Today, I'd like to share an essay I wrote recently on the difference between faith and hope. The difference between these two is essential to the understanding of the Gospel.
Faith Vs. Hope
Many people would assume that faith and hope are synonyms, the same word, just in a different form. But they’re not. Faith and hope are very distinct from each other. The meaning of faith is belief in the unseen, whereas the meaning of hope is assurance of the seen. The more a person thinks about these two words, the more they can appear different.
Faith’s meaning is believing in something you cannot see or may not understand. For example, a person has faith that someone else will do something they say. They have confidence that that person will carry out what they said they would. Faith can mean belief in religion, words, or ideas. Nearly everyone has some form or shape of faith in their lives.
Hope, on the other hand, means assurance in the seen. This means that a person has assurance that they understand and know will happen. People have hope in certain things, which, to them, meant that that is what would happen, no matter what. An example of this is the second coming of Jesus. We have hope, we have assurance that this event will happen because Jesus said it would. We know for absolute certain.
I can see why people could mix these two up. Faith can seem very similar to hope. Faith is believing something, but hope is realizing and being assured that it will happen. Hope is being certain something you know will happen. On the contrary, faith is confidence in something you don’t know or understand fully.
Although faith and hope are very different, it helps to understand the differences. A person can have faith that a chair will hold them, but once they sit in the chair and realize that it will hold them, they have hope in that chair. In conclusion, faith is belief in the unseen, but hope is assurance of the seen.
