A Bible Reading: Romans 8:31-32, 35-37
If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all, how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?
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.
A Thought
In his famous passage from 1 Corinthians 13, St Paul talks about the eternal nature of love. ‘Love never fails…and now these three remain; faith, hope and love, but the greatest of these is love.’
Most of us will have, at some time, lost someone we love dearly. Helen and I have lost parents, we have also lost a daughter. The pain of bereavement can be enormous, but my experience is that love endures, and that, as the pain subsides, love remains. Indeed, without the love, there would be no pain of bereavement. As C.S. Lewis wrote, after the death of his wife, ‘The pain now is part of the happiness then, that is the deal’.
If the pain of death is unable to separate us from the love of those we hold dearly in this life, does it not also follow that, as St Paul says, the troubles we face in this life cannot separate us from the love of God who has already demonstrated his love by giving up his own Son for us?
St Paul, in his reasoning takes this thought further. If nothing can separate us from the love of God, he says, then we are ‘more than conquerors’ in all the things that we face today. We are not ‘conquerors’, because it is not us that has won the battle, we are ‘more than conquerors’ because Jesus has won the battle, and we can enjoy the spoils of victory without having to fight the battle.
What are the trials you face today, and in the days, weeks and months to come? Whatever they are, however big they may appear, the love of God is greater, and you are more than a conqueror through him who loves you.
A Prayer
Thank you, Father God, that you demonstrated your love for me, unworthy as I am, by sending your Son to die for me. Thank you that his victory over sin and death means that, in all the things that I will face today, nothing can separate me from your love, but that, through Jesus, I am more than a conqueror.
Amen.
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