Articles
More Than Conquerors
“No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.”(Rom 8:37)
Christians live between two realities. On the one hand we know that God has acted out of his own grace and reached out to us in love through the sacrifice of Jesus. On the other hand, we daily confront a world that refuses to acknowledge this—one that attacks our choices, belittles our faith, and pressures us toward evil. Which reality wins out?
Paul has spent the first eight chapters of Romans explaining the inner workings of God’s plan to save us. It is tempting to take this as a lesson in obscure theology that is distant from the world we live in. Yet Paul connects these two realities because as he writes these words, he is suffering physically! “For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us”(Rom 8:18). God is on our side, and that has a practical impact in our lives right now. “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword?...No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us”(Rom 8:35, 37).
The challenge of the world’s opposition does not negate or overwhelm God’s love. No, God’s love swallows the world’s trials under. He gives us the victory over them. He makes us “more than conquerors.”
Christians conquer and live above all circumstances. Look through the list again—tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, danger, sword. We are not crippled by thinking of ourselves as innocent victims who deserve better treatment. We are not embittered by a lifetime of ill-treatment because we conquer “through him who loved us.” We overcome the evil around us with good.
We continue to walk by faith in a God who is on our side (Rom 8:31). We hold a perspective that thinks in eternal (rather than momentary) terms. We see value even in suffering that connects us more deeply to our God (Rom 5:3-5). We are not stronger and better than the world on our own—but we are “more than conquerors through him who loved us.”
God is on our side, even if sometimes it doesn’t feel like it. God is on our side, even if others try to convince us that his help is meaningless. God is on our side. What else matters?
