What Is Biblical Hope? — Owen on Hope That Anchors the Soul
⏱ 14 min read
The trouble with the word hope is that the modern ear has been trained to hear it as a synonym for optimism. The bright forward-leaning expectation that things will probably turn out alright. The slightly forced cheer of the woman who has been told that the Christian posture is supposed to be hopeful, and who is trying — somewhere underneath the pressure to keep producing it — to feel something more solid than the wishful thinking she suspects she is actually trading in.
The biblical word does not mean any of that. The biblical word means something older, stranger, and far steadier than the modern English meaning would suggest, and the woman who has been quietly disappointed by her own hopefulness on the long Tuesday afternoons of a hard year has not been failing at hope. She has been operating with the wrong definition of it. The Everspring Bible Study Workbook for Women carries this kind of slow doctrinal reading into a daily companion, if you would like a place to take the practice after the article. For now — read slowly.
This is the slow version. John Owen, the seventeenth-century Puritan who wrote Of Communion with God across hundreds of pages because he could not stop unfolding the same simple thing, will be the older voice we walk with. Three passages from that book, read at the speed Owen intended. Hope, in Owen’s hand, is not optimism. It is the soul anchored elsewhere — fastened, by faith, to the unchanging tenderness of the Father, so that whatever happens in the visible weather of the day, the soul itself does not drift. The question what is biblical hope is, in Owen’s reading, a question about where the anchor lies — and the answer is precise enough that the woman who walks with it for a year will find her interior weather has slowly changed. (For the joy-companion to this hope-essay, what is biblical joy? — Edwards on the joy that holds walks Edwards’s complementary account of settled affection. For the related struggle with the sanctification engine that often masquerades as hopelessness, the sin of trying to sanctify yourself — John Owen on communion is the sister Owen essay. And if the deeper question underneath the hope question has been who am I in Him, what is my identity in Christ? — Owen on the indwelling Christ is the identity-soil this hope grows in.)
Hope, in the New Testament writers, is an anchor of the soul. The image is from Hebrews 6 — which hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and stedfast, and which entereth into that within the veil — and the anchor is not an emotion. It is a fastening. The soul has been tied to something that does not move, and the tie is what hope is. Owen builds his entire treatment of biblical hope on this image, and the slow reading of the three passages below will let you see exactly how.
The first passage: they that know thee will put their trust in thee
“They that know thee will put their trust in thee. Men cannot abide with God in spiritual meditations. He loseth soul’s company by their want of this insight into his love. They fix their thoughts only on his terrible majesty, severity, and greatness; and so their spirits are not endeared. Would a soul continually eye his everlasting tenderness and compassion, his thoughts of kindness that have been from of old, his present gracious acceptance, it could not bear an hour’s absence from him.”
— John Owen, Of Communion with God
Read it once. Then read it again, slowly.
Notice the diagnosis Owen is making before he gets to the cure. Men cannot abide with God in spiritual meditations. The soul has been losing God’s company — not because God has been withdrawing, but because the soul has been operating with a one-sided knowledge of Him. The soul has been taught terrible majesty, severity, and greatness and has not been taught everlasting tenderness and compassion, thoughts of kindness that have been from of old, present gracious acceptance. Both halves of the knowledge are true. The half that has been fed produces fear. The half that has been starved is the half hope grows in.
This is why the modern Christian woman’s hope so often feels thin. The content of her knowledge of God has been lopsided. She has been given the half that produces reverent caution and not the half that produces the endeared spirit — the soul that could not bear an hour’s absence from him. The hope she has been failing to feel is not a failure of effort. It is the natural state of a soul whose knowledge of the Father has been left half-fed. Hope is built on the half that has not been fed.
Notice what Owen is saying about the insight into his love. The word insight is doing real work. It is not just information about. It is the kind of slow, embodied, repeated seeing that allows the love to register in the soul as actually directed at this woman, in this chair, on this Tuesday. The information has been present, perhaps for decades. The insight — the slow inward registration — has often not. Hope is the affection that grows when the insight finally lands. They that know thee will put their trust in thee. The trust is not effortful. It is the natural outflowing of a knowledge that has finally become insight.
For the Christian woman whose hope has been failing in a hard season, this is the diagnostic line. Where is your insight thin? Not your knowledge. You have the knowledge. The verses about His love are in your head. But the insight — the slow registration in the deeper part of the soul where the affections actually live — has been left to grow on its own without daily feeding, and the affections cannot run on what they have not been fed. Hope, in Owen’s hand, is the affection that grows where the insight has been allowed to land. The work of feeding it is the work of the daily small return to the right-shaped knowledge of the Father, until the terrible majesty and the everlasting tenderness are held together in the same insight, and the soul, finally, cannot bear an hour’s absence from him.
