Gordon Gano of the Violent Femmes sings the following in their song Bad Dream

I’m supposed to be a better person by now.  What the hell is taking me so long?  Dying savior’s on some cross. Now I’m hoping and I’m praying that it nullified my losses.

I don’t know too much about Mr. Gano.  I don’t know his beliefs, and I don’t know how autobiographical those lyrics are, but I think he poignantly recognizes a need for personal sanctification.

I believe there are two sides to the coin of hope, and it seems we often confuse the two with interchangeable vernacular.  On the one side, there is the object of hope, and on the flipside, there is the cognitive measure of hope that is felt and recognized.  In other words, the notion of hope is often blurred ambiguously between the unwavering anchor of steadfast certainty and our faltering grasp of its assurance.  This is, to me, a contributing factor between the blurred understanding of justification and sanctification. 

In the one sense, the Christian’s hope for salvation rests in the justification accomplished by the atoning work of Jesus Christ.  This hope takes Christ at his word, and believes in the truth of God’s declaration when he proclaims the effectual power of Christ, and the guaranteed perseverance of his sheep.  This is our anchor of hope.

On the flipside, however, our hope is — in some sense — made manifest by our own sanctification.  As we grow in Christ and the wounds of our rebellion are healed with divine reconciliation, the fruit of the Spirit flourishes and becomes more evident in the believer’s life.  As we examine our lives, this sanctification is the means by which we recognize our grasp on the object of hope.  I believe that those who cling most desperately to Christ are those who most realize how desperately they need their Savior.  Consequently, the more we recognize our desperate need, and the more we come to grips with the magnitude of grace, the more that grace will shine in our lives.  The more we feel His love of us — the unlovable — the more our love will grow towards those who were, to us, unlovable.  The more we feel His grace poured out upon us — the hopeless and helpless — the more we will be inclined to share that grace with those who were, to us, hopeless and helpless. 

As we work through our salvation with fear and trembling, the object of our hope is Christ Jesus who came as the perfect sacrifice to satisfy the holy judgment of God upon the treasonous sins of man.  Through his atonement, he took our place on the cross so that we might — by grace through faith — receive the benefits of His righteousness and become right with God.  This is our hope and stay.

We are, however, fickle creatures of fleeting whimsies and a wanderlust fancy.  Our thoughts shake and sway with the changing winds of influence, and we often forget where our hope rests.  In order to preserve our hope (or rather our grasp on our hope), we need to immerse ourselves and daily remind ourselves of the object of our hope, and our glorious Gospel.

All have sinned against God and have brought upon themselves the just judgment of death and eternal separation from God.  There is no hope for us in our good works or noble intentions, because, for one thing, our good works are still tainted with the stain of sin, and, for another, the weight of our good deeds (assuming they were noble and pure) is not enough to sway the divine scale of justice.  (To put it another way, the standard is righteousness goodness, not mediocre neutrality.  Assuming, for the moment, our good deeds are truly good, then they still wouldn’t be adequate to counterbalance our shortcomings, because they would not be exceeding the mark, but rather, simply and fleetingly meeting it.  It would take perfect goodness to meet the mark and then perfect goodness exceeding goodness for us to undo the harm we have done the rest of the time.)  The hope we do have, however, is a glorious hope that rests not in ourselves — lest any man should boast — but rather in a divine sacrifice of perfection.  The hope of sinners is in the perfect life of the Son of God and the Son of man, Jesus Christ, who lived a sinless and righteous life, and died as a propitiation for the sins of those who will believe in Him. 

By His life, he earned the right to be the perfect sacrifice; by His death, he paid the price of his sheep’s disobedience and bought their lives so that they may rest eternally in his fold; and by his resurrection, He conquered death, giving hope for eternal life to all who believe on Him.