“What’s the difference between faith and hope?”

Steve Brown:
What’s the difference between faith and hope? We’ll answer that question on this edition of the Key Life.

Matthew Porter:
Welcome to Key Life. Our host and teacher is Steve Brown. He’s no guru, but he does have honest answers to honest questions about the Bible. God’s grace changes everything, how we love, work, live, lead, marry, parent, evangelize, purchase and worship. So, here’s Steve and Pete Alwinson from ForgeBibleStudy.com with street-smart Bible teaching for real life.

Steve Brown:
Thank you Matthew. Hi Pete.

Pete Alwinson:
Hey man. How you doing? Happy Friday.

Steve Brown:
Well, it is generally a happy Friday.

Pete Alwinson:
You’re not happy today?

Steve Brown:
No, my computer is all messed up and we’ve got the most talented and gifted. IT man in America, who works for a Key Life.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah.

Steve Brown:
His name is John Myers and even he’s confused.

Pete Alwinson:
And so, you really, are you upset or just.

Steve Brown:
You ever hear a preacher cuss?

Pete Alwinson:
I don’t want to start.

Steve Brown:
No, he’s getting it fixed now as we sit down and do more important and spiritual things, then computers. We’re going to be talking about Jesus and Pete comes in, as you know, every Friday and we answer questions together. And we do love to get your questions. By the way, go to ForgeTruth.com. I keep telling you that and you keep not listening. Go check out ForgeTruth.com. What I was saying before I interrupted myself was that we love to get your questions. And you can call 1-800-KEY-LIFE, 24 7, record your question. And sometimes we put that on the air, your own voice. Or you can send your question to

Key Life Network
P.O. Box 5000
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If you’re in Canada, it’s

Key Life Canada
P.O. Box 28060
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Or you can e-mail us at [email protected]. When you send along your question, if you send along a gift, you get 30 free sins. No, if you’re a Christian, you get all of your sins free because Jesus paid for them. But. If you can help us financially, we’ll be as faithful with your gift as you are in giving it. And if you can’t, we get that, say a prayer for this ministry. And all of those addresses I gave you are places where you could do that. Pete, why don’t you pray for us and we’ll get to some of these questions.

Pete Alwinson:
Sounds good. Let’s pray. Father, thank you for today. Thank you for Fridays, where a week of work begins to come together and we begin to look back at what you’ve done and we honor and praise you as our great God and Savior. We ask that Lord, you would help us to see your hand at work in our life. Thank you, that you’re always in control that you’re always sovereign, that you love us. And that there’s nothing that you can do to us, that will be harmful because you love us so much. And so, we honor you and we pray that this week-end we would be able to worship and see how the gospel of grace unleashes us into new life and freedom and joy. And we ask that you’d be with our pastors and teachers and priests and worship leaders and all those that stand before us to draw us into your presence. Lord, be with them in a powerful way and enable us to hear your voice through them. And so, now we just thank you for Key Life and for the chance to deal with some real questions that grace enables us to look deeply at all things and find your wisdom. We commit this time to you in Jesus’ strong name. Amen.

Steve Brown:
Amen. Alright, let’s go to our phone lines.

Caller 1:
If you can tell me the difference between hope and faith.

Steve Brown:
Oh, that was quick.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah, there it is.

Steve Brown:
Quick, short and sweet.

Pete Alwinson:
Most people talk a lot longer.

Steve Brown:
I know, some of them preach.

Pete Alwinson:
I know. Right. That’s great. Well, what do you think, how do you deal with that?

Steve Brown:
Well, they smell the same. They really do. They’re sisters and they’re in the same house. And hope and faith have overtones that are similar. But anybody can have hope. I mean, that’s something that’s built into human nature. You can look forward to the girl that you’re going to ask out that she would accept your invitation. You can hope about getting a raise. You can hope the movie’s going to be good, but also if you’re a Christian, you can hope that the world would see a revival. You can hope that your friends come to Christ. But faith is particular and geared to the reality of a gift that God gives us. Faith is a gift of God. We’re saved by faith, but even that faith, Paul says in Ephesians, even that gift of faith is from him. So, it’s all him. And so, if you have faith, It smells like hope, but it’s a lot deeper and more profound than that. And it’s a gift of God, I think. Add your comments.

Pete Alwinson:
I think that’s good. I think that’s good. I think that makes a lot of sense of how we generally approach those things, so faith, what I hear you saying is rooted in the finished work of Christ and his death, burial and resurrection. And that reality of a historical reality is mediated to us by the Spirit that we can believe that. So, it’s a gift of God. Now, can hope have that deeper sense of, the passage that comes to mind is that Abrahamic passage, in hope against hope he believed. So they, like you said, they’re sisters there.