This is the first definition. Biblical hope is the soul’s reposing on the insight of the Father’s love — slowly built, daily fed, the affection that grows when the knowledge has finally become inward enough to anchor the soul.
The second passage: an inexpressible mercy
The second passage is the one Owen wrote to describe what the insight actually produces in the soul when it is allowed to land. It is one of the most tender sentences in the entire Puritan corpus:
“To give a poor sinful soul a comfortable persuasion, affecting it throughout, in all its faculties and affections, that God in Jesus Christ loves him, delights in him, is well pleased with him, hath thoughts of tenderness and kindness towards him; to give, I say, a soul an overflowing sense hereof, is an inexpressible mercy.”
— John Owen, Of Communion with God
Read it twice. Slowly. Notice that the second reading is harder than the first, because the sentence keeps unfolding into ground you may not have walked recently.
A comfortable persuasion, affecting it throughout, in all its faculties and affections. This is Owen’s working definition of the soil hope grows in. The persuasion is comfortable — meaning, in seventeenth-century English, strengthening, bringing comfort in the older sense of fortifying — and it affects the whole person. The faculties (the mind, the will, the imagination) and the affections (the loves, the longings, the heart’s inclinations). Not just the head agreeing that God loves me. The whole person being slowly persuaded throughout that God loves this me, this woman, in this hard season, with these doubts and this fatigue.
This is the slow inward soil hope is built in. Without the comfortable persuasion affecting the whole person, hope is reduced to a head-fact the soul cannot lean on. With it, hope becomes the natural inward posture of a person who has been persuaded throughout that the Father, in Jesus Christ, loves him, delights in him, is well pleased with him, hath thoughts of tenderness and kindness towards him. The four verbs in the sentence are deliberate. Not one of them is tolerates. Not one of them is puts up with. All four are warm. All four describe an inward disposition of God toward this specific soul. The hope that anchors the soul grows in the soil of a comfortable persuasion that all four are true — for you, specifically, not only in general.
An overflowing sense hereof. This is the phrase that names what biblical hope actually feels like at its strongest. Not a thin wishful optimism. An overflowing sense. The persuasion has spread into the affections to such an extent that the soul is no longer holding the truth carefully in a small inward cup; the truth has come up to the brim of the cup and is overflowing into the rest of the soul’s interior life. An inexpressible mercy, Owen calls this. He has been a pastor long enough to know that most Christians never reach this overflowing state. He is not naming a standard. He is naming a gift — a mercy God gives, slowly, to the souls that have been faithfully returning to the right-shaped knowledge over years, until the cup at last fills.
For the modern Christian woman, this is the part that quiets the chronic guilt of not feeling enough. The overflowing sense is not a thing you produce. It is a thing God grows in you, by daily small exposure to the truth of His tenderness, until the soil is ready for the overflowing. Your work is the showing-up to the truth. The overflowing is His.
This is the second definition. Biblical hope is the affection that arises when the comfortable persuasion of the Father’s love has spread, slowly, into the whole person — and the soul finds itself anchored in something that does not depend on the day’s weather to stay fastened.
The somatic — finding where the anchor is currently holding
Pause here. The teaching has a body to it, and the body is where the hope is either held or not held.
Sit somewhere quiet. Let both feet press flat against the floor — the floor is itself a small anchor, in the literal way the body uses anchors. Let one hand rest, lightly, on the lower belly, where the diaphragm settles. Take one slow inhale. On the exhale, let the breath go all the way out, slower than the inhale, until the lungs have emptied enough that the next inhale arrives on its own.
Now ask the body — not the mind — a single question. Where is the anchor of the soul holding, right now? Do not answer in words. Wait for the inward sense to surface. The anchor might be holding in the work — the chest braces around the project, the deadline, the colleague’s email. It might be in the relationship — the worry over the child, the husband, the friendship. It might be in the bank balance, the body, the calendar, the next medical appointment. The anchor of the soul is always holding somewhere; the question is where.
The body knows. The orientation is not a moral score; it is a piece of information about where the soul’s weight is currently resting. If the anchor is holding in any of the worldly places, the soul will move with the weather of that place. If the anchor is holding in the Father’s everlasting tenderness, the soul will not. Owen’s whole pastoral programme assumes the anchor can be moved — slowly, by daily small practices — until it is fastened, at last, in the place that does not change. Take one more slow exhale. Take the hand away. Continue reading.
