All Your Tribulation Are Belong To Us.

Do you enjoy witnessing your favorite sports team win? Your friends or family members overcome a problem or succeed in life? I assume you do. We have been victorious over the other team. Your loved ones have conquered the situation, the problem. There is another victory for Christians, however, and it is far superior to earthly victories. It is an eternal victory over our adversaries, those many trials and dangers in life—even death itself. Paul wrote of this victory in this beautiful passage:

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? As it is written, ‘For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.’ No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:35–39). ¹

The list of our adversaries is long in these verses, and we could write about them all. However, I’d like to direct our focus to the statement that Christians are “more than conquerors.” The lift-off for this focus is from these statements: “A conqueror is a person who defeats the enemy. One who is more than a conqueror causes the enemy to become a helper.”²

When an army conquers another army, one is the victor and one is the loser. However, if an army overwhelmingly conquers the armies of another country, they take over the defeated foe. “We are now your rulers. You will do what we command and help us remain conquerors.”

So, according to Romans 8, through the love of God in Jesus, trials, persecutions, and hardships are not only conquered, they become our helpers.

How can that be?

Paul wrote that we Christians are more than conquerors “for” or because nothing will be able to separate us from the love of God in Jesus. Let’s expand that with this statement: God’s love is an immovable, impenetrable, undefeatable bulwark, and Christians who abide there are in that bulwark. They conquer tribulation in that bulwark. They conquer persecutions in that bulwark.

They conquer death in that bulwark.

However, not only are all these adversaries conquered, they help us remain conquerors.

How? Because they cause this to happen:

The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him (Romans 8:16–17).

For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God (Romans 8:18–19).

We are heirs of God. What does that mean? Great question. That is quite a statement, and I confess my ignorance concerning the fullness of it. But we will be glorified with Him in eternity. Our trials helped bring us there, nonetheless. What does it mean that all creation eagerly longs for the revealing of the sons of God? I do not know. But here’s an interesting passage from Revelation:

The one who conquers and who keeps my works until the end, to him I will give authority over the nations, and he will rule them with a rod of iron, as when earthen pots are broken in pieces, even as I myself have received authority from my Father. And I will give him the morning star (Revelation 2:26–28).

Does that sound like overwhelming victory to you?

This is God’s love in Jesus.

This is what God’s love in Jesus through trials—even death—wins for us.

Christian, remain faithful. Abide in His love.

Overwhelming conquering awaits.

 

¹The Holy Bible: English Standard Version. (2016). Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles.

²Hendriksen, W., & Kistemaker, S. J. (1953–2001). Exposition of Paul’s Epistle to the Romans (Vol. 12–13, p. 293). Grand Rapids: Baker Book House.

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