Jesus Of Nazareth Is The Only Hope For Any Person

Jesus of Nazareth is the only hope for any person

"Hopelessnes is hell - literally. As God made us to fulfil a function and attain an end (for 'man's chief end is to glorify God, and enjoy him forever'), so he made us creatures for whom hope is life, and whose lives become living deaths when we have nothing good to look forward to. As the deep hopelessness of pose-Christian western culture tightens its chilly grip on us, we are made to feel this increasingly, and so can better appreciate the infinite value of life today of that exuberant, unstoppable, intoxicating, energizing hope of joy with Jesus in the Father's presence for ever which is so pervasive a mark of New Testament Christianity.

Whereas those without Christ are without God and without hope, living already in a dusk of the spirit that is destined to grow darker and colder, Christians are in the sunshine, endlessly rejoicing in 'Christ Jesus our hope'. The inescapable alternatives are false hope (Marxism? spiritism? happiness through having things? endless good health? - false hopes, every one), or else no hope (total pessimism, inviting suicide), or else Christian hope, the electrifying knowledge of 'Christ in you, the hope of glory'. It is a pity that so little is heard these days about what has been called 'the unknown world with its well-known inhabitant' to which the New Testament teaches Christians to look forward; for, as the hymn says: 'The Lamb is all the glory of Emmanuel's land,' and declaring that glory is part of what it means to relate the New Testament witness to the person of Jesus Christ."

- J. I. Packer, "Jesus Christ is Lord" in The J.I Packer Collection, ed. Alister E. McGrath