For we are saved by hope: but hope that is seen is not hope: for what a man sees, why does he yet hope for?
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Ambrosiaster
AD 400
By hoping for what God has promised to us in Christ, we have made ourselves worthy of deliverance. Therefore we have been set free in the hope that what is coming in the future is no different from what we believe. Commentary on Paul’s Epistles.
For we are not following after present glory, but future, according to what Paul the apostle also warns us, and says, "We are saved by hope; but hope that is seen is not hope: for what a man seeth, why doth he hope for? But if we hope for that which we see not, then do we by patience wait for it."
We believe that our bodies also will overcome corruption and death. For the time being this is a hope, because it is not yet present, but it is a future certainty. .
For we are saved by hope, as it is the will of God we should be, waiting and hoping with patience for the things which we have not seen, which neither the eye hath seen, nor the ear hath heard (1 Corinthians ii. 9.)
And the spirit also helpeth our infirmity, asketh for us with unspeakable groanings. If we understand this according to the common exposition, of the divine spirit of the Holy Spirit, the sense is, says St. Augustine, that the Holy Spirit maketh us ask: but we may understand the Spirit of God and his grace, diffused in our souls, and in particular that gift of the Holy Spirit, called the spirit of prayer, given to the new Christians, which taught them what to ask, and how to pray. See St. Chrysostom. (Witham)
What Paul means is that we are not to expect everything to be given to us in this life, but we are to have hope as well. For the only thing we brought to God was our faith in the promises of what was to come, and it was in this way that we were saved. If we lose this hope, we lose the one thing which we have contributed to our salvation.
