Jesus Christ is our hope. Hope must rest not in the promises of resurrection, escape, or the Kingdom, but in the Person who made them, because a promise is only as good as the character and power of the one who gives it. Paul's Greek in I Thessalonians 1:3 makes Jesus the object of our faith, love, and enduring hope, and I Timothy 1:1 calls Him "our hope." Hebrews 6:16-20 shows this hope as an anchor of the soul, fixed on Jesus the forerunner and High Priest, who cannot lie. Its steadiness lets us persevere actively through trials rather than merely waiting them out. The ground of this hope is real: Christ's resurrection, attested by hundreds of eyewitnesses, guarantees that a living hope in God is not in vain (I Peter 1:3-7; I Corinthians 15). Hope is also Christ in us, "the hope of glory" (Colossians 1:27), the mystery now revealed. His life, character, and virtues formed in a believer give certainty that reaches beyond the grave, just as God's presence in Christ raised Him. Those without Christ are without hope (Ephesians 2:12). The gospel by itself does not save; God saves the person who is in Christ through the gospel. Our hope therefore rests in a living relationship with a Being, not a book, and Paul's pursuit of knowing Christ shows the aim of that relationship: conformity to His image.

Our hope is in God, and Jesus Christ is its anchor. Hebrews 6 pictures hope as an anchor of the soul, sure and steadfast, that holds to something that does not move despite the tempests around us. That anchor enters the Presence behind the veil, where Jesus has gone before us as High Priest forever. Though His blood justifies us, His life saves us. Because He lives, intercedes for us, and watches over our lives to bring us into the Father's Kingdom, we have hope. The Father and Christ are alive, exert sovereign control, and cannot lie, so the promises confirmed in Christ's life, death, and resurrection are absolutely dependable. Through His resurrection we are begotten to a living hope, and our faith and hope are in God, who raised Him from the dead. Isaiah's prophecy of the Root of Jesse, in whom the Gentiles shall hope, points to Him. Before calling, the Gentiles were without Christ and so without hope, and no other religion offers a certain hope because none expects the Messiah. Human hopes are fragile, and many are false. Hope anchored in the person and promises of the Creator never disappoints, because God never fails. This hope motivates endurance, protects the mind like a helmet, and keeps us from drifting away. It also drives us to cooperate with God's work of making us like Him.

Jesus Christ is the only solid basis for hope, whatever the times. When many disciples abandoned Him over hard sayings, Peter answered, "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life," and so hope resides in Jesus Himself together with the teaching He gave. The old cliché "where there is life, there is hope" should be changed to "where there is Christ, there is hope." What one's faith is in determines the quality of one's hope. Because Christ is infallible and all-powerful, hope placed in Him is a living hope. Paul calls Him "our hope" (I Timothy 1:1), and Peter says God has begotten us again to a living hope through His resurrection from the dead, toward an incorruptible inheritance. Hope in Christ's return has been the beacon of the believer's life. Faith is the foundation on which hope is built, and love is the fruit of faith and hope working together. When hope rests in the right source, it becomes active in the believer. Peter, the apostle of hope, writes that we are to rest our hope fully upon the grace brought at the revelation of Jesus Christ. This hope keeps the mind fixed on what is to come rather than on present suffering, enabling holy conduct and perseverance through persecution and worsening conditions. Those who lose hope, like Demas or the disciples who left, had placed it elsewhere.

Simeon's account in Luke 2 provides the foundational picture of Jesus Christ as the object of hope. This devout, elderly man had received a promise from the Holy Spirit that he would not die before seeing the Lord's Christ, and he held onto life in anticipation of that singular event. When he finally beheld and held the infant Jesus, he declared himself ready to depart, having witnessed God's salvation. Simeon's endurance was sustained by his waiting for the "Consolation of Israel," a term parallel to the "hope of Israel" that Paul later invokes, and this hope centered entirely on the person of Christ. Simeon's life stands as a remarkable precursor to devout Christians today, who likewise wait—not for Christ's first appearing in the flesh, but for His return, the Second Coming, as the culminating object of their hope. This connection between Christ and hope unfolds further through the Pentecost symbolism. Jesus Christ is the One to whom the Father gave the responsibility of dispensing the Holy Spirit, and this matters profoundly for hope because Christ, having lived as a man and been tempted in all points, sympathizes with human weakness and knows precisely what is needed, when, and in what measure. He pours out His Spirit abundantly, not sparingly, sustaining believers throughout the entire journey from calling to glorification. In this sense, the Spirit that indwells Christians is Christ Himself, present with them at every stage toward the Kingdom of God. Christ's role as the object of hope also appears vividly in the Pentecost wave-loaf offering. Though the loaves, representing God's firstfruits, contain leaven symbolizing sin, they are rendered acceptable to God only in conjunction with the sin offering and peace offering—both of which represent Jesus Christ. It is only through His atoning sacrifice that corrupted, yet transformed, believers can be presented before God and declared holy. Christ is also identified as the Priest to whom the loaves ultimately belong for consumption, signifying that once sanctified, believers are given over to His service, just as He wholly gave Himself to the Father's work. Finally, hope in Christ is tied to assurance of completion. Since believers are called to be God's firstfruits through the unchanging, ever-shining Father, and since Christ Himself is the one "who has begun a good work" in believers, there is confident expectation that He will complete it "until the day of Jesus Christ." This certainty rests on Christ's own faithfulness to finish what He starts. Thus, Jesus Christ stands as the central object of hope—first typified in Simeon's long wait to behold Him in the flesh, and now realized in the anticipation of His return, His mediating role in granting the Spirit, His atoning sacrifice that makes acceptance before God possible, and His assured faithfulness to bring His people to completion in the Kingdom.