Steve Brown:
Yeah, they really are. There are overtones that are gather, but at the same time Abraham, that said of Abraham, you know, there were others around him tending their livestock who had other hopes, which were not what that passage is talking about, but it smells the same. It has the same smell to it.

Pete Alwinson:
So, there is that deep sense of, maybe underlying, when I think of the relationship, I kind of say, well, hope is that deep sense of confidence.

Steve Brown:
Yeah.

Pete Alwinson:
Faith is a little bit more active, holding onto

Steve Brown:
That’s good.

Pete Alwinson:
God, I don’t know.

Steve Brown:
That works.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s from what you said, that’s how it applied to me, from what you said.

Steve Brown:
We have never gotten this question before.

Pete Alwinson:
I know, we never have.

Steve Brown:
So, we’re just talking off the top of our head and we could be wrong. So search the Scriptures, young lady and find out. And if you tell us we’re wrong, we’ll repent publicly and give a proper answer to that particular question.

Pete Alwinson:
And we’ll continue to study it ourselves.

Steve Brown:
That’s true.

Pete Alwinson:
Great question. Great question.

Steve Brown:
Hey, listen. This is a question we get all the time and I hesitated to bring it up again, but you know, my granddaughter, our granddaughter just lost a kitten that she loves so much. And the family lost a dog, they love so much. And it was interesting that when they went through that, and it was kind of dark because they loved their pets. I thought about my dogs and I don’t care that much about cats, but my kids did. And how often, we buried them, how often we had to put them down, how often. And it was always a sad time. One time at the veterinarian’s our little dog Annie he had to be put down. And my wife held her head while they were administering the injection. And, you know what I did, I sat over in a corner and cried. And the nurses kept looking at me and I could see it in their eyes. What are you, some kind of a wuss, what’s wrong with you? So, we finally get out in the car and I say to Anna, you’re a hard woman. And all of a sudden she fell apart and started crying. So, you know, we love our pets. You know, there’s the old story. God does too. But the old story of the man who went to heaven and they didn’t have his name on the book and Peter was going to send him away. And Jesus said, hold it, are you the man that fed the birds in the park. And he said, yeah, that’s me. And Jesus said, Peter, let him in. So, there’s a lot to be said for our animals. So the question is, after all the chit-chat. Do they go to heaven?

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah. Right. I, you know, it is, God created certain pets to connect with us. And I think that that’s something we can say. I always struggled with, you know, those people that have like pet iguanas or something like that. We don’t, we go hunting iguanas in South Florida, literally. So, I don’t understand a pet snake. Really. I get that, but I think, a good chance that we will. I mean, you know, we see the lion lays down with the lamb. We see, we see these Biblical imageries that involve animals and it could well be true, but we don’t know for a hundred percent.

Steve Brown:
So, it’s a good question. And we’ll get it again and again. And what we will do is just play digital recording of this particular answer, instead of, now, this is a, what does the phrase to live as Christ to die is gain, that’s Philippians 1:21 really mean? Well, it means to live is Christ and to die is gain.

Pete Alwinson:
Words have meaning.

Steve Brown:
No, it does mean what it suggests to you, when you read it, that when we die, we’ve been promised that heaven is ours and we’ll be before the throne and it will be eternal. So quit eating everything that’s good for you. Eat stuff that’s bad for you. And you can get there quicker.

Pete Alwinson:
Okay. Your logic, drive faster, you know, be reckless, do things that will lead to your death, so you can get to heaven.

Steve Brown:
And get you there as fast as you can.

Pete Alwinson:
But only after you’ve accepted Christ. So, you know, there’s a real sense also of John’s gospel here, where he says.

In him was life and the life was the light of men.

So, that in Christ we have true life. As opposed to that, you know, substitute for life that so many people say, if you do this, you’ll have life. This will give you life. No, Christ gives us life here, but in the age to come.

Steve Brown:
That’s true. And to live as Christ, that’s not half bad.

Pete Alwinson:
No, no.

Steve Brown:
And to die is even better.

Pete Alwinson:
And, and you know, this is something I’ve, I think Christians used to have a stronger theology of death. And I think we need to have that, in our lives, that death is not our enemy, it’s been taken care of. And I think as people get older in the faith, they need to face that a more realistically.

Steve Brown:
And we don’t think about it very much.

Pete Alwinson:
We don’t.

Steve Brown:
We don’t. And there’s a reason for that. What’s that old saying? The good news is you’re going to heaven. The bad news is you’re going on Thursday.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right. That’s right.

Steve Brown:
To live is Christ. And to die is gain. Guys, we appreciate you joining us on Fridays as we answer these letters. Feel free to comment. And one other thing, before we go. Key Life is a listener supported production up Key Life Network.