking?

 

Therefore gird your minds for action, keep sober in spirit, fix your hope completely on the grace to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

1 Peter 1:13 NASB

 

NOTE:  This week we are trying something a little different.  Instead of zeroing in on a single Greek word, we are walking through an entire verse. Please let us know if you enjoy this approach.

 

Critics have often complained that Christian faith is little more than blind belief.  Richard Dawkins, for instance, writes:

“Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence. Faith is belief in spite of, even perhaps because of, the lack of evidence” (from the preface to The Selfish Gene).

It’s an old accusation.  Skeptics have long accused believers of unplugging their minds, resting their hopes on sheer wishful thinking.

To be fair, it is true that we are called upon to believe things that we cannot physically see.  I Peter 1:8 describes the reality of faith in Christ:  “though you have not seen Him, you love Him; and though you do not see Him now, but believe in Him, you greatly rejoice.”

This, however, is not a blind or ignorant faith.  Peter sets the record straight in the very next paragraph, and the answer comes into even sharper focus when you look at his statement in the original Greek.

Peter was writing to people facing tough times.  They battled suffering and persecution, and it was easy to be disheartened.  What would encourage these dear brethren?  Peter gives them hope for the future – the assurance of a heavenly inheritance that no one can take away from them!

How should they respond to such a bright future?

1 Peter 1:13 gives the answer:  Fix your hope on God’s promises.  You can see the verse at the top of this page, but let’s enhance our understanding by bringing out some nuances that you can see most easily in the original Greek.

First, a bit of Greek grammar.  In English, this verse appears to contain three commands:  gird your minds, keep sober, and fix your hope.  In Greek, however, only one of these is in the “imperative” or “command” format.  The other two are “participles.”  Without diving too deeply into grammar, here is the main point:  only one of these is the main command.  The other two are supplements that give more detail.  It’s a common pattern in New Testament Greek.

So here’s how the verse looks in Greek:

The main command:  Fix your hope

The secondary ideas:  Gird your mind and keep sober.  These two phrases reveal HOW to fix our hope on God’s promises.

Let’s get more specific.

• Main Command: Fix your hope

Peter has presented the promises, but that won’t help us unless we choose to believe those promises.  If you’re lying face down in the dust, you must lift your head and look ahead.  Only when you choose to trust the promises will you have hope.  And you will only move ahead if you have hope.  “Hope” in Greek is elpis, which is more than wishful thinking.  It is confidence about the future based on God’s promises.

• Secondary Commands – HOW to hope 

1. Gird your minds for action. The Greek literally says, “Gird up the loins of your mind.”  In the first century, men wore long robes with a sash around the waist.  If you needed to run or work, you had to pull the robe up around your waist [the “loins”] and use the sash to tie it in place [“gird up”].  Hiking up the robe was standard preparation for action.  Peter tells us here to “hike up” the robes of our minds.  In other words, get your mind ready for action!

He was not asking his readers to put their minds in neutral so that they would believe a fairy tale about heaven.  No, he wanted their minds to be active, ready to operate unhindered as they considered the hope of salvation.

2. Keep sober. The Greek word for “sober” here is nēphō, which comes from a root that means “not drunk.”  Too much wine causes you to lose touch with reality; this word calls on you to stay in touch with reality.

The person who chooses to place their hope in God’s promises is not ignoring reality.  No, this kind of hope is based on a firm grasp of reality.

• WHAT to hope for

Christians don’t rest their hope on wishful thinking.  We count on the clear promises of God.

In this case, Peter says, we have hope for the future – “the grace to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.”  Even if things are hard now, a day is coming when Christ will be revealed in all His glory.  The “revelation” in this verse is the same Greek word as the title of the book of Revelation which gives all the details.

Our hope is not a mindless superstition.  According to 1 Peter 1:8, we don’t believe lightly.  We trust God because we have clearly examined His character and His promises, and with a realistic view of life’s ups and downs, we have come to the conclusion that He can be trusted.

For the follower of Jesus, our hope is not a leap in the dark.  It’s a steady walk toward the Light.

 

Study Hint:

1 Peter 1:13 is the first in a series of 5 commands that Peter gives in the rest of the chapter.  Each command stands at the center of a whole paragraph wrapped around that single imperative.

Here they are:

• Be holy (1:14-16)
• Live in fear (1:17-21)
• Love one another (1:22-25)
• Long for the Word (2:1-3)

Take time to ask yourself why Peter picks these particular commands as an agenda for responding to God’s promises.

 

Coming Up

Most highly visible movements are spearheaded by a visionary leader.  It’s easy to focus on that person because they have been such a helpful source of insight and encouragement.  Next week we are going to analyze the Greek grammar of a verse that will help ensure that we have a healthy appreciation for prominent leaders.

Ezra Project 2025