Since we have the same spirit of faith according to what has been written, “I believed, and so I spoke”, we also believe, and so we also speak, 14 knowing that he who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus and bring us with you into his presence. ESVUK

We’re not keeping this quiet, not on your life. Just like the psalmist who wrote, “I believed it, so I said it,” we say what we believe. And what we believe is that the One who raised up the Master Jesus will just as certainly raise us up with you, alive. The Message

As a Jew, Paul was steeped in the Psalms, and he spoke in the same spirit as the psalmist in the 116th psalm. He continued to believe, and affirm his faith, in the face of suffering – the psalmist did, and so did Paul. At the heart of Paul’s confession is the resurrection of Jesus and its implications for believers. Although he is constantly exposed to the threat of death, here is his core conviction, and he verbalises it. The essence of the Christian hope is, in a word, Jesus. Paul expresses this clearly in Philippians 1:21-23:

 ”For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain. 22 If I am to live in the flesh, that means fruitful labour for me. Yet which I shall choose I cannot tell. 23 I am hard pressed between the two. My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better.”

In his book, ‘Hope in times of fear’, Tim Keller refers to J.R.R. Tolkien’s ‘The Lord of the Rings’. He says, ‘Sam Gamgee has been guarding his master, Frodo, during a harrowing journey through a deadly, evil country. At one point he rescued Frodo from a prison tower out of sheer force of will. Later he is falling asleep and sees a white star twinkling in the sky:

The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty forever beyond its reach. His song in the Tower had been defiance rather than hope; for then he was thinking of himself. Now, for a moment, his own fate, and even his master’s, ceased to trouble him

…real courage comes with self-forgetfulness based on joy. It comes from a conviction that we here on earth are trapped temporarily in a little corner of darkness, but the universe of God is an enormous place of light and high beauty, and that is our certain, final destiny. It is so because of Jesus.’