More Than Conquerors

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? As it is written: “For your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.” No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:35-39) 

      Though history, one of the characteristics of Christianity at its best has been our willingness to face trouble, hardship, persecution, nakedness, danger and the sword, because we know our time here is temporary. Christians have been martyred. They have taken stands against empires and against corrupt societies. They have cared for those suffering from plagues and leprosy, knowing that they could become infected. Oh, that more Christians today would have the courage to say "He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose." (Jim Eliot) Instead, we hear demands that those among whom there might be someone who is physically ill (Ebola) or spiritually or morally ill (terrorists) must be rejected.

         There is wisdom in not bringing evil into your home, but Christians before us have gone out to help those who sought their deaths. They have gone out to care for their enemies' needs. They have believed that facing death all day long was part of what it meant to be Christ-like. I fear that I am too great a coward - that many of us are. Oh, there are those who will say that they'll gladly go down with guns smoking in a blaze of glory, but how many of us would walk unarmed into the camp of the enemy and seek a condition in which they can again make us victims if they so choose? How many would pay so that they could victimize us again? This is what the story of the Good Samaritan is about. This is what Christians have done over and over, though not consistently enough.

       How can we become more like these ones who have gone before us and the One who is our King? We can do this by remembering that nothing can separate us from Christ. We can do it by learning to be this way when our lives are not what is at stake, but only our convenience.... then our egos.

         And the perspective that God's Word teaches us? It is that when we do this, we are more than conquerors.