The Supremacy of Christ Our Hope

I used to think, when the apostle Peter said in 1 Peter 3:15, “Always [be] prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you,” that he implied more or less that I should nail down two or three solid arguments for the historical fact of Jesus’s resurrection, and two or three good, solid historical arguments for the reliability of the Bible, and two or three good exegetical arguments for why my interpretation of the cross of Christ is true. And thank God that some in the church are called to do just that, because there are such good arguments. But I doubt that’s what Peter mainly had in mind.

He was talking to ordinary believers, probably many of them preliterate (these are first-century Roman provinces scattered across Asia Minor). The churches would have included slaves (1 Peter 2:18–25), who would’ve been prevented from ordinary education. It’s just very unlikely that Peter had in mind the kind of sophisticated historical investigation we think of today. And remember what he actually said: “[Be] prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you [about] the hope that is in you” — in you. Why do you hope in Jesus?

True and Wonderful Reasons

The vast majority of you in this room have set your hope in Jesus Christ. You have a living hope that when you die you will go to heaven to be with him, and not to hell. Or here’s the way Peter put it in 1 Peter 1:3–5:

According to [God’s] great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God’s power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.

For most of you in this room, that’s the hope that is in you: an imperishable inheritance. And it is protected there in heaven for you, and you are protected here for it, so you’ll make it. And Peter is saying you have reasons for that hope. You do, right now. Just be willing to tell people what they are. And he gives two of them right in those verses, and you know them both: (1) You’ve been born again to a living hope, and (2) it was through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.

“There is no being in the universe (or outside the universe) that is greater than or superior to Jesus Christ.”

So, when they ask for a reason for the hope that is in you, you say, for example, “My hope is to inherit heaven and not hell (1) because God caused me to be born again and (2) because Jesus rose from the dead.” Those are two solid, true, authentic reasons for why you have hope. Many of us get paralyzed because we think we have to give a reason, and then a reason for the reason, and then a reason for that reason, until we get back to something absolutely incontrovertible. Well, guess what: There is no such thing. Satan and unbelievers can controvert every reason you (or the best scholars) give.

Peter didn’t say, “When someone asks for a reason for your hope, win the argument.” He said, “Give a reason.” You have one; you have several. They are valid. They are not argument-stoppers. They’re just true and wonderful.

And one of the reasons we can give for the hope that is in us is the supremacy of Jesus Christ.

Great Realities of the World

It seemed good to me that, here at the beginning of the series, we should linger for a few minutes on the simple, magnificent reality of Christ’s supremacy. That is, the reality that there is no being in the universe (or outside the universe) that is greater than or superior to Jesus Christ — not even God, because Jesus Christ is God.

The burden I feel for the church today is that cultural and political spectacles are being thrust before our eyes in such a way as to say, “This is supremely important! This you need to pay attention to. This is a great life-shaper. These national and international issues have supremacy.” Just type into your favorite AI assistant, “What are the great realities being discussed in our world today?” Here’s what you get:

• The geopolitical order is fracturing.
• Climate change is irreversible.
• Infertility is causing the demographic collapse of developed countries.
• Space is the new arena of great-power competition.
• The credibility of legacy institutions has collapsed.

Those realities, or ones like these, are offered to us every day as great issues — realities that have supremacy. And my burden is that Christians — human beings who have been born again by the Creator of the universe to have a living hope, to be everlasting children of the living God, and who have been delivered from the domain of darkness and transferred into the kingdom of his beloved Son, to inherit the universe and to rule over angels — that we may be duped into believing that those are the great things. They’re not!

But this is what everyone is talking about. How can it not be supremely important? And we simply lose our bearings, like the sonar of a submarine that sends off alarms because a turtle is swimming by, while it’s unable to see an aircraft carrier five miles away, five million times bigger than the turtle. The important thing has no impact.

Great Realities of Christ

So here, at the beginning of our series on the supremacy of Christ, may I try to reorient your sonar? Colossians 1:18 says, “In everything [Christ is] preeminent.” He has the supremacy. Try to take in these realities of Christ’s supremacy.

1. The supremacy of his deity, equal with God the Father in all his attributes — the radiance of his glory and the exact imprint of his nature — infinite, boundless in all his excellencies.

