The God of Hope Fill You With All Joy and Peace in Believing (Romans 15:13)

Rom. 15:13. Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit..

Again the holy Apostle prays. This is the concluding prayer for all that he has spoken about so much, beginning from the preceding chapter. The words of the prayer are applied to the preceding prophetic word. There it was said: the Gentiles will place their hope in Him; and here it is said: and let the Lord, the God of hope, give you to hope, and not only to hope, but to abound in hope. Hope here is the hope of salvation in the Lord Jesus Christ, which, as soon as someone has gained it, will no longer think up new supports for it—unreliable and fragile ones, such as, for example, to eat certain things and not touch others, or to eat everything: from which the Apostle was dissuading them above. So this prayer, by its wording clinging to the just-cited words of the Prophet, corresponds in its content to all the preceding section (chapters 14–15).

Remarkably outlined here by the Apostle in a compact word is the relationship of spiritual feelings and dispositions. The object of the prayerful good wish is the abundance of hope; that this may be, the filling of the heart with joy and peace is desired; faith is indicated as the source of these. Faith produces joy and peace, joy and peace increase hope, and all this is accomplished by the power of the Holy Spirit. Therefore the prayer is directed to the God of hope.

God is the God of hope because the very word God already moves one to hope: for He is goodness itself, without limits well-wishing toward us and doing good to us, knowing better than we do what is necessary for us, always ready to satisfy our needs, and possessing all the means for this. Therefore the prophet David confesses that “Our God is God of salvation” (Ps. 67:21). And “Blessed is the man whose hope is in the name of the Lord” (Ps. 39:5). And therefore God is the God of hope because He Himself plants it in the heart; for He is the source of all spiritual blessings.

“The God of hope,” he says, “fill you with all joy and peace in believing.” “In believing,” εν τω πιστεύειν,—as you believe or insofar as you believe. First—faith. God has given you faith—and you believe. Insofar as you believe, there is no impediment for God to fill you with all spiritual blessings, and He will indeed fill you insofar as you will believe. Faith is both a channel for the flowing of God’s mercies and a vessel for receiving them.

Of all spiritual blessings the Apostle wishes for the Romans only “joy and peace.” Apart from the condition of the Romans, joy and peace are indicated above other blessings because they are the inseparable companions of faith, giving themselves more perceptibly to be felt by the believer. The believer’s sins are forgiven. Take this as a feeling, and you will feel as if a mountain has fallen from your shoulders. How not to rejoice at this? The believer is received into God’s mercy, into sonship to God, and is embraced by the warmth of God’s fatherly love. Having received this as a feeling, how can one not rejoice? Thus joy is inseparable from faith; and peace is inseparable from joy: without peace, joy cannot exist. Peace is established from being overshadowed by grace. Grace, when it comes, suppresses all passions for the sake of self-denial and does not give them motion or power. And when the passions are not in motion, there is nothing to disturb the peaceful order either within or without. All then remains in its natural state; and the natural state is the peaceful flow and order of all things. Moreover, peace comes from the fact that grace unites with God, who is the God of peace, bringing peace with Him everywhere.

In relation to the condition of the Romans, the Apostle especially desires joy and peace because when these are present, those insignificant differences in conviction of which he speaks will no longer have the harmful consequences that now result from them—joy and peace will suppress every disagreement, division, and alienation, and will not allow them to arise any longer. The blessed Theophylact writes: “The Apostle prays that believers from the Jews be filled with joy, for they were grieved by reproaches, and believers from the Gentiles be filled with peace, for they appeared to be at peace in relation to those who held to the Law; or better to say, he prays that both be filled with joy and peace.”

But the Apostle does not stop his good wish with joy and peace, but extends it further: “abound in hope.” “Abound,” εις το περισσεύειν,—so as to abound. He desires the filling of the heart with joy and peace, so that you might abound in hope. Hope—that God, for the sake of the Lord Jesus Christ, will arrange our essential good in the best way—is born together with faith; and it grows and increases as we taste the blessings of faith. The blessing received and tasted assures us that all the rest will certainly be received, and thereby increases hope. Joy and peace are blessings of faith. The Apostle wishes: grant you, O Lord, to be filled with peace and joy, so that you might also abound in hope. Hope, or abounding in hope, is placed as the highest good, the aim of good wishes. So it truly is. Even in worldly order one cannot live without hope, much less in the spiritual. How, on the contrary, life flourishes in both orders with the increase, expansion, and abundance of hope!

But one must keep in mind that spiritual feelings and dispositions are so closely bound together and so influence one another that one cannot establish their sequence as a universal and unchanging law. We say: faith produces joy and peace, and joy and peace increases faith. But it can also be: faith increases hope, and hope fills with joy and peace; or thus: hope fills with joy and peace and thereby sustains and enlivens faith. Spiritual life moves through the flowing of spiritual feelings and dispositions into one another; and only such flowings testify that spiritual life is alive. And all this is accomplished “by the power of the Holy Spirit.” The power of the Holy Spirit generates spiritual life; it also sustains it and leads it to perfection; from it come all movements and changes in spiritual life. Just as there is no life in the body without the soul, so there is no spiritual life in the soul without God’s Spirit. The God of hope first of all sends the grace of the Spirit; and it produces faith and fills with joy and peace, increases hope, and arranges all their mutual influences and transitions. Therefore the Apostle concluded his good wish with a good wish that all this be in you by the power of the Holy Spirit. Where this power is, there all is firm and full of hope.