A daily home for the practice — between the second and third passages
The Everspring Bible Study Workbook for Women is built for this kind of slow re-anchoring. The hope Owen describes is not produced by a single intense moment. It is produced by repeated, slow, daily exposure to the right-shaped knowledge of the Father — until the comfortable persuasion has soaked through, and the overflowing sense has been gently grown by the One who gives it. The workbook is the daily room. A short passage. A small honest sentence. No demand to perform. The room where the anchor slowly moves to the place it was made to hold.
The third passage: the soul brought into the bosom of God
The third passage is the one where Owen names the final form of biblical hope — the form it takes when the anchor has finally moved to the place it was made to hold:
“The soul being thus, by faith through Christ, and by him, brought into the bosom of God, into a comfortable persuasion and spiritual perception and sense of his love, there reposes and rests itself.”
— John Owen, Of Communion with God
Read it once at speed. Then read it again, slowly. Notice every clause is doing work.
Brought into the bosom of God. Not climbing into. Not earning entry. Brought. The verb is in the passive voice because the soul does not do this. Faith does it. Christ does it. The Father, in His own initiative, draws the soul into the place the soul was made for. The hope of the Christian, in Owen’s reading, is not the hope of a person who has climbed her way up to God. It is the hope of a person who has been brought. The bringing is His. The hope is the inward registration that the bringing has happened — and that, because it has happened, the soul is home.
There reposes and rests itself. The verbs name the final form of biblical hope. Not striving. Not pushing. Reposing. Resting. The soul has finally found the place its restless centuries were leaning toward, and the response is not a louder activity but a quieter one — the resting of the weight of the soul on the One who is finally close enough to hold it. This is what Hebrews 6 means by the anchor of the soul. The anchor has caught the rock. The soul, fastened to the rock, can now rest. The weather above will still come and go. The anchor will hold.
For the modern Christian woman, this is the part that quiets the chronic anxiety about am I doing enough. The doing was never the point. The being brought is the point. Your part is the daily small showing-up to be brought — the chair time, the slow reading, the patient return to the right-shaped knowledge of the Father — and His part is the bringing. The hope grows in the gap between your showing-up and His bringing, and after enough months of the gap, the soul finds itself reposing without having been able to name the moment the reposing began.
This is the third definition. Biblical hope is the soul brought into the bosom of God, fastened there by faith through Christ, reposing and resting itself in the comfortable persuasion of the Father’s love — the anchor finally caught, the soul finally home, the weather finally unable to dislodge the anchor’s hold.
What this means for the way you have been hoping
Most Christians, in seasons of difficulty, have tried to manufacture hope. They have read the hopeful verses harder. They have repeated the hopeful affirmations more often. They have tried to feel hopeful on Tuesday mornings by an act of will. The manufacturing has not worked — it cannot — because biblical hope is not a feeling the soul produces; it is the inward state of a soul brought, persuaded throughout, and reposing in the Father’s tenderness.
The work, then, is not to try harder at hoping. The work is the slow re-feeding of the soul on the right-shaped knowledge of God — everlasting tenderness, thoughts of kindness that have been from of old, present gracious acceptance — until the insight has landed, the comfortable persuasion has spread throughout, and the soul finds itself reposing without having tried to. Owen would tell you the work is not less than this and is also not more. The hope is His to grow. The showing-up is yours.
(The sibling articles in this contemplative-fathers series sit at what is the kingdom of God? — Augustine on the two cities and what is regeneration in the Bible? — Edwards on the new birth. The three together walk the doctrines the daily-companion practice of the workbook is built to feed.)
What biblical hope will actually feel like over a year
The hope Owen describes will not feel, at first, like the bright forward-leaning optimism the modern bookshop sells. It will feel quieter. Sturdier. Lower in the body. A small interior steadiness that does not depend on the day going well. The Tuesday at three in the afternoon, when the difficult email lands, will surface a different inward response — not the bracing of the soul’s whole weight against the news, but a small settled inward sentence: the anchor is still holding. The news has happened. The chest has tightened slightly. The anchor, fastened elsewhere, has not moved. This is what biblical hope feels like over months of slow practice. Not euphoria. Steadiness. The interior weather has shifted because the centre has shifted, and the centre — the anchor — is fastened, at last, in the place that does not change.
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