2. The supremacy of his eternality that makes the mind of man explode with the unsearchable thought that Christ never had a beginning, but simply always was; he is sheer, absolute reality, while all the universe is fragile, contingent, like a shadow by comparison to his all-defining, ever-existing substance.

3. The supremacy of his never-changing constancy in all his virtues and all his character and all his commitments — the same yesterday, today, and forever (Hebrews 13:8).

4. The supremacy of his knowledge that makes the Library of Congress look like a matchbox, and all the information of the massive AI data centers look like a 1940s Farmers’ Almanac, and quantum physics — and everything Stephen Hawking ever dreamed of — seem like what you find in a first-grade reader.

5. The supremacy of his wisdom that has never been perplexed by any complication and can never be counseled by the wisest of men.

6. The supremacy of his authority over heaven and earth and hell, without whose permission no man and no demon can move one inch, who changes times and seasons, who removes kings and sets up kings, who does according to his will among the host of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth.

7. The supremacy of his providence, without which not a single bird falls to the ground in the furthest reaches of the Amazon rainforest, nor a single hair of any head turns black or white.

8. The supremacy of his word that upholds the universe and holds in being all the molecules and atoms, and the subatomic world we have never yet dreamed of.

9. The supremacy of his power to walk on water, cleanse lepers and heal the lame, open the eyes of the blind, cause the deaf to hear and storms to cease and the dead to rise, with a single word.

10. The supremacy of his purity never to sin or to have one millisecond of a bad attitude or an evil, lustful thought.

11. The supremacy of his trustworthiness never to break his word or let one promise fall to the ground.

12. The supremacy of his justice to render in due time all moral accounts in the universe settled, either on the cross or in hell.

13. The supremacy of his patience to endure our dullness for decade after decade and to hold back his final judgment on this land and on the world, that many might repent.

14. The supremacy of his sovereign, servant-like obedience to keep his Father’s commandments perfectly and then embrace the excruciating pain of the cross willingly.

15. The supremacy of his meekness and lowliness and tenderness that will not break a bruised reed or quench a smoldering wick.

16. The supremacy of his courage, to walk intentionally right into the mouth of the lion and embrace the torture of crucifixion in our place.

17. The supremacy of his wrath that will one day explode against this world with such fierceness that people will call out for the rocks and the mountains to crush them rather than face the wrath of the Lamb.

18. The supremacy of his grace that gives life to spiritually dead rebels and awakens faith in hell-bound haters of God and justifies the ungodly with his own righteousness.

19. The supremacy of his love that willingly dies for us even while we were sinners, and frees us for the ever-increasing joy of making much of him forever.

20. The supremacy of his own inexhaustible gladness in the fellowship of the Trinity, the infinite power and energy that gave rise to all the universe and will one day be the inheritance of every struggling saint.

Compared to this supremacy, this Christ, this God-man, the spectacles of culture and politics and international affairs are as nothing.

Behold, the nations are like a drop from a bucket,
     and are accounted as the dust on the scales;
     behold, he takes up the coastlands like fine dust. . . .
All the nations are as nothing before him,
     they are accounted by him as less than nothing and emptiness.

To whom then will you liken God,
     or what likeness compare with him? (Isaiah 40:15, 17–18)

What Is Hope?

So, let’s make the turn — not a very big turn — from the supremacy of Christ to the supremacy of Christ our hope. What is the reason for your hope? Answer: the supremacy of Christ over everything.

There are three ways that the word hope is used in the Bible and in contemporary English. First, it is a strong emotion of desire and confidence for something good to happen. It’s something we feel. Second, hope is the thing that you hope for. Third, hope is the foundation of why you can hope for it.

For example, ask the Timberwolves coach how he’s feeling about the game, and he may say, “We are very hopeful that we are going to win this game. The guys are full of hope.” That’s the emotion of hope. Or we may ask, “What are you hoping for?” And he may say, “Victory is our hope.” That’s hope as the thing hoped for. Or we may ask, “What’s your hope if you’re down by 3 with three seconds to go and it’s your ball?” And he may say, “We’re giving it to the Ant-Man. Anthony’s our hope.” That’s hope as the basis or ground of your hoping.

“Compared to the glory and the greatness and the beauty and the worth of Christ himself, the cosmos is as nothing.”

