Mark how the Apostle, in his lofty and enthusiastic way, is not
content here with simply saying that he and his fellows conquer. It
would be a poor thing, he seems to think, if the balance barely
inclined to our side, if the victory were but just won by a hair's
breadth and triumph were snatched, as it were, out of the very jaws
of defeat. There must be something more than that to correspond to
the power of the victorious Christ that is in us. And so, he says, we
very abundantly conquer; we not only hinder these things which he has
been enumerating from doing that which it is their aim apparently to
do, but we actually convert them into helpers or allies. The '_more_
than conquerors' seems to mean, if there is any definite idea to be
attached to it, the conversion of the enemy conquered into a friend
and a helper. The American Indians had a superstition that every foe
tomahawked sent fresh strength into the warrior's arm. And so all
afflictions and trials rightly borne, and therefore overcome, make a
man stronger, and bring him nearer to Jesus Christ.
Note then, further, that not only is this victory more than bare
victory, being the conversion of the enemy into allies, but that it
is a victory which is won even whilst we are in the midst of the
strife. It is not that we shall be conquerors in some far-off heaven,
when the noise of battle has ceased and they hang the trumpet in the
hall, but it is here now, in the hand-to-hand and foot-to-foot
death-grapple that we do overcome. No ultimate victory, in some
far-off and blessed heaven, will be ours unless moment by moment,
here, to-day,' we _are_ more than conquerors through Him that
loved us.'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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