“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.”
Read the whole chapter here.
Although I will be focusing on verses 31-39 (and more specifically the section that is quoted above), this whole chapter is very powerful and encouraging. With that said, if you have the time, then I would definitely suggested reading the full chapter. Otherwise, let’s dive into what we have here. To understand why the “No” starts off this verse, we have to look at what question it is in response to. If we look at verse 35, we see Paul asking what separate us from the love of God, then he rhetorically asks if trouble, hardship, persecution, famine, nakedness, danger, or sword would be the thing that would separate us from that love of God. The simple answer to that question is Paul’s “no.”
I’m glad that Paul elaborated on his answer. He told us why none of those difficult things that we experience in life would separate us from God’s love. Paul tells us that we are to identify as conquerors of all of those things through Christ’s love for us. Because God sent us Jesus to die on the cross, but even more because Jesus rose from the grave conquering death, we have access to life and more importantly access to the love of God. What does this mean to us? It means that we get to live a life that is better than the circumstances we are in.
In some of life’s toughest circumstances, it is easy to feel like God is distant or even that maybe we have slipped up and separated ourselves from God. We look to our circumstances to determine God’s position toward us. Sometimes we exchange the question “Is God pleased with me?” with the question “How is my life going right now?” I think when we do this we lose sight of how great God is. In this sense, I am using great not only in saying that God is very good but also saying that God is very big/vast. God demonstrates His love by standing with us in our tough circumstances. God’s love give us hope. God’s love gives us peace that’s unexplainable. Even if you don’t feel like it, or maybe you don’t think it’s true in a particular moment. We have this passage to hold onto as hope that we cannot be separated from God’s love.
pray
Take a moment to thank God for sending Jesus to give us life and make us conquerors of our circumstances. Thank him for a love that we can’t be separated from. Now take some time just repeating these verses to yourself. If you’re able, I challenge you to memorize these verses in your reflection.