So it is in the New Testament. There is hope as the feeling of confident expectation. There’s hope as the prize that we hope for. And there’s hope as the ground or basis of our confidence. So, for example, “[We are] born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ” (1 Peter 1:3). Christ risen is the basis of our living hope. And then the emotion of hoping itself is a gift of the Spirit — the Spirit of Christ. “By the power of the Holy Spirit you . . . abound in hope” (Romans 15:13). And third, the goal that we hope for is Christ himself. And that is where I want to focus for the rest of our time together.

Our Greatest Hope

I want to leave you with the encouragement to make the close, personal enjoyment of Christ in all his supremacies your greatest hope — greater than your hope to see your loved ones again, greater than your hope never to be sick or diseased or depressed or wounded or sad or lonely ever again, greater than your hope never to sin again, greater than your hope to be glorified like Jesus himself, and greater than your hope to be part of the glorious new heavens and new earth. I want to persuade you that a close, personal enjoyment of Christ himself in all his supremacies should be your greatest hope.

There are three reasons that I see in the New Testament for why the enjoyment of Christ himself should be your greatest hope:

1. Because that’s what Jesus wants.
2. Because that’s what the apostle Paul experienced.
3. Because that’s the purpose of the new heavens and the new earth.

1. This is what Jesus wants.

Here’s how he prayed in John 17:24: “Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory.” Paul called the appearance of this glory our blessed hope: “[We are] waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ” (Titus 2:13). That’s what Jesus prayed for: that we would be with him personally and that we would see his glory. I think that means this: A close, personal enjoyment of Christ in all his supremacies is our greatest hope.

2. This is what Paul experienced.

When he was in prison in Rome, Paul wrote to the Philippians, “I am hard pressed between the two [being released or going to heaven]. My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better” (Philippians 1:23). To be with Christ was for him like a precious, long-awaited homecoming. He said in 2 Corinthians 5:8, “Yes, we are of good courage, and we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord.” With Christ after death is better than life here, because it is home.

Noël and I live about a ten-minute walk from here. We have lived in that house for 42 years. We raised five children there. We passed through the deepest marital waters there. We hosted dozens of Thanksgiving feasts there. It is home. And it is precious. I love coming home. But the reason God gave us this home — with its chipping paint, and fraying carpet, and rotting eaves — is to point us to a better home. And that home is Jesus.

Knowing that I am old, and my heart could stop any night while I am asleep, I speak to the Lord personally to get ready to meet him — and I always close with the words of Paul in 1 Thessalonians 5:9–10: “God has not destined us for wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us so that whether we are awake or asleep we might live with him.” This is where all the emphasis lies with the apostle Paul: with him, with him.

Even when Paul is describing the second coming, when those who have died will receive our glorious resurrection bodies, this is still the note that he strikes. “Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord” (1 Thessalonians 4:17). With the Lord. I think that means this: A close, personal enjoyment of the supremacy of Christ is our greatest hope.

3. This is the purpose of the new heavens and the new earth.

It is true that the entire cosmos — all the galaxies and all the planets and the solar system and the whole fallen earth with everything broken in it — is going to be set right and made new. That is a glorious Christian hope. But I would like to make one thing crystal clear: Jesus Christ could carry the cosmos in his pocket like a peanut. Compared to the glory and the greatness and the beauty and the worth of Christ himself, the cosmos is as nothing.

Before there was a place called the cosmos, there was a person called God — Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Therefore, ultimate reality is a person, not a place. The place serves the person, not the other way around. The cosmos exists for Christ — and for the people of Christ.

When Paul said in Romans 8:17 that our destiny is to be glorified with Christ, the next thing he said was this: “The creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God” (verse 19). The main thing is not that we are waiting for the new creation; it’s waiting for us. Then he says it again: “The creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God” (verse 21). We don’t inherit the glory of the new creation; it inherits ours. And what is our glory? It is the glory of Christ. Verse 17: “We [will] be glorified with [Christ].”

What’s the point? The point is that the purpose of the new heavens and the new earth is to celebrate the glory of the children of God. And what is our glory? Our glory is the glory of Christ. And why do we share his glory? Because we have come into a close, personal enjoyment of Christ in all his supremacies.

So, I conclude: A close, personal enjoyment of Christ himself in all his supremacies should be your greatest hope, because this is what Jesus wants, this is what Paul experienced, and this is what the new heavens and the new earth will celebrate — the glory of Christ reflected in the enjoyment of his people